Winogrand Interview.

Photo 2 not carrying any vision???? Yea, I won't argue that one with you. I have nothing to tell you why that was a great pic. If you don't get it, you'd better not as well. See, Im not even calling you names for not getting that. Exactly what you have been doing in this thread.

The problem I see with you is that because you don't like something, you want others who like them to explain to you why we like them in compositional terms. And if we don't do that, we're all stupid/naive.

 

You may be better off spending time doing the opposite what GW had been doing all his life. And yea, don't shoot the monkeys.

Xinbad/Appleby and Travis. I'm obviously a philistine compared to you both, because I don't "get" the five pictures that Bender referenced. What's so great about them?

 

X, What is it about the second picture that haunted you for so many years? Do I need to have an education in Classics to appreciate this at the level that you do? Is photography something that requires a certain life experience, or an upbringing in certain parts of the world, to be appreciated or to be considered great? If someone came from another culture and saw all these works, they might not have the same reaction as you, so would you classify them as heathens, or uncultured, or ordinary?

Vic, sure you're entitled to your opinions about certain works, like everyone of us do. But MB wasn't leaving at that. He whacks everyone who opined differently and he asked for explanations as to why he should like what we liked.

 

Agree to disagree. Besides, GW is dead. Although that may not be so relevant.

Oh, duh, that's Rob? Where'd he come up with that name?

I don't see what's wrong with trying to explain the pictures. He seemed open to hearing it, if only a little. I don't think saying that one image has "haunted me" or that an a photographer would "give his eye teeth" is going to get it.

 

There's no need to attack Michael further, that just pushes what might become an honest discussion right off the table.

Ray,

 

"Xinbad the

Pthailer " is a James Joyce pun on "Sinbad the Sailor". try saying it aloud.

if the photos that bender referenced are so trite, I'm looking forward to his attempts

to duplicate them, or at least their visual qualities, their internal rhythms, the sense

of humor, the quickness of the eye and physical reflex to get the shot, the off

guardedness of the people that populate his images.

 

The first image is the most self-conscious of these images. It clearly shows the

influence of H. C-B & Walker Evans.

 

In the second shot there is a lot going on: the yin-yang composition of the order

and chaos of the man made world balanced against the the order and apparent

chaos of

natural world, the eternity of the mountains vs. the child , the

encroachment of the suburbs into the desert, the black hole of the garage (and the

child visually emerging from it) vs. the palpable lightness of the thundercloud. the

chiaroscuro light on the child and the flat light on the landscape and the dramatic

light in the cloud.

 

#3. A typical Winogrand find: the frame split into two sections & the bourgeois

materialist quality of life in a big city (the car, the buildings, their clothes)

punctuated by the emotional absurdity of the monkey. What does it say about these

normal appearing couple that they have a pet monkey? And where was the

photographer standing when he made this shot? Winogrand's shots when you look

them for awhile start making you ask a lot of questions --unless you have a closed

mind.

 

4.) I don't particularly "get" this image. Obviously he is playing with dualities; their

near

identical body postures and dress. Which when you think about is a little weird why

do otherwise seemingly unrelated people act and dress alike if they aren't in the

military?

 

5.) nicely dressed attractive couple out with their pet monkeys. Look at the

expressions on the couples faces, what do you think they are thinking about? Are

they a couple? an inter-racial couple (odd for the 1960s even in NYC) walking their

pet

monkeys --which are dressed like children.

 

It also really helps to see the actual prints and not the tiny reproduction and limited

tones on a website-- you just miss a lot of the details and visual surprises.

sorry for any typos & grammar mishaps.

if the interview shows anything at all its that he is a photographer first and foremost. he shoots and shoots and does what he does. he kept hacking away at it, made a good living, and enjoyed it.

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what more could one ask for in life than to do what one enjoys doing each day, and, make a living out of it.

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thats success to me....

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<i>If someone came from another culture and saw all these

works, they might not have the same reaction as you, so would

you classify them as heathens, or uncultured, or ordinary?</i>

<P>

 

Vic, that's essentially what Bender has been doing--Rob has

argued against that position.

thats success to me....

 

Lucky guy! Michael has contributed to a interesting discussion; whether you agree with his views, his entitled to them.

Winogrand made a just "okay" living, not a good one. One of the reasons he died so

young was that he couldn't afford decent health insurance & health care--and more

directly hedied from lung cancer caused by a near life-long time cigarette habit. He is

a lot more well known now (and influential) than he was when he was alive.

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Seems my dear Thacker, Chavez, Cicarello and co., that life treated you especially harshly abandoning you on the wrong side of the Bell Curve. Positively dumped.

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I tell you what, Bender. I have $1000 that says I can outperform you on the standardized IQ test of your choice. I hope you take the challenge, though you'd have to be even a bigger fool than I think you are, and without question $1000 poorer.

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In the meantime, maybe you can answer this: why does someone with your great intellect spend so much time participating in a forum where you are universally disliked?

The New Mexico shot is included as Winogrand's entry in the compilation Phaidon 'PhotoBook', which many of you will know, and where it has illuminating commentary by (I think) Ian Jeffries. It has always been one of my favourites - indeed, I once unconsciously ripped it off. The strengths of this picture have already been mentioned above: I might add its ominous feel (the isolated house, the overturned tricycle, the second figure swallowed up in the darkness of the garage, but just visible, the sense of 'emptiness' created by the w/a lens).

I like Winogrand, but I don't feel obliged to defend his entire canon, much of which I do find incoherent. He flirts constantly with disaster, and it often overtakes him, but when an image of his does work, it has the status of a precious object snatched from a burning building. They're all supposed to be unstable, teetering on the edge.

 

I personally feel that there's a problem with his famous 'machine-gun' approach to shooting: photography is not just about what you shoot, but which frames you keep and which you discard. I use less than 1% of the frames I shoot for street photography, and I'm sure I'm not unusual in this respect. I'm not convinced that Winogrand was an informed editor of his own work, that he could really tell the difference between the hits and misses - he was notoriously mislead (for example) by his fetishization of womens' bodies - and his unwillingness to comment on his work makes it more difficult to have faith in him in this regard. (The problem of lax editing is of course most pronounced in the thousands of entirely unedited rolls taken in Los Angeles, which do not to my mind constitute 'Winogrand photographs' at all.)

 

The ire directed against Mr. Bender seems a bit excessive in this thread. He's certainly pompous, but then it's hard to avoid being defensive when everyone's at your throat. Maybe there's a history here that I'm unaware of.

 

Let's argue about Lee Friedlander now!

Sorry, I attached entirely the wrong file there. Meant to link my Winogrand rip-off: this one.

That is why he was Garry Winogrand, and not anyone of us.