New York City

Date

1964

Creator

With a flair for seeing the extraordinary among the commonplace, Garry Winogrand developed his own methods of capturing fleeting events. He learned the techniques of photography in the Army, and worked as a photojournalist in the 1950s. In his creative work, Winogrand shot everything he saw with his Leica miniature camera, exposing hundreds of rolls of film. He framed images instinctively, tilting the camera to control the visual distortions of the lens. When choosing which frames to print, Winogrand favored momentary images of human fallibility. He often worked at the Central Park Zoo, and found that people relaxed in the presence of the animals. Here a family leans over a poolside rail, searching for a walrus below. The animal has surfaced to confront the photographer, seeming almost to shrug at the spectators’ stupidity. When Winogrand died in 1984, he left more than 300,000 exposed negatives that were either undeveloped, unproofed or unedited. from Touchstones of the Twentieth Century: A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame (exhibition, 2020-21)