his place in the history of photography, he may
also be remembered for pictures he never saw.
When he died in 1984, he left behind more than
300,000 exposed negatives that were either undeve-
loped, developed but unproofed, or printed on
proof sheets but unedited. Commenting on Wino-
grand’s ‘‘last few thousand rolls,’’ Szarkowski
posits that ‘‘the making of an exposure had become
merely a gesture of acknowledgment that what lay
before the camera might make a photograph, if one
had the desire and the energy to focus one’s atten-
tion’’ (Szarkowski 1988, 36).
Szarkowski, with assistance from Winogrand’s
long time friends and colleagues Tod Papageorge,
Tom Roma, and Thomas Consilvio, selected 25 pic-
tures for the 1988 retrospective which were grouped
under the heading ofUnfinished Work. Szarkowski
wrote that these photographs ‘‘were chosen because
they are consonant with and yet different from his
earlier work, and represent our sense of the change
in his intuitions and ambitions late in his life.’’
(Szarkowski 1988, 9) While such postmortem extra-
polation is not unheard of in the history of art, and
photographers often have backlogs of unprocessed
film or unedited contact sheets, the scale of the
Winogrand backlog has prompted numerous ques-
tions about the artist’s career. Liz Kotz writes: ‘‘The
awkward status of these late, ‘unfinished’ images
should alert us to a structural failure or impossibil-
ity internal to Winogrand’s project.’’ Despite the
valid, conceptual implications of archives suggested
by the reams and rolls of unreviewed material, Kotz
insists that Winogrand ‘‘doggedly clings to an older
model of authorial agency, subjectivity and desire,
even as it implodes around him during his final
years’’ (Kotz 2000, 25 & 28).
The weight of Winogrand’s articulated legacy and
the astonishing number of negatives he left unre-
marked are matched by a comparable outpouring
of words in response.Winogrand: Figments from the
Real World, (1988) the most comprehensive single
source of information on the photographer, includes
over four dozen book and article citations, following
listings of published interviews, statements, and
taped lectures. The publication of this book and the
exhibition it accompanied spawned numerous
reviews and retrospective commentary in 1988. Sev-
eral substantial biographical and memorial essays on
Winogrand have appeared by writers including
Helen Gary Bishop, Ben Lifson, Tod Papageorge,
Leo Rubinfien, Kenneth E. Silver, Alex J. Sweet-
man, and John Szarkowski.
In the end, there can be no final resolution of the
Winogrand legacy. The problems, both physical
and mental, represented by his work will provide
fodder for endless arguments cycling around what
for Winogrand were the central issues—the distinc-
tion between photography and sight, the tension
between form and content, the use of photography
to know life. As Alex Sweetman writes:
His nervous bliss, the ecstasy of the photographic activity
that took him outside of himself, was what Winogrand
worked for, lived for, and believed in: his own profes-
sionalism, the performance of his vision, was all that he
had and the best that he could be. The resulting photo-
graphs were, finally, merely the leftovers and debris, the
ash of the intensely seen and intuitively felt moments, not
life itself
(Sweetman 1990, 11)
GeorgeSlade
Seealso:Davidson, Bruce; Friedlander, Lee; Lyon,
Danny; Street Photography; Szarkowski, JohnBiography
Born in New York, New York, 14 January 1928. United
States Air Force, 1946–1947. Studied painting, City Col-
lege of New York, 1947–1948. Studied painting and
photography, Columbia University, New York, 1948–- Studied photography, The New School for Social
Research, New York, 1949, with Alexey Brodovitch.
Freelance photographer and photojournalist, New
York, Los Angeles, 1952–1969. Begins association with
Light Gallery, New York, 1971. Photography instructor
at The New School for Social Research, New York;
Cooper Union, New York; The School of the Art Insti-
tute of Chicago; Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of
Technology, Chicago; University of Texas at Austin.
Member American Society of Magazine Photographers,
1952–1963. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow-
ship, 1964, 1969, 1978. New York State Council on the
Arts Award, 1972. National Endowment for the Arts
award, 1975. Died in Tijuana, Mexico, 19 March 1984.
Individual Exhibitions
1960 Photographs by Garry Winogrand; Image Gallery, New
York, New York
1969 The Animals; Museum of Modern Art, New York,
New York
1971 Garry Winogrand’s Photographs; Light Gallery, New
York, New York
Garry Winogrand; Focus Gallery, San Francisco, Cali-
fornia
Garry Winogrand; Institute of Design, Illinois Institute
of Technology, Chicago, Illinois
1972 Garry Winogrand; Toronto Gallery of Photography,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Garry Winogrand; Media Center, Rice University,
Houston, Texas
1975 Garry Winogrand: Women Are Beautiful; Light Gal-
lery, New York, New York
1977 Public Relations: Photographs by Garry Winogrand;Mu-
seum of Modern Art, New York, New York, and traveledWINOGRAND, GARRY