1. Subways
2. Roads/paths running toward the horizon
3. Posters ironically juxtaposed with pedestrians
4. Natural landscapes
5. Anything outside U.S. borders
6. People on bicycles
7. Immediate family including parents, wives, and children
10. Shadows for their own sake
11. Friends, including other photographers
12. Interior domestic scenes
13. Decay/Entropy/Death
14. U.S. racial minorities with the exception of African-Americans
15. Any scene that would look the same one second later
2. Roads/paths running toward the horizon
3. Posters ironically juxtaposed with pedestrians
4. Natural landscapes
5. Anything outside U.S. borders
6. People on bicycles
7. Immediate family including parents, wives, and children
8. Clocks, calendars, the sun, or any other physical representation of time
9. 99% of Americans alive during his lifetime
11. Friends, including other photographers
12. Interior domestic scenes
13. Decay/Entropy/Death
14. U.S. racial minorities with the exception of African-Americans
15. Any scene that would look the same one second later
Your post left me thinking why I am shooting almost all the time this things excluded in Winogrand preferences.
ReplyDeleteHernan, If you're trying to be the next Garry Winogrand, I think you are doing this for all the wrong reasons. You should not be judging how well you're doing by comparing yourself to others or how you fit in the hierarchy. Your work should come from your heart. Dilettantes on the Internet and in your personal life will constantly seek to classify and judge your work as a means to make sense of their own work. They have no clue what they're doing in their own artistic endeavors so they focus their energy on keeping you down with them. Your job is to ignore them with all your might and carry on with what makes you happy.
DeleteI suspect this article and many other's on Blake's blog are passive aggressive attacks directed at other photographers whom Blake sees as lesser than him.
Focus on what comes from your own heart and your own soul and you will be successful.
Common Sense, can you please elaborate on how this post is a passive aggressive attack? I am very curious to hear your thoughts, but I suspect I will not hear from you again, or perhaps anonymously since you are too ashamed of your opinions to associate them with a real name. But thanks anyway for chiming in.
DeleteHey Common Sense. I am not trying to be the next Garry. Just I am absolutely amazed by the list cause are my redundant themes. Just I am putting some order in my archive and I found that themes included kisses and couples and people alone. I think some of us just shoot and then we discover our recurrent themes.
DeleteWinogrand shot his children as far as I am aware
ReplyDeleteYou didn't read the title very carefully?
DeleteYes but rarely, at least judging from what has been made public. There are no photos of his kids in the huge SFMoMA show, for example. This from a guy who shot 2 million frames. Aperture 112 reproduced several photos of his kids and family life, but as far as I can tell that's about the extent of it. But who knows. Maybe he shot many more that have remained private. But I think it's safe to say he shot them relatively rarely in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteWinogrand's children appear a bit in his Animals book.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, China Plate. Maybe that example sums up the Winogrand philosophy. The only way he could incorporate his kids into his output was as anonymous props in a nonfamily project.
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter was born, Kodak's stock should have jumped half a point! It is strange that such a prolific shooter would have left behind so few pictures of his kids. I never thought about all the things missing from his work except for the subway. Many years ago I bought an old copy of Eros from the early '60s which had a bunch of Garry's photos of lovers in the NYC subway. If I knew where it was, I'd scan a few and post them...
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting in that it shows, not the worthiness or unworthiness of certain themes but, that the prolific Winogrand was focused.
ReplyDeleteHa.
ReplyDeleteIn later life, he photographed his daughter Melissa every day when he put her on the school bus, according to Figments, p. 39.
ReplyDelete(bit late here - am looking for another blog post)