Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand, (b. 1928) is an American street photographer known for his spontaneous images of people in public. He was extremely prolific, and though he died young, Winogrand created a vast corpus of work that documented society across the United States over the course of three decades.

Winogrand threw away the established traditions of Street Photography set forth by his predecessors. So, his photographs often appear haphazard, tilted, and poorly composed. As a result, this is what came to be called the ‘snapshot aesthetic’. However, this unique aesthetic helped emphasize his subject matter, which challenged preconceptions of American society. As well as the post-WWII optimism captured by commercial photography. His skewed and off-center images paradoxically united discordant elements into one composition. Therefore allowing the viewer to engage with his subjects in new and unusual ways. In so doing, Winogrand influenced an entire generation of photographers and artists. Forcing them to push the boundaries of what photography as a medium could be and what it could expose. Winogrand’s prolific body of work is best known through the photo books he published.