Garry Winogrand at Rice University

To be honest I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the production of this video. This video was screened by Tod Pagageorge when I was in his "Core Curriculum" Class. (Totally would recommend his book by the same title from Aperture Foundation) Some how I had the DVD and uploaded it here. I mean, it's pretty cool to see someone talk to students about making work in such a genuine and open manner. 1hr. 46min. of Garry Winogrand when there was really only the 6 minute clip for so long.

[@Hipster_In_Denial]

Such a character. Says what he means. We need a few more Garry Winogrand's in the world. Especially today. Thanks so much for sharing!

[@ellisvener5337]

This was Winogrand speaking at the old Rice Media Center. I’m pretty sure he’s talking answering questions asked by a photography class taught by Geoff Winningham. What a lot of street photographers don’t understand is that Winogrand cut his teeth and honed his craft by working as a commercial and magazine photographer (same as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus although they were advertising fashion photographers and Winogrand worked for public relations, sports magazines, and advertising clients in the 1950s and 60s.

[@ellisvener5337]

I was briefly acquainted with Winogrand when he was in his last couple of years of teaching at UT and I was an undergraduate. I watched him several times while he was photographing on “The Drag,” the stretch of Guadalupe Street that ran along the side of the campus. I never bothered him, just observed. What I noticed was that he was a much more careful shooter than many of his critics gave him credit for. It is true that his photos have the appearance of randomness, but he really was paying attention to the relationship of foreground to the context of the background. It was kind of exciting to watch him work because he was so fully engaged in interacting with the people around him. I had a couple of closer encounters with him in other University related contexts, like getting our ID pictures made and photographing on the sidelines of a football game. Unfortunately by the time I felt like I had pulled my grades out of the toilet and could afford to take photography classes, he had moved to Los Angeles or somewhere out west. A decade and a half later, my girlfriend/roommate was a painter who was a couple of years older than me. At Garry’s invitation, she had sat in on his classes and told me a few things about how he judged and culled both his work and that of students. Basically he’d start with a big pile of work prints and as he quickly went went through them he’d say either “no” or “huh” (his way of saying “this photo is worth looking at again”as he sorted them into two piles. The “no” pile was always much larger than the minuscule “huh” pile. They would then pin the ones that made the cut up on the wall and he and the class would discuss them, why they worked as photographs and why they didn’t. My photography mentor was Garry’s good friend Jay Maisel. Jay has some great and very funny Winogrand stories. Jay told me he liked to tease Garry that he was always finding chaos in order, and Garry would fire right back, “yeah but you find order in chaos!”

[@wildmano1965]

“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” Perfect.

[@bobfet1]

amazing! i have been living off of the small 5-minute clips of winogrand up until now.

[@artromano7554]

listened to it 3 times already and it won't be the last. Great stuff!

[@georgeroukis]

I find his personality as interesting and intriguing as his photos. I can watch him talk for hours. So relaxing to listen and watch his mind.

[@willselfsdog4664]

Thanks for sharing this. Brilliant rare footage of a true great, in his full rambling guise!

[@davidrbanta]

Like what he said about a photographer's job being to make the photograph more dramatic than what's being photographed...

[@gumanow]

Awesome nuggets in here. He goes on to explain a lot of what he's said before in more detail.

[@henrygrove100]

I love his work

[@Leon6D]

Thanks me too!!!

[@pmanis09]

It's great that this even exists, but frustrated with all of the debate about Evans. There are so many questions about Winogrand's work and technique that could've been asked.

[@RaymondMcCarron1]

if you get a chance, please go to see his exhibition at the metropolitan museum of art in new york. its fantastic!

[@streetphotographygalleryit6326]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/qXjcg5eVbruNhas

[@paulreinhard8544]

Thank you for uploading, great value and fun watching and listening to one of the great photographers

[@CalumetVideo]

Great insight into a master of photography. I agree with much of of his discussion, but seem to disagree with 35mm matching medium or large format. I think the difference is realized when printing larger.

[@ymousanon4615]

...I've been told that Winogrand was the most honest street photographers. That is to say most of his photographs were grab shots and not "posed" candids. I've read that the great man of grab shots Cartier Bresson would even set up some candid grab shots he missed according to writer who went with him on assignment for awhile Eugene Smith was another great photojournalist who rarely manipulated his subjects into poses. Diane Arbus and Judy Dater also great capturing the moment photogs. Robert Frank was also great. That iconic shot by Eisenstadt of the American soldier kissing a nurse which keeps making time-life millions. And the two persons in that photo said that photograph was posed. Although Eisenstadt, being a an american Jew traveled to Nazi Germany in the late 1930's really did capture the moment of Josef Goebbels glaring at him with so much evil, took much courage. Another great photojournalist who traveled the world was Ken Heyman. Search for his work in the book : "The World's Family" Perigree books, published by the Putnum Publishing Company, (c)1983. It may not be one of the most exciting collection but it one of most compassionate, but not prudish, photojournalist book i ever saw, imho. He's very right about exploitative Bruce Davidson. Also some of the greatest people action photos are fuzzy and blurry. I use to like the Ansel Adams type of photography. But know i find them soulless. There is a very emotional picture of Toscanini: The Last Concert is very emotional but fuzzy. I'd take that photo over the most super realistic view camera photo anyday. Can't remember a notable fashion photographer in the UK who said, when i go out and do street photography, i put my wide angle 35mm or 28mm on his Leica and said he never focused or cared. I saw one of his arty books and it was called trouble and strife and its just his wife in various nude poses brushing red paint here and there on her body. not the greatest i've seen of his work...name still evades me...dementia setting in, lol. You see with a wide angle lens even if it is wide open at f2.8 you focus on infinity and everything is in fosus from 8 or ten feet to infinity. Being a retired small time photojournalist with some national credits, The advantage of the range finder is you know exactly what you got. With an slr there is this black out because the mirror has to go up. You really don't know what if you caught the moment on film. startting in around the 1960's most photojournalists used slr's. The advantage was that you could use telephotos easier with an slr and so on. but since you didn't know if you got that for example soccer ball on the players head, heavy motor drives were used at like 6 frames per second and action photojournalists went through a roll of 36 in no time. It was nuts and a waste of film. www.classicalnotes.net/reviews/toscanini_last.html

[@Leon6D]

awesome info thank you!!!

[@michaelbarkleyphoto]

Wish i was a lump a ore like Garry Winogrand .....

[@therealsergio]

Reference is made during this talk of a "recording in texas" that Walker Evans shows up an hour late to, and Frank and Winogrand are there (do they also speak)... Does anyone know when this occurred and whether the video/audio is available anywhere?

[@straydog6166]

Thank you for posting this Justin :0)

[@JosephBayot]

This is fantastic. Thanks!

[@jamiegray3245]

Someone get his guy a bed or a lounger chair.

[@wildmano1965]

So I guess this is 1977. (I know, this is an old thread).

[@TheIrishfitter]

Excellent!!

[@marcinnowak3338]

Thank you.

[@hoastbeef1202]

love his NY brashness and saracasm. hilarious!

[@nickfanzo]

hoastbeef Bronx. Baby

[@Leon6D]

Lovin it!!!!

[@carloronce1967]

What book of Davidson's are they talking about? East 100th Street?

[@davidrbanta]

Yeah...man, down on Davidson...

[@wildmano1965]

I would take this assessment of Davidson with a grain of salt.

[@lordotori9063]

big time @@wildmano1965

[@MJL7557]

thank you for this

[@nickfanzo]

Master

[@tricityterror]

Whoa, where did this come from???

[@hoastbeef1202]

u never got an answer, this was 4 years ago...

[@ellisvener5337]

It was at the old Rice Media Center at Rice University in Houston. At the time Winogrand was living in Austin and teaching in the art department at the University of Texas.

[@Ava-ph9vv]

@@ellisvener5337 8 years after the original question! Good info, though.

[@radioblogtirana]

[@slimnics]

what did he mean when he was talking about the difference between a range finder and an slr ? i have an slr with a 50, will i get a different image compared to a range finder with a 50 ?

[@andresalejandro99515]

+SlimNic Clipz What he meant was for the film slr's of the era. At that time, the focusing was not that easy with wider lenses on slr cameras. Nowadays though, we don't have that problem with digital cameras.

[@slimnics]

i use a slr film camera and yeh its sometime hard to see the focusing...i see how the range finder is easier to lock in focus

[@nickfanzo]

It’s just preference, use what you have and get good with it

[@slimnics]

@@nickfanzo hi, my comment was 5 years ago. I have learnt so much since then, amazing!

[@weisserth]

@matej sarlija Winogrand primarily used a 28mm focal length on his Leica bodies. Leica introduced 28mm frame lines with the M4 in 1966 and even then, the frame lines extended to the very edge of the viewfinder window, so even with your eyeball pressed all the way to the viewfinder, you wouldn't see more than 100% of the frame. Winogrand always wore glasses, so with ANY Leica and a 28mm lens and frame lines, he always saw less than 100% of the 28mm field of view. That's why you can see him use an external, dumb viewfinder instead of the rangefinder viewfinder in many videos.

[@GaitaPonto]

Pure gold, invaluable document. Thank you for sharing.

[@jamesnicol3831]

MASTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY

[@absonus]

This is it …. you don`t really need to know more .

[@scotth6647]

26:47 sounds like he's trying to invoke what can simply be expressed not in an idolitric way but by abraxas, but maybe he read the concept somewhere and just wanted to sound smart but couldn't explain it. like I bet he's good at photos but verbal not the sharpest tool in the shed.

[@jameskyle4807]

It would be really nice if you could REMOVE that Sixty Cycle Hum from the audio of this VID. Distracting and not very well recorded. Please try to remove that hum... And repost.

[@PeachPeachPeachBBY]

Could you do it for us plz?

[@jameskyle4807]

@@PeachPeachPeachBBY I do not have the software anylonger, :-(( It would be rather easy - just lower the volume or delete the oscillation of 60 Hz on the audio part,.

[@PeachPeachPeachBBY]

​@@jameskyle4807 You should probably get the software then...

[@carlosmcse]

When I’m teaching my job is to be clear. Haha… Funny to see him trying to teach when he can’t put 3 cohesive sentences together. He said “the meaning. It’s up to you”. Then the student “so it’s ambiguous”… “no it’s not ambiguous”. Student: uhhh. What’s the difference. Garry: hmmmm … bullshit bullshit bullshit 😀 When he talks about the statue photo. His picture of that statue is very amateur. It’s not that Frank’s photo was so much better, it’s just that it was properly composed. In Garry’s photo is just a snapshot. The background is cluttered. There’s no figure to ground. This is what happens when you think the only way to learn is just to go out and shoot. A teacher could’ve taught him about figure to ground. Frank didn’t discover that just shooting on his own. When he said “conversations I’ve had with him” when taking about Avedon, you could tell that was a lie. The reason students are arguing with him is because they can smell bullshit a mile away. He’s not confident and they can sense it. And they can feel the disrespect when he sits like that, which is just out of the fact he’s not confident in that environment.

[@chqngolion1777]

Damm american students want the answers of everything, so dummy lol You cant expect someone to give u the reason of why ur art it's art

[@starchores]

Can we see your book?

[@CRJines]

Robert Frank's work was important because it was anti-American and pro communism. That's why we know who he is

[@user-vh1pl7lm9o]

He wasn't anti-American, even though he could be pro communism. He just came from a different perspective, because he wasn't born in USA; so he had a different point of view and a different "regard" upon American people.

[@marcinti9509]

What a weirdow!