With street photography growing in popularity, famed street photographer Garry Winogrand is finally starting to get the exposure he deserves. A feature biopic film about him is due out next year, and now the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona has made available 1,822 Garry Winogrand images available on its massive web site for students, fans, and street photographers looking to unlock his secret code to study.
They are a significant part of the 36,000 images that went online on the Center for Creative Photography’s web site in August.
Does she look familiar? A different frame in this sequence became the cover photo of Winogrand’s controversial book, Women are Beautiful, as seen on the Center for Creative Photography online photo collection.
Even if you’re familiar with Winogrand’s life work, there are a lot of photos in this online collection that you’ve probably never seen before. There are many early photos, from the 1950s, that predate the early 60s when Winogrand found his visual “voice”. There are also many photos from the thousands of frames Winogrand shot shortly before his death in 1984 which he never saw.
Yes, that’s Diane Arbus, photographed by Garry Winogrand.
The bad news: Many of them aren’t interesting, and likely would have ended up in Winogrand’s “no” pile of prints. The other bad news? The pictures are rather small. This does a disservice to many of Winogrand’s photos, which are complex and need to be seen in all their detail.
More undiscovered gold from the collection.
One of many previously unseen Winogrand photos.
However, for hardcore fans, there are a lot of familiar and unfamiliar images and one can start to piece together how Winogrand’s view of the world evolved by seeing the hints of his vintage 60s-70s approach as far back as the early 50s. It’s definitely worthwhile binge viewing for would-be and actual street shooters. If you’re patient, you’ll find some undiscovered vintage Winogrand gold.
