Garry Winogrand: The Animals
Seen through Winogrand’s lens, the zoo is a theater in which humans and animals, united in a peculiar kind of symbiosis, act out in parable the comic drama of modern urban life.
Fraenkel Gallery will be closed starting Thursday, November 28. We will reopen Tuesday, December 3 for the final weeks of our Kota Ezawa exhibition.
Seen through Winogrand’s lens, the zoo is a theater in which humans and animals, united in a peculiar kind of symbiosis, act out in parable the comic drama of modern urban life.
Seen through Winogrand’s lens, the zoo is a theater in which humans and animals, united in a peculiar kind of symbiosis, act out in parable the comic drama of modern urban life.
Winogrand published this monograph in 1975, at the height of the feminist movement. In the book’s introduction, he writes, “Whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman, I’ve done my best to photograph her. I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.”
Winogrand photographed in airports to assuage his own fear of flying, arriving hours ahead of scheduled trips to distract himself with work. The pictures capture the chaotic anxiety of travel set within the serene architecture of airport terminals.
Winogrand’s early work shows a radical departure from the style of documentary photographers. Unattached to persons or outcomes, the artist takes pleasure in simply observing the human dramas and absurdities that play out in public spaces.
“Winogrand’s best work had a powerful and distinctive authority. The nervous, manic, nearly chaotic quality was an appropriate formulation of a sense of life that was balanced somewhere between animal high spirits and an apprehension of moral disaster.” —John Szarkowski