12 January 2015
What do things look like when photographed? This is what Garry Winogrand (1928-84) asked himself as he roamed America after the Second World War and created his iconic images, moving invisibly between faces, parades, sidewalks, election rallies and local folklore. At once flippant and dramatic, Winogrand is the protagonist of a retrospective not to be missed at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, where over half the prints are being shown for the first time. In 1967, together with Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus, he changed the history of photography forever with the exhibition New Documents at the MoMA in New York, subverting in almost scandalous fashion the principles of documentary photography as they had been laid down just a few years earlier by The Family of Man (1955), curated at the same venue by Edward Steichen. In his pictures Winogrand captured a schizophrenic society, catapulted into the most glaring exhibitionism (convertible cars, electrical appliances, wigs and hairdos), still in the grip of racial prejudice and ready to go back to war in Vietnam and to repress the student movements and the aspirations of the new generations. He represented the feelings of a country with his photos: not limiting himself to documenting, he delved behind the appearances of a widespread affluence and showed us a crude and sensual reality. A talent worth rediscovering.
Garry Winogrand
Jeu de Paume
Curated by Leo Rubinfien, Erin O’Toole and Sarah Greenough
Paris
October 14, 2014 > February 8, 2015