Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand is widely considered to be one of the most renowned street photographers of the 20th century, known, in particular, for his representations of American life during the 1960s. Born in the Bronx, Winogrand studied art at the City College of New York, and, later, at Columbia University. Often associated with fellow street photographers Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, Winogrand developed some 20,000 rolls of film during his lifetime, with subjects ranging from famous actors and athletes to hippies, politicians, soldiers, animals, and antiwar demonstrators.

In the early 1950s, Winogrand worked as a commercial photographer at the Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan, and at Brackman Associates. In 1955, several of Winogrand’s photographs were featured in The Family of Man exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, followed by his first solo show at Image Gallery in 1959. Throughout the 1960s, Winogrand achieved wide recognition, with his work again featured at MoMA in shows such as Five Unrelated Photographers, along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling, and Ken Heyman, and New Documents, with Arbus and Friedlander.

Winogrand received three Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1964, 1969, and 1979, which enabled him to travel the country and document media events and their effect on the American public. Winogrand also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975.

In addition to his work as an artist, Winogrand served as a professor of photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and at the University of Texas in Austin.

Winogrand passed away in 1984 at the age of 56. Today, his work can be found in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among others.