--- description: A new exhibition at SFMOMA presents a retrospective look at Garry Winogrand's most iconic and rare photographs. title: An American Epic: The Work of Garry Winogrand image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01c997521a9c110f/69868b45810bbb7e8ec911da/00102_sfmoma_winogrand_democraticconvention.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [World](/section/world/) ## World Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [LightBox](/tag/time-section-lightbox/) ## LightBox Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # An American Epic: The Work of Garry Winogrand by [Richard Conway](/author/richard-conway/) ## Richard Conway Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 13, 2013 8:00 AM CUT  John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960 John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco by [Richard Conway](/author/richard-conway/) ## Richard Conway Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 13, 2013 8:00 AM CUT There is a moment during Bill Moyers 1982 interview with Garry Winogrand when Winogrand, wandering through the streets of Los Angeles, lifts his camera to set up a shot. It’s a move he surely performs often, but this time something doesn’t quite work: He clicks, but speedily pulls the lens away from his face, shrugging his shoulders. “What’s happening?” a woman sitting outside a nearby restaurant asks, seeming to take notice of Winogrand as he hesitates, and of the documentary crew with him. “I’m surviving!” he replies in his thick Bronx accent, laughing warmly. The public television piece – originally broadcast on New Jersey’s WNET – is but a very brief window into a moment in his life, and yet we learn something crucial about him. Humble, genial, this is Winogrand as he is most often remembered; wandering through city streets with a Leica over his shoulder. But here we also see him mid-process, engaged with the world around him, unafraid of taking risks. “I learned a long time ago to trust my instincts,” Winogrand tells Moyers a little later. “You see? You don’t learn anything from repeating what you know.” Born in the Bronx in 1928, Winogrand certainly did well to trust his instincts. A deeply unpretentious and inventive photographer, his frenetic, apparently off-the-cuff pictures descend from the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. On the streets, he was a shoot-often kind of guy, one who could get so close to subjects as to either charm or irritate them. Winogrand took so many pictures, in fact, that it is hard to grasp the breadth of his contribution to photography: After his death in 1984 he left behind an estimated 250,000 frames in total, most of which he never saw himself. It is into these unknown frames that a retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington attempts to delve. Aiming to expose more of his work, and to show that he was not simply a street photographer, what emerges from a carefully curated selection is not just a portrait of one of the country’s most prolific artists, but of one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. One who chronicled all American life. “We see a whole range of people,” says Leo Rubinfien, photographer and guest curator of the show. “Here’s the businessman, here’s the beauty, and here’s the cowboy. Winogrand really offers an epic picture of life in the United States.” Indeed, from the sparse, big-skied domesticity of the family home in _Albuquerque, 1957_ to theawe-struck kid eying jewelry in _Fort Worth, Texas, 1974–77_ and from the sneaking, lighthearted voyeurismof a captured kiss in _New York, 1969_ to the bubbly, near-ecstatic intimacy of the women in _Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960,_ to know Winogrand’s work is surely to know the soul of America. And yet if Winogrand authored a modern epic, what is equally striking was his acknowledgment of the limits of photography throughout his career. As a documentarian of the everyday, he believed his pictures were mere windows into a moment, at best a surface level description of life. Indeed, he rallied against photojournalism. Or at least photojournalism as it operated in his day. Shooting at a time when many magazines would commission photographic projects that were often editor-directed and subservient to the written stories accompanying them, he preferred to shoot from the gut. Working not from top down, but from the bottom up. Just as life presented itself to him. “Winogrand was a student of America,” Rubinfien adds. One who constantly asked the question: “What is it that makes us _us_?” --- Is it worse to treat women as objectify women or relegate them to old school gender roles? Advertisers compete for the most sexist ad. Garry Winogrand _runs at_ [_SFMOMA_](http://www.sfmoma.org/ "undefined") _from March 9, 2013 to June 2, 2013_. _A_ [_catalog_](http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300191776 "undefined")_, published by Yale in association with SFMOMA, accompanies the show_. ---  John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Fort Worth, Texas, 1975 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Location Unknown, 1963 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Fort Worth, Texas, 1974–77 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Park Avenue, New York, 1959 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Metropolitan Opera, New York, ca. 1951 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  New York, ca. 1969 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Central Park Zoo, New York, 1967 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Point Magu Naval Air Station, California, ca 1979 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Fort Worth, Texas, 1974 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, 1964 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Fort Worth, Texas, 1974–77 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Los Angeles, 1964 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Venice Beach, Los Angeles, 1980-83 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Albuquerque, 1957 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  New York, 1969 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco  Los Angeles, ca.1980–83 Garry Winogrand / © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/67654/an-american-epic-the-work-of-garry-winogrand/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/67654/an-american-epic-the-work-of-garry-winogrand/"},"headline":"An American Epic: The Work of Garry Winogrand","datePublished":"2013-03-13T08:00:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:41:57.196Z","description":"A new exhibition at SFMOMA presents a retrospective look at Garry Winogrand's most iconic and rare photographs.","url":"https://time.com/67654/an-american-epic-the-work-of-garry-winogrand/","keywords":["LightBox","bronx","Out There","street photography"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01c997521a9c110f/69868b45810bbb7e8ec911da/00102_sfmoma_winogrand_democraticconvention.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Conway","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-conway/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt01c997521a9c110f/69868b45810bbb7e8ec911da/00102_sfmoma_winogrand_democraticconvention.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"John F. 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