Garry Winogrand was an American street photographer, known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation. These Garry Winogrand quotes will motivate you.
Best Garry Winogrand Quotes
- “Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Sometimes I feel like . . . the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me, as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“You have a lifetime to learn technique. But I can teach you what is more important than technique, how to see; learn that and all you have to do afterwards is press the shutter.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I don’t have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera ‘saw’ a piece of time and space.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “The world isn’t tidy; it’s a mess. I don’t try to make it neat.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “All things are photographable.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “When I’m photographing I see life.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“Great photography is always on the edge of failure.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “When the woman is attractive, is it an interesting picture, or is it the woman? I had a lot of headaches with that, which was why it was interesting. I don’t think I always got it straight.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I photograph what interests me. I’m not saying anything different.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “You know, I really don’t think you learn from teachers. You learn from work. I think what you learn, really, is how to be- you have to be your own toughest critic, and you only learn that from work, from seeing work.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“Every photograph is a battle of form versus content.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “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.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film…if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I get totally out of myself. It’s the closest I come to not existing, I think, which is the best – which is to me attractive.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “What if I said that every photograph I made was set up? From the photograph, you can’t prove otherwise. You don’t know anything from the photograph about how it was made, really.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“I have no expectations. None at all.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “A photograph can look anyway.” ~ Garry Winogrand quotes
- “All I’m doing is photographing. When I was working on The Animals, I was working on a lot of other things too. I kept going to the zoo because things were going on in certain pictures. It wasn’t a project.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“If you didn’t take the picture, you weren’t there.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I’m trying to learn more and more about what’s possible.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Frame in terms of what you want to have in the picture, not about making a nice picture, that anybody can do.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Sometimes photographers mistake emotion for what makes a great street photograph.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “There are things I photograph because I’m interested in those things.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “There are no photographs while I’m reloading .” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “You see something happening and you bang away at it. Either you get what you saw or you get something else–and whichever is better you print.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“I sometimes think I’m a mechanic. I just take pictures.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “You’ve got to deal with how photographs look, what’s there, not how they’re made.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “The primary problem is to learn to be your own toughest critic. You have to pay attention to intelligent work, and to work at the same time. You see. I mean, you’ve got to bounce off better work. It’s matter of working.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “You’re talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “There’s an arbitrary idea that the horizontal edge in a frame has to be the point of reference.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That’s part of the discipline. My only purpose, while I’m working, is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act – an alter consideration. Certainly, while I’m working, I want them to be as useless as possible.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“The photo is a thing in itself. And that’s what still photography is all about.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I don’t know how to say easily what I learned. One thing I can say I learned is how amazing photography could be.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Let’s put it this way – I photograph what interests me all the time. I live with the pictures to see what that thing looks like photographed. I’m saying the same thing; I’m not changing it.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I’m still compulsively interested in women. It’s funny, I’ve always compulsively photographed women. I still do.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “There is a transformation, you see, when you just put four edges around it. That changes it. A new world is created.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“I have to photograph where I am.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “My intention is to make interesting photographs. That’s it, in the end. I don’t make it up. Let’s say it’s a world I never made. That’s what was there to deal with.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “What I know bores me.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “When I was a kid in New York I used to go to the zoo. I always liked the zoo. I grew up within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo. And then when my first two children were young, I used to take them to the zoo. Zoos are always interesting. And I make pictures.” ~ Garry Winogrand quotes
- “I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability… They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like. To a camera.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“Nobody sold prints then and prices didn’t mean anything. In terms of earning your living, it was a joke.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I had an agent. When [Edward] Steichen was doing “The Family of Man”, I went up to the office one day. I think Wayne Miller, who assisted Steichen with “The Family of Man,” was up there and pulled out a bunch of pictures. So I got a message: “Take these pictures, call Steichen, make an appointment and take these pictures up there.” And that’s how I met him.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Let’s say that what’s out there is a narrative. Often enough, the picture plays with the question of what actually is happening. Almost the way puns function.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that’s boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let’s say that an artist deals with banality. I don’t care what the discipline is.” ~ Garry Winogrand
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“People are just dumb. They misunderstand.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I have a good friend who’s a very good printer. And he does a certain amount of printing for me. I do all the developing. If somebody’s going to goof my film, I’d better do it. I don’t want to get that mad at anybody else.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I look at a photograph. What’s going on? What’s happening, photographically? If it’s interesting, I try to understand why.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “Surviving, that’s all. That’s all I have in mind .” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I certainly never wanted to be a photographer to bore myself. It’s no fun – life is too short.” ~ Garry Winogrand
- “I’m a good craftsman and I can have this particular intention: let’s say, I want a photograph that’s going to push a certain button in an audience, to make them laugh or love, feel warm or hate or what – I know how to do this.” ~ Garry Winogrand
