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Garry Winogrand archive

 Collection
Identifier: AG 72

Scope and Contents

Series one contains two boxes of records created in the course of managing Winogrand’s career as a photographer and teacher, including correspondence, activity logs, indexes to photographs, records related to licensing images, and photograph sales. Also included are miscellaneous financial records and records related to teaching and travel.

Series two contains two boxes of biographical materials, including writings and interviews, early resumes, chronologies, calendars, personal and family correspondence, as well as legal, medical, and death records.

Series three contains two boxes of records related to exhibitions of Winogrand’s photographs. Included are correspondence with presenters, loan and reproduction agreements, publications, announcements, a few installation photographs, and public comment books.

Series four contains five boxes of printed material, including copies of four books published by Winogrand (The Animals, Women are Beautiful, Public Relations, and Stock Photographs), a presentation portfolio of commercial work from the 1950s, publications that include writings about Winogrand or reproductions of his photographs, and a small personal library comprised mostly of periodicals, exhibition catalogs, and books about other photographers.

Series five contains three boxes of artifacts and memorabilia. Two boxes contain historical photographic prints including tintypes, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, and studio portraits. One box contains a few objects and memorabilia.

Series six contains three boxes of moving image materials comprised of black-and white and color silent 8mm films shot by Winogrand, a group of 8mm pornography, and DVD copies prepared for public access.

Series seven is comprised of 420 boxes of photography mostly by Winogrand, in various formats. Included are negatives (141 boxes), contact sheets (82 boxes), 35mm slides (104 boxes), teaching slides of works by others (2 boxes), polariod prints (1 box), commercial work (1 box), posthumous prints (2 boxes), and study and work prints (87 boxes).

Dates

  • circa 1947-1984

Creator

Language of Materials

The bulk of the collection is in English; a few printed materials are in Western European languages.

Conditions Governing Access

To access materials from this collection, please contact CCP-RefDesk@email.arizona.edu

Conditions Governing Use

©2021 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission from the copyright owner (which could be the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates or literary executors) prior to any copyright-protected uses of the collection. Include statement about Winogrand rights? The user agrees to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Arizona Board of Regents, the University of Arizona, Center of Creative Photography, including its officers, employees, and agents, from and against all claims made relating to copyright or other intellectual property infringement

Biographical

American photographer and teacher Garry Winogrand was born January 14, 1928 in the Bronx, New York to two emigrant parents: Abraham (from Budapest) and Bertha (from Warsaw). Winogrand grew up in a Jewish working class neighborhood, graduated from high school in 1946, and served for a short period in the United States Army as a weather forecaster. He enrolled in 1947 at the City College of New York to study painting, transferring in 1948 to Columbia University, where he developed a passion for photography. By 1949 Winogrand was exploring photojournalism in a class taught by Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research.

Winogrand became known as a street photographer, or a candid photographer, who experimented with composition, frequently employing nontraditional camera angles. This innovation earned Winogrand’s style the title “snapshot aesthetic,” a term Winogrand rejected. He would actively insert himself into the subject’s physical space in order to elicit strong reactions. He shunned technical effects and used a wide-angle lens often tilted down to align parallel lines. Winogrand liked to say his reason for taking photographs was "to see what the things that interested him looked like as photographs.”

In the 1950s and early 1960s Winogrand worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer. In 1955 he took a four-month cross-country photography trip, and he had his first solo show at the Image Gallery in New York in 1959. In 1963 Winogrand was featured in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition "Five Unrelated Photographers" along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling, and Ken Heyman. In 1964 Winogrand was awarded his first Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to travel and continue his exploration of human nature through photography.

The exhibition "Toward a Social Landscape" was displayed at the George Eastman House in 1966. Curated by Nathan Lyons, it included the work of Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Duane Michaels, Bruce Davidson and Danny Lyon. The following year Winogrand was featured in another MoMA exhibition entitled "New Documents," curated by John Szarkowski, and included photographs by Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus, both widely considered to be Winogrand’s contemporaries. His 1969 book The Animals collected photographs taken at the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium.

Winogrand stopped accepting commercial work in 1969, and his second Guggenheim Fellowship (also in 1969) led to a seven-year period of investigating the effects of media on events. He used 700 rolls of film to photograph public events, resulting in 6,500 prints, from which were selected images for his first MoMA solo exhibition and the accompanying book Public Relations (1977).

In 1971 Winogrand began teaching in New York and started to receive invitations for teaching positions around the U.S. Later that year he moved to Chicago, where he was a photography instructor at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology through 1972. Around this time he began work on his book Women Are Beautiful. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 1973-1978. From 1974-1977 he took photos at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo that would later be used for the book Stock Photos (1980). He also continued to photograph in New York, Washington, DC, at Cape Canaveral, and in airports. He had a difficult period starting in November 1975 due to a long recovery period from a broken leg and shattered kneecap, injuries sustained while photographing a Texas A&M football game.

Winogrand moved to Los Angeles in 1978. Relying on income from print sales and fees for conducting workshops, he no longer needed to teach. In 1979 Winogrand received a third Guggenheim fellowship, this time to travel and photograph within the Southwest. Around this time John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at MoMA, renewed his working relationship with Winogrand and became the editor of Winogrand’s work.

In February, 1984 Winogrand was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. He sought alternative treatments and care in Tijuana, Mexico, where he died on March 19, 1984 at the age of 56.

At the time of his death, 2,500 rolls of exposed film remained undeveloped. An additional 6,500 rolls had been developed but not printed. Contact sheets were made from 3,000 additional rolls, but few have any editing marks. He probably made a third of a million photographs that he never looked at.

MoMA mounted a retropective exhibition from May-August 1988 entitled "Winogrand: Figments from the Real World" and it traveled in 1990 to the Hayward Gallery, London.

Over the years Winogrand's work was variously represented by Light Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, and Double Elephant Press. His widow, Eileen Adele Hale, continued to manage business affairs and exhibition requests after his death.

Sources consulted: Center for Creative Photography finding aid for the Garry Winogrand Miscellaneous collection, circa 1947-2012, AG 188.

Winogrand: Figments from the Real World. New York: MoMA, 1988. pp. 12-41.

Extent

350 Linear Feet

106 Cubic Feet

438 Boxes

Metadata Rights Declarations

  • License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Abstract

Photographic materials and papers, ca. 1947 – 1984, of Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), American photographer and teacher. Includes approximately 600 fine prints, 16,000 study prints, 15,000 work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 45,662 35mm color slides, 100,000 negatives, 400 Polaroid prints, and 8mm motion picture films. Business and personal records, writings, exhibition documentation, publication materials, teaching materials, and a collection of historical print photography are also found in the archive.

Arrangement

Series 1: Business Records, 1960-1984

  1. Subseries 1: Business Correspondence
  2. Subseries 2: Activity Logs
  3. Subseries 3: Photograph Inventory Records
  4. Subseries 4: Photograph Licensing Records
  5. Subseries 5: Financial Records
  6. Subseries 6: Teaching and Workshops
  7. Subseries 7: Travel Records

Series 2: Biographical Material, 1942-1985

  1. Subseries 1: Writings and Interviews
  2. Subseries 2: Resumes, Chronologies, Calendars, and Diplomas
  3. Subseries 3: Personal and Family Correspondence
  4. Subseries 4: Legal and Medical Records
  5. Subseries 5: Death Records

Series 3: Exhibition Files, 1959-1991

  1. Subseries 1: Solo Exhibitions
  2. Subseries 2: Group Exhibitions
  3. Subseries 3: Proposed and Small-loan Exhibitions

Series 4: Printed Material, 1953-1987

  1. Subseries 1: Books by Winogrand
  2. Subseries 2: Writings about Winogrand
  3. Subseries 3: Personal Library
  4. Subseries 4: Commercial Work

Series 5: Artifacts and Memorabilia

  1. Subseries 1: Historical Photographs
  2. Subseries 2: Objects

Series 6: Moving Image Material, 1958 - circa 2013

  1. Subseries 1: Street Scenes, 1968-1969
  2. Subseries 2: Activities and Objects, 1968-1969
  3. Subseries 3: Family and Friends, circa 1958-1960
  4. Subseries 4: Family and Friends, circa 1967-1969
  5. Subseries 5: Commercial Pornography, circa 1960s
  6. Subseries: 6: Empty Containers
  7. Subseries 7: DVD Reformatted Copies, 2012-2013

Series 7: Photographic Materials

  1. Subseries 1: Negatives, 1950s-1982
  2. Subseries 2: Contact Sheets, 1950s-1982
  3. Subseries 3: 35mm Color Slides, circa 1952-1983
  4. Subseries 4: Teaching Slides, 1940s-1980s
  5. Subseries 5: Polaroid Prints
  6. Subseries 6: Family Photographs
  7. Subseries 7: Commercial Work and Layouts, 1950s
  8. Subseries 8: Posthumous Prints, 2004, 2013
  9. Subseries 9: Study and work prints

Custodial History

The archive is comprised of three separate acquisitions, in 1983, 1992-1993, and 2001. The initial acquisition in 1983 was a gift of the artist to the Center for Creative Photography comprised of approximately 16,300 master, study, and work prints; 126 color prints; 400 contact sheets, and selected exhibition materials and publications that were then located in Winogrand’s New York City apartment. These items, measuring 67 linear feet, were chosen by the artist and formed the foundation of the archive. The prints spanned much of Winogrand’s career from 1947 to 1975 and included examples from the series The Animals, Women Are Beautuful, and Public Relations.

In 1992-1993 the CCP acquired a major addition to the collection from the artist’s estate, comprised of approximately 15,500 prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 120,000 negative strips, 45,000 color slides, Polaroid photographs, commercial layouts, business and personal records, gallery books, memorabilia, 8mm motion picture films, and a collection of historical photographs.

In 2001 the CCP acquired a third, much smaller, group materials from the artist’s estate, including correspondence, exhibition announcements, biographical materials, press clippings, writings by the artist, an artist chronology, various business-related activity logs, and family-related documents. Collectively the materials span the dates 1942–1988.

Related Materials

Related materials can be found in Garry Winogrand Miscellaneous Acquisitions Collection, Center for Creative Photography Archives, AG 188.

Numerous audio-visual recordings featuring Winogrand as subject, including interviews, lectures, symposia, and video productions, are in Interviews and Oral History Collections, AG 19.

1,800+ digitized images are available in Online Collections. http://ccp-emuseum.catnet.arizona.edu/

Separated Materials

15,000-16,000 11x14 silver gelatin photographic prints are located in CCP's Fine Prints Department. Presumably the bulk of them were selected by Winogrand and acquired as part of the initial 1983 accession. Although originally arranged into broad subject catagories, they were rearranged in 2017-2018 by the corresponding contact sheet number.

Processing Information

Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by National Endowment for the Arts Museum Cataloguing grants in 1986 and 1994.

1983 Acquisition: Processing of the initial 1983 acquisition was begun in 1984 and the work focused on separating the prints into two groups: those identified as fine prints to be accessioned into the CCP’s Fine Prints Collection and the remainder that were identified as study or work prints. [Discussions surrounding the guidelines for making this initial determination and subsequent determinations are documented in the CCP’s collection files.] Processing of the 1983 acquisition continued from 1986-1989 with financial support from a 1986 National Endowment for the Arts Museum Catalogue grant. Archivist Amy Rule was responsible for the initial inventory of the collection. She worked with cataloger Marcia Tiede and student assistant Paul Roth to create a subject-based organization of the print collection that would enhance both intellectual and physical access. Tiede left the project in 1988 and her work was continued by Alex Sweetman and Paul Roth. After much discussion, the organization scheme for the fine print collection included ten categories and the scheme for the study prints comprised eleven similar categories. The organization of the fine print collection remained in place until 1994, when it was replaced in favor of an accession numbering system. Between August 2017 and March 2018, a team of four archivists comprised ob Meghan Jordan, Lenox Wiese, Janette Ruiz, and Katie Sweeney reorganized 15,559 prints located in the fine print department chronologically, based on the arrangement of the contact sheets in the archival collection. Duplicates and variants previously housed in multiple different boxes were gathered together. Some duplicates and variants were assigned T numbers and left with other T number prints. At the end of the project 795 prints remained unmatched to contact sheets.

1992-1993 Acquisition: The CCP received an additional grant from the NEA in 1996 to research, sort, and organize the contact sheets and negatives. The project, led by archivist Leslie Squires with assistance from Tiede and Rule, resulted in a comprehensive chronological organization of the contacts and negatives based in part on Winogrand’s own numbering scheme. Squires also compiled a detailed subject-based index to the contact sheets and negatives based on the categories developed in 1986-1989. This index can be found in External Documents. The approximately 15,000 study and work prints received in 1992-1993 were minimally arranged and described in May 2022.

Color Slides: During the spring of 2010 two project archivists, Carol Elliott and Amy Rule, assessed and organized the color slide collection. Specific work included preparing the collection for research access and producing numerous documents including a searchable Excel database; a detailed box list; a description of the history, organization, and dating of the slides; and a “contextual chronology” that documents events related to Winogrand’s color work. These documents can be found under External Documents.

2001 Acquisition: From 2019-2022, volunteer archivist David Farneth arranged and described the additional material received in 2001. He also incorporated existing documentation (including inventories, extant box lists, and indexes) into a standards-based finding aid. The work included arrangement and description of the non-photographic material received in the 1992 accession. Existing box numbers were largely retained for the negatives, contact sheets, and slides (boxes 1 – 326). Newly processed materials begin with box 327. To improve access, one large correspondence file was rearranged into the following groups: Series 1, Subseries 1: Business Correspondence; Series 2, Subseries 3: Personal and Family Correspondence; and Series 3: Exhibition Files.

Title
Garry Winogrand archive
Status
Completed
Author
Finding aid created by David Farneth. Previous arrangement, indexes, and inventories created by Carol Elliott, Meghan Jordon, Andrew Kensett, Paul Roth, Janette Ruiz, Amy Rule, Leslie Squires, Katie Sweeney, Alex Sweetman, Marcia Tiede, Lenox Wiese, and others.
Date
2022
Description rules
Finding Aid Based On Dacs (Describing Archives: A Content Standard)
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Center for Creative Photography Archives Repository

Contact:
1030 N. Olive RD
Tucson Arizona 85721 United States