Review And Renewal...

Photo: Garry Winogrand

Finally got to see the Winogrand exhibit just before the whole damn museum shut down. SFMOMA is now shut for three years, to renovate, expand and add ten floors of... luxury whatever- cause ya know whatever they're gonna add is gonna be luxury something. And it'll probably cost a cool $25 (way above my hourly wage) to get in once it reopens, and I just found out my rent went up $30- all of which doesn't jive with my recent 1% raise. But at least it was free last weekend.

The newly exhibited work concentrated particularly on early sixties, even fifties stuff and made for a very nostalgic, Mad Men kinda viewing experience. You could see all the greatness that was yet to come imbedded in those early photos, just as you could see the remaining shadows of what once was in his last work. The meat and potatoes being the old familiar hits one knows and loves.

Amazing to see everyone looking at little grey prints in a museum, no colossal wall sized anything to be seen anywhere, and they were, in fact, surprisingly... grey  (yes, like old friends at a reunion)- the majority of his prints being surprisingly lower in contrast than I remembered, despite having seen them on many an occasion prior. Anyway, what can I say that hasn't already, except that I do take exception to his being described as "the first digital photographer." As prodigious and prolific a shooter as he was, Winogrand never burdened the viewer with his outtakes and almosts- as do the digital dispensers of today. If anyone owns that title it would be Friedlander- most of whose books could well profit from a tighter edit.