Photographer and guest curator Leo Rubinfien has estimated that perhaps two million people passed through Garry Winogrand’s photographs, equaling roughly one percent or more of everyone in America during Winogrand’s productive years. 

Image: Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, ca.1980–83; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand’s first retrospective in 25 years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is also the first exhibition to examine the renowned photographer’s unfinished work. Dying suddenly at the age of 56, he left behind some 250,000 undeveloped negatives, as well as proof sheets that had been marked, but never printed.

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SUBMISSION (thank you for sharing!):

I’ve always loved Gary Winogrand’s response to a curator questioning “How long it took to make a particular photograph?”  He replied “1/125th of a second”.  The question of whether he was being coy or serious is something I’ve always wondered about.  Anyone who has ever done street photography knows it is a lot more challenging than it seems.  I found myself at the Corner of Hollywood and Vine a few years ago, realized it was the corner where he took that remarkable photograph sometimes referred to as “The Three Graces”.  I took a great many photographs at the corner, not one of them terribly interesting.  Here are two of the 125 I put into a little artists book titled “One Second for Gary Winogrand”

Happy birthday to Eadweard Muybridge!

An accomplished bookseller, inventor, and businessman, Muybridge advanced both technical and aesthetic applications of photography. Want to learn more? Take a multimedia “stroll” through his life + career!

Image: Eadweard Muybridge, Woman jumping over barrier, 1887; photograph; Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Frederick P. Currier and Amy McCombs

Winogrand called himself a student of America … What he meant was that he was trying to understand who the Americans were. What were these people? Who are my countrymen? What is the place in which I live? And therefore, by extension, who am I? – Leo Rubinfien on Garry Winogrand

To learn more about Winogrand, dive into our mobile tour, which is available to download before (or after!) you visit here.

Image: Garry Winogrand, Central Park Zoo, New York, 1967; gelatin silver print; Collection of Randi and Bob Fisher; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

After moving to San Francisco, I began experiencing history differently — I inhabited history. The things I’ve read about happened in the buildings I see all day, every day. Relics of the Gold Rush and the Gilded Age populate the city. I walk past a building as old as the State of California every morning on my way to get coffee. The transition from suburbia to history left me searching for the notable everywhere I walk, but it has also left me looking for the familiar in historical texts or photographs.

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Image: Carleton E. Watkins, Golden Gate, San Francisco, number 669 from the Pacific Coast series, 1867

NEWS: SFMOMA DEBUTS FIRST MAJOR TOURING EXHIBITION OF GARRY WINOGRAND’S WORK IN 25 YEARS

• The first retrospective in 25 years of work by artist Garry Winogrand (1928–1984) will debut at SFMOMA on March 9 and run through June 2, 2013.

• Jointly organized by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art, Garry Winogrand brings together the artist’s most iconic images with newly printed photographs that have never been exhibited or published until now.

• Known primarily as a street photographer, Winogrand captured everyday strangers on the street and the rich and powerful; protesters and politicians; airports and zoos. The photographs in the exhibition and accompanying catalogue will paint a vivid portrait of the artist as a chronicler of postwar America.

• After premiering at SFMOMA the exhibition will travel to Washington, D.C., New York, Paris, and Madrid.

• For more information, read the full press release.

Image: Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, ca.1980-83; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of G>arry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Happy President’s Day! To celebrate, may we present this 1918 photograph of 21,000 soldiers standing in the formation of Woodrow Wilson’s face.

Image: Mole & Thomas, Woodrow Wilson (21,000 Officers and Men, Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio), 1918; photograph; Collection SFMOMA, Purchase through a gift of the Alfred William Pye and Mabel Johnston Pye Endowment Fund.

Happy birthday to photographer Cindy Sherman, who turns 59 today!

Sherman began as a painter in college, but soon turned to photography when, as she puts it, “I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.” 

Image: ArtScope snapshot of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled (Marilyn), 1982 

For a veritable treasure trove of multimedia related to Sherman’s work, click here!