Film is a showcase for photos by master
It’s a basic question: What is a photograph? Here’s what Garry Winogrand thought: “A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a moment in time and space.”
There are many beautiful, intriguing moments in “Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable,” a documentary by Sasha Waters Freyer assessing the work and cultural impact of the idiosyncratic photographer (1928-84). Freyer admirably gets out of her own way, letting Winogrand’s pictures control the mise-enscene, with little directorial flourish. It is, after all, funded partially by PBS’ “American Masters.”
Great, because his photographs are wonderful. The film includes testimony by such experts as Jeffrey Fraenkel, founder of San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery, which houses some of Winogrand’s work and helped mount a major exhibition of his work at SFMOMA in 2013; television producer Matthew Weiner, who counts Winogrand’s work as one of his inspirations for the look of “Mad Men”; and many others. Even his ex-wife from the 1960s says nice things about him, which is interesting because the consensus from those who knew him is that Winogrand was difficult to live with.
Once saying he wished he hadn’t existed, he was also an admitted pessimist, believing, as he wrote in an application for a Guggenheim grant: “Our aspirations and successes seem cheap and petty. … I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently. And it just doesn’t matter. We have not loved life.” To prove himself wrong, he set out among humanity, constantly snapping pictures of the bustling life around him.
Winogrand, who was inspired by Robert Frank and others, proved to have a genius for discovering the motion of people within a still frame. His best work is lively, filled with people who seemingly love life (thus proving him wrong). His work during this time — New York in the 1960s — helped pave the way for photography to be considered as exhibition worthy, as opposed to merely illustrating magazine and newspaper articles.
Looking for new challenges, Winogrand felt he was going stale in New York and moved, first to Texas and then Los Angeles. And he was getting older. While the first hour of Freyer’s 90-minute documentary is exhilarating, the farther Winogrand migrates west the less interesting his work becomes (although some of the experts in the film dispute this).
It appears his work suffered as his health suffered — his final decade, before he died of cancer at age 56, seems to have been difficult years. But he never gave up, never stopped shooting. It was a well-lived life because he apparently discovered that it mattered after all.