Described as a “poet,” an “athlete,” or a “philosopher” of photography, Garry Winogrand harnessed the serendipity of the streets to capture the American 1960s and ‘70s. His Leica M4 snapped spontaneous images of everyday people while observing themes of cultural upheaval, political disillusionment, intimacy and alienation. Once derided by the critics, Winogrand’s “snapshot aesthetic” is now a universal language of contemporary image making. Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable is the first cinematic treatment of Winogrand’s work. Contemporary and archival interviews with Jay Maisel, Tod Papageorge, Matthew Weiner, and more attest to Winogrand’s indisputable influence as artist and chronicler of culture, and his streetwise perspective indebted to an upbringing in New York City.
Following the film, director Sasha Waters Freyer will be in conversation with SFMOMA associate curator of photography Erin O’Toole, who is also interviewed in the film. The screening and conversation are presented in conjunction with the exhibition Michael Jang’s California, which situates his raw and exuberant street photography amongst works by his major influences Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand from the McEvoy Family Collection.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Sasha Waters Freyer makes non-fiction films about outsiders, misfits and everyday radicals. Her films have screened at the Telluride Film Festival; the Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Tribeca Film Festival, New York; the Museum of the Moving Image; New York; Union Docs, New York; and BAMPFA, Berkeley, as well as on the Sundance Channel and international cable and public television. Her first feature film Raising Appalachia (2003), screened globally on ITVS. Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable received the Special Jury Prize at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival. Waters Freyer is Chair of the Department of Photography & Film at Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives in Richmond, VA.
Erin O’Toole is the Baker Street Foundation associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has organized numerous exhibitions for SFMOMA, including April Dawn Alison (2019), Selves and Others (2018), and Anthony Hernandez (2016). She was also part of the curatorial team that co-organized Garry Winogrand (2013), a major retrospective that traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; and the Fondation MAPFRE, Madrid. O’Toole holds a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz, an M.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.