Genius of Photography 4 - Paper Movies

1.Why did Garry Winogrand take photographs?

Garry Winogrand said that he “took photographs to see how the world looks like photographed”.

2.Why did “citizens evolve from blurs to solid flesh”?

Previously, the life on the street moved too fast for long exposure times, so photographers had to carefully plan and setup any movement in the photographs, or were showing empty streets, which looked like “post-apocalyptic ghost towns”. “Citizens evolved from blurs to solid flesh” when technology caught up and allowed photographers to use shorter exposure.

3.What was/is the “much misunderstood theory”?

Cartier-Bresson’s theory of “the decisive moment”.

4.Who was the godfather of street photography in the USA?

Garry Winogrand

5.Who was Paul Martin and what did he do?

He was a British photographer. In 1896 he went to seaside with a camera disguised as a brown paper parcel. He took photographs, which showed a magic of a beach at work, and how people came there to forget about what being Victorian meant.

6.Who said “When I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”?

Edward Ruscha

7.Why does William Eggleston photograph in colour?

He said “If I just make the colour hierarchy the structure of the picture, can that work, and still do realistic subject matter, still do the real world?” He wondered how to structure a colour picture, and used colours to give his photographs whole new, perhaps psychological meaning.

8.What is William Eggleston about?

He was a man of few words calling his pictures “democratic” also saying he is “at war with the obvious”. He took colour photographs in 1970s of his home city Memphis and the surrounding area.