Garry Winogrand

American, 1928–1984

Garry Winogrand was born in New York City in 1928. After serving eighteen months in the Air Force during World War II, he enrolled at the City College of New York under the GI Bill, which provided college tuition for veterans returning from the war. He then transferred to Columbia University to study painting. Winogrand was already enamored of cameras, and at Columbia a friend introduced him to the darkroom and the process of photography. Within two weeks he abandoned painting and never looked back.

After three years at Columbia, Winogrand enrolled in photojournalism classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City. In 1952 he began his career as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer, and his work regularly appeared in magazines like Collier’s and Sports Illustrated. He had his first solo exhibition in 1960, and in the ‘60s and ‘70s Winogrand received three Guggenheim Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He began teaching in 1969 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later taught at the University of Texas at Austin.

Courtesy Denver Art Museum

Judy Teller/Greenwich Entertainment