Garry Winogrand Quotes & Sayings

You're talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture. — Garry Winogrand

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed. — Garry Winogrand

Sometimes photographers mistake emotion for what makes a great street photograph. — Garry Winogrand

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed. — Garry Winogrand

All things are photographable. — Garry Winogrand

Frame in terms of what you want to have in the picture, not about making a nice picture, that anybody can do. — Garry Winogrand

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space. — Garry Winogrand

I get totally out of myself. It's the closest I come to not existing, I think, which is the best - which is to me attractive. — Garry Winogrand

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts. — Garry Winogrand

There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work. — Garry Winogrand

The only thing that's difficult is reloading when things are happening. Can you get it done fast enough? — Garry Winogrand

I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both. — Garry Winogrand

Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface. — Garry Winogrand

There is no special way a photograph should look. — Garry Winogrand

There are no photographs while I'm reloading . — Garry Winogrand

The primary problem is to learn to be your own toughest critic. You have to pay attention to intelligent work, and to work at the same time. You see. I mean, you've got to bounce off better work. It's matter of working. — Garry Winogrand

I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions. — Garry Winogrand

No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something. — Garry Winogrand

The world isn't tidy; it's a mess. I don't try to make it neat. — Garry Winogrand

I think that there isn't a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability ... They do not tell stories - they show you what something looks like. To a camera. — Garry Winogrand

When I'm photographing I see life. — Garry Winogrand

I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible. — Garry Winogrand

You know, I really don't think you learn from teachers. You learn from work. I think what you learn, really, is how to be- you have to be your own toughest critic, and you only learn that from work, from seeing work. — Garry Winogrand

Every photograph is a battle of form versus content. — Garry Winogrand

You see something happening and you bang away at it. Either you get what you saw or you get something else
and whichever is better you print. — Garry Winogrand

You have a lifetime to learn technique. But I can teach you what is more important than technique, how to see; learn that and all you have to do afterwards is press the shutter. — Garry Winogrand

The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about. — Garry Winogrand

I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs. — Garry Winogrand

Sometimes I feel like ... the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It's a big show for me, as if it wouldn't happen if I wasn't there with a camera. — Garry Winogrand

Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good — Garry Winogrand

Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid. I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it. — Garry Winogrand

For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film ... if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better. — Garry Winogrand

Great photography is always on the edge of failure. — Garry Winogrand

I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs. — Garry Winogrand

If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up. — Garry Winogrand

The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed — Garry Winogrand

In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it's something else. — Garry Winogrand

I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me. — Garry Winogrand