A well put together overview of Winogrand's work over his working life, from his early years to the less well known later period. (Amazing that he died with 3000 rolls of undeveloped film!)
Some interesting points in the commentary:
- his acknowledged debt to certain aspects of Frank's work in The Americans
- his comment that he photographs things he finds interesting to see what they look like in photographs
- the discussion of his use of leaning lines (ie. non-vertical and non-horizontal to the frame) in composition - it strikes me that this is the solution to the problem I have struggled with in regard to shooting in cities and other man-made environments where everything is too geometrical - two things bring the kind of hidden order beneath chaos that is easier to find in wild environments: 1) the lean and 2) use of wide-angle lens, which Winogrand talks about
- his comments on wide-angle lenses and how they allow him to include more things, more information in the frame, while at the same time maintaining the presence of the subject - the wide angle introduces more information, which then becomes the overlay of chaos that masks, but not quite, the compositional order in the photo - this tension between chaos and order p. 21 "He had a special affection for those of his pictures that were almost out of control, the pictures in which the triumph of form over chaos was precarious. He believed that a successful photograph must be more interesting than the thing photographed..."
- p. 29 "As Winogrand grew older and his ambition grew more demanding, the role of luck in his work grew larger. As his motifs became more complex, and more unpredictable in their development, the chances of success in a given frame became smaller."
No comments:
Post a Comment