A Quote by Garry Winogrand

The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about. — © Garry Winogrand
The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about.
My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened, elements of the photo are diminished. There is no sense of truth when you're looking at the painting or the photo or that moment when the photo was first taken.
If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.
Despite everything we know about photo manipulation, a photo is still considered an objective document.
You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.
I have a great-great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate cavalry colonel, and I still have his military composite photo on my wall. The chemicals in the photo tint have changed over the years to the point that he looks green. One of my family members apparently still has the piece of paper that listed every thing in his pocket when he got shot.
A word refers to something in the real world and so, in a way, does a photo. It's not the thing itself, but it's a kind of suggestion of where you might look for that thing.
I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over.
What's happened is that the digital age has made photography more accessible to people. Everyone is a photographer. But to do it [photography] at a certain level, well, there's a skill to it. Still, it's a good time for photography now.
To know whether photography is or is not an art matters little. What is important is to distinguish between good and bad photography. By good is meant that photography which accepts all the limitations inherent in photographic technique and takes advantage of the possibilities and characteristics the medium offers. By bad photography is mean that which is done, one may say, with a kind of inferiority complex, with no appreciation of what photography itself offers: but on the contrary, recurring to all sorts of imitations.
I collect art on a very modest scale. Most of what I have is photography because I just love it and it makes me happy and it looks good in my home. I also have a pretty big collection of art books mainly, again, on photography. A lot of photography monographs, which is great because with photography, the art itself can be reproduced quite well in book form.
Press information is serious information, but press information is also manipulated by people who want you to think that this and that happened. So it's the old thing that you still cannot trust photography at all or you have to know who is distributing the photograph. In terms of cell phone photography, I think nobody cares about a photograph anymore because they're taking so many pictures just for fun.
...the subject, the thing itself, is the genesis of all types of photography.
When I was in the 12th standard itself, I decided to join the Adyar Film Institute and study photography. I specifically chose photography because I see photography as an applied science. There is an artistic element also in it. If you perfect your scientific element, you can attain certain quality.
No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.
When I first started making photo pieces it wasn't with the idea of a commitment to the medium. I didn't think I would have to become a photographer to make my photographs. I recall that anything could be used as material for art in that era. Photography was just one more thing.
Somebody said recently that the best thing a student could do was to get in some shows and publish a book; but nothing about becoming a human being, nothing about having important feelings or concepts of humanity. That's the sort of thing that is bad education. I'd say be a human being first and if you happen to wind up using photography, that's good for photography.
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