The Zimmerli Art Museum shows Photography of Garry Winogrand & Larry Clark

Written by Marilyn Symmes Saturday, 15 May 2010 21:25

New Brunswick, NJ - The photographs by Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) and Larry Clark (born 1943) redefined documentary photography of the 1960s-70s American social landscape. Winogrand, a tireless and prolific street photographer, captured people he encountered by chance in public places with an informal, candid snapshot immediacy. He focused on the most ordinary activities and occurrences to create images of surprising, often witty, juxtapositions resulting in ambiguous, yet tantalizing, narratives. Fifteen photographs from Winogrand’s 1981 portfolio Women Are Better Than Men…celebrate urban and suburban women of all ages. On view through 11 July, 2010.

Garry Winogrand would move fast through the streets, see things happening, maybe across an intersection, would move to that area, firing off his Leica, the wide-angle lens essentially pre-focused, moving with the camera, the energy, the kineticism of the street coming through. Winogrand (1928-1984) an underrated member of a vibrant generation of photographers, which includes Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon and Lee Friedlander. Winogrand was the subject of John Szarkowski’s first show as photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963:  “A key moment in American photography,”

Instead of making strangers the subject of his camera, Larry Clark photographed his Oklahoma home town friends instead. His portfolio Tulsa (1971) is an intensely intimate portrayal of aimless youths experimenting with drugs, sex, and guns. The raw honesty of his photographs shattered myths of the wholesome lifestyle and values of heartland America. Drawn from the Zimmerli Art Museum’s collection, this exhibition of approximately thirty photographs by Winogrand and Clark challenges viewers to re-examine the composite picture of American society then and now. This exhibition is organized by Marilyn Symmes, Director of the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts and Curator of Prints and Drawings.

The Zimmerli Art Museum's collections comprise a number of areas of focus and total 60,000 works of art. Particular strengths exist in Russian and Soviet art, French nineteenth-century art and American nineteenth- and twentieth-century art with a concentration on early-twentieth-century and contemporary prints. In addition, the museum houses a research library of rare books, journals and other documents that support the French collection which can be searched from this site. http://www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu/

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