Description:
pedestrians on sidewalk, woman in shorts with hatbox, dogs sniffing trashcan
Label Text:
Returning from Europe in 1974, the photographer Louis Faurer found Times Square to be “a seedy caricature of its former glamour.” Winogrand’s New York City, 1968 bears out Faurer’s observation with its view of dirty gutters and dingy marquees, one of which advertises risqué feature films. The chance crossing of a short, barrel-chested man and an eccentrically dressed woman, however, transforms this seedy view into a portrayal of what some historians of Winogrand’s work have called “an absurdity of everyday life.”
In New York City, 1968, text clutters the cityscape. A bold sign for “HAMBURGERS,” not unlike that in Robert Frank's White Tower, 14th Street, NYC, hangs halfway down the street. Yet, whereas Robert Frank’s cynical photograph juxtaposes lovely women with the thought of tasty, but unexceptional, hamburgers, Winogrand’s image evokes thoughts of greasy burgers, sticky theater seats, and oddball city-dwellers, thrown together in the chaos of a loquacious urban environment.
MD, PHOTOdocument exhibition, March 30, 2012-July 22, 2012
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1979.23.2 |
