I’ll repeat that quote from Garry Winogrand (American, 1928–1984):

“If you didn’t take the picture, you weren’t there.”

Well before Instagram, the master photographer himself declared this, so let’s all calm down and admit that there’s no new social rot to selfies, dinner documentary photography, or even the mass of camera screens raised in the skies during last night’s concerts.

The need to document one’s experience is based in a future-need to prove one’s existence. To provide a document that will outlast us. The absence of such a document leaves you alone with your claims, and friends or grandchildren who think you’re making it all up.

Winogrand’s life’s work, a documentary through America’s post-war identity from 1950's to the 1980's, demonstrates this thesis. With his narratives of tension, he captures the problem of that moment: life without truths.

From a woman walking through Manhattan with what might be her entire life in the suitcases, to the above a naval officer at dawn, we are given the chance to trace the imaginary stories of tragedy or heartbreak, to find & make answers.

Opening today (June 27) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Garry Winogrand has a slightly reduced in image count from its run at SFMOMA, but is complete enough to eliminate any thought that it was lacking.

Look for Elsa Martinelli, El Morocco, New York early on in the exhibition. This print, which is from a private collection, is remarkable. A lesser known Winogrand, but outstanding in composition, clarity, and contrast, and quite hypnotic.

The unanswered questions pile up throughout the exhibition, but luckily, some allow for laughter. How did that couple find themselves down the street from the Met Life building with both a convertible and a monkey inside of said auto? It’s a moment so surreal that it’s only natural to suspect it was staged.

This well-known work of Winogrand’s is likely the most positive in the entire exhibition. Fashion, laughter, and ice cream too? She’s got it all! Except that the window’s reflection only clues us in on one interpretation: the artist, seen possibly on the far right, almost breaks the fourth-wall.

A thorough a review of Winogrand as this would be incomplete without the darker moments of the decades he witnessed. A mother holding a child, looking upon troops standing in-formation, at attention in United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs suggests a family broken apart, but with all faces hidden, interpretation is far from over.

Entering the final room of the exhibition, Boom & Bust, it’s possible you’ll feel overwhelmed. The build to this chapter was a slow simmer, finally reaching a boil. With starkly contrasting views of life on the west coast, from poverty at the pier to a young Drew Barrymore at the Academy Awards, the growing gaps in our structure continue to divide and engulf.