Garry Winogrand

signed by the photographer in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1964, printed in the 1970s

The photographer to Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 23 (this print)

Other prints of this image:

John Szarkowski, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (Museum of Modern Art, 1988, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 136

Trudy Wilner Stack, Winogrand 1964 (Santa Fe, 2002, in conjunction with the exhibition originating at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson), p. 37

Sarah Greenough, Joel Snyder, David Travis, and Colin Westerbeck, On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography (National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Art Institute of Chicago, 1989, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 356

Tom E. Hinson, Catalogue of Photography, The Cleveland Museum of Art (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996), p. 398

This print is on double-weight paper with semi-glossy surface. It is essentially in excellent condition. In raking light, faint linear retouching can be seen in the upper right corner. There is a slight chip in the margin, in the left portion of the top edge. These condition issues do nothing to undermine the fine appearance of this print.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Wyoming is one of the key images from Garry Winogrand's formative 1964 cross-country trip, financed by a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 1967, the image was one of only 32 Winogrands chosen by John Szarkowski from hundreds of pictures, for the groundbreaking New Documents show at The Museum of Modern Art. This landmark exhibition showcased the work of three contemporary photographers--Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander--and charted a new direction in what had previously been thought of as 'documentary photography.'  In the exhibition brochure, Szarkowski wrote that these three photographers shared 'the belief that the commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it with a minimum of theorizing.'

Winogrand set out alone from New York in the summer of 1964, in a second-hand car donated by Lee Friedlander.  He had made two cross-country road trips before, in 1955 and 1959, with his wife Adrienne and their children.  These trips had been inspired by his admiration for two books: Walker Evans's American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans.  The Guggenheim trip, however, was a new experience.  Now in the final stages of separation from his wife, Winogrand traveled alone and was able to capture on film whatever appealed to him, in complete freedom.   The resulting 550 rolls of film encapsulated Winogrand's unique view of America, full of description but filled with mystery.

The image offered here, a startling shot of a calf on a highway, catches the audience by surprise.  In Winogrand 1964, Trudy Wilner Stack writes of the photographer's work from that year,

'Each picture was a formal translation of "Look at that!"  Once they were photographs in his hands, the good ones held even more welcome surprises, but not accidents.  His best pictures, and there are mountains of them, are the result of a radically disciplined animal intelligence charged with animal alertness.  Life falls together in these frames, defying the very complexity and chance they can suggest' (p. 276).