Garry Winogrand, New York City, 1964
From the Getty Museum:
I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.
-Garry Winogrand in Women are Beautiful
Six attractive young women in short dresses sit sandwiched between two men on a bench. One looks upset as she leans against her friend; the others seem distracted. They are engaged in stereotypical girlish behavior: chatting, gossiping, and flirting. Their juxtapositions invite comparisons; their cross-legged postures and dramatic hand gestures echo one another, yet are unique to each of them.
As the women’s rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s, Garry Winogrand avidly photographed women for his 1975 book, Women are Beautiful. In the preface to a monograph published after the photographer’s death, Museum of Modern Art curator John Szarkowski commented: “Winogrand’s view of women was perhaps outrageous, or was perhaps saved from outrageousness by its simplicity and openness, and by its reckless enthusiasm.”
