Paul Graham at the Winogrand retrospective, The Met, NYC

Garry Winogrand - New York, circa 1962

Writer Nicholas Dawidoff talked to New York resident Paul Graham at The Met's Winogrand show and penned a piece in The NEW YORKER Photo Booth section.

Inside the exhibition, Graham wandered until something snapped him into focus. He paused at a photograph of a muscular young man hoisting a woman aloft and wrestling her toward the surf, from 1952. “The thing about these early ones, they strike me as the work of someone who hasn’t found his voice. They’re of that era of Time-Life photojournalism—someone trying to unshackle himself from popular journalism’s obligatory good cheer, the clanking boxcars of magazine narrative.” A little further on, he admired photographs of elderly people with much seemingly on their minds, none of it optimistic, standing on street corners sometime around 1960. “We’ve charged ahead ten years, and it’s already much richer,” Graham said. “It’s him photographing on his own gambit. He’s gone rogue! It’s haphazard, disorienting.”

You can read the full story HERE.