Quotes from Garry Winogrand

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.

Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good

I don't care how they think of it. Some of these people are acquiring some very good pictures by a lot of different photographers.

Great photography is always on the edge of failure.

The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about - it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.

When I'm photographing I see life.

Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that's boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let's say that an artist deals with banality. I don't care what the discipline is.

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space.

I certainly never wanted to be a photographer to bore myself. It's no fun - life is too short.

Let's put it this way - I photograph what interests me all the time. I live with the pictures to see what that thing looks like photographed. I'm saying the same thing; I'm not changing it.

You just go through a certain kind of drudgery every time you have to look for something. I've got certain things grouped by now, but there's a drudgery in finding them. There's always stuff missing.

I don't think time is involved in how the thing is made.

Los Angeles has interested me for a long time. I was in Texas for five years, for the same reason. I wanted to photograph there.

I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.

You're talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture.

What you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks - the form, the design, whatever word you want to use.

The museums want large crowds coming to the shows - it's the same thing. It's hype. Absolutely. But there's nothing evil about it.

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.

I'm still compulsively interested in women. It's funny, I've always compulsively photographed women. I still do.

At times I'd much rather talk about other work.

Teaching is only interesting because you struggle with trying to talk about photographs, photographs that work, you see.

There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work.