Photos capturing 1964 to be exhibited

Art Business News, July, 2004

NASHVILLE -- It was 1964 when native New Yorker Gary Winogrand (1928-1984), who would become one of the world's great photographers, captured a slice of American history with images of the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and race riots.

Beginning Feb. 5, 2005, 100 images from this collection will be shown at Nashville's Cheekwood Museum of Art. "Winogrand 1964" curated by Trudy Wilner Stack and produced by the Center for Creative Photography, depicts the nation at a cultural crossroads, a superpower increasingly linked by mass consumerism and television, but still naive and quirky.

In 1963, Winogrand was searching for meaning in his work when he wrote: "I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and what we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't matter ... I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper."

That photographic investigation is seen in "Winogrand 1964." During that year, with the support of the first of three Guggenheim fellowships, Winogrand traveled for four months to 14 states and recorded an America in transition, making some of his most famous photographs.

"Winogrand's compositions are very deliberate" says Cheekwood Associate Curator Terry Smith. "His artistic arsenal is not stocked with the dramatic events of the era, but with the subtleties most of us miss, such as the melancholy tilt of a head, the humorous similarity between real life and advertising, and the way a car window can serve as a picture frame. Winogrand is one of those artists who help us really see the world in which we live."