In authoring a blog post on the book Winogrand Color I came across a review of the book online by New York Times writer Arthur Lubow. I think it was a really accurate review about the images in the book. The only thing I didn’t agree with that Lubow wrote were part of his comments on the very famous Winogrand photograph on the left above. Lubow wrote “Even less successful is the color version of one of his most famous photographs, “Central Park Zoo, New York City” (1967), which shows a Black man and blonde woman, seemingly affluent, each carrying a fully clad chimpanzee. It is a biting and unsettling comment on the era’s prevailing slurs about interracial marriage. In the color image, probably taken an instant later, the man is looking at the camera, the woman’s expression has changed, and the impact is diffused by the photographer’s own obscuring shadow and a distracting crowd of passers-by.” As I stated in my other blog post I saw the Winogrand documentary film, “All Things are Photographable” where Papageorge discussed this image and shared his own photograph of Winogrand with the couple. Tod Papageorge explained he was with Garry Winogrand that day and he disputed the assumption that Winogrand was making a statement about interracial relationships with this photograph. Tod and Garry were close friends and I think Tod would have understanding of Garry’s beliefs and opinions. I researched this subject matter further and found an in-depth article, with photograph illustrations, that Papageorge had authored about the photograph for Transatlantica in 2014 on MoMA’s website.
I know I have shared this information in the body of another blog post, but I think the subject is important enough to highlight in a separate post specifically dealing with the perceived controversy with this image because it applies to other works by other people. It is wrong to apply current day feelings or cultural standards with things from the past. I am not saying we need to condone outdated beliefs or past behavior that would be wrong in our world today. I am saying things needs to be evaluated with perspective of the time of the event and without any attempt to cancel it because of the current values and opinions of a segment of society. Here is a good non-photo example of my point:
My son is a graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall, a well-known prep school in Connecticut. On one of my many visits back there I got to sit in on his English class during the events of a “parents’ weekend”. My son’s teacher was Ed McCatty who is an outstanding educator, now retired. McCatty, who is black, had the class reading Mark Twain’s 1884 classic book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at the time. In the classroom, with all these other parents visiting, McCatty called on a student to read the book out loud and the student became nervous because of the book uses the “N-word” a fair amount to describe Huck’s friend Jim who was a fugitive slave. Finally, McCatty took over reading and projected Twain’s words eloquently. Parents squirmed uncomfortably as McCatty read “that word” again and again. I had already met Ed on a previous visit, he was one of the faculty residents in my son’s dorm, I knew where he was going with the reading, so I sat back and enjoyed seeing a number of parents getting completely stressed over words written in the 19th century. McCatty eventually explained how it was important to interpret Twain’s writing based on the time it was written. He pointed out that even though Huck was using the term for Jim that it wasn’t being used in a derogatory manner for the time, and the fact that Twain wrote about a young white youth befriending a black fugitive slave it showed Twain had a progressive viewpoint. McCatty took the topic further, using examples in his own life, and ended up giving everyone a lesson that day which went far beyond literature.
Interpretations of images (and other things) can change quickly, we don’t need a hundred plus years to pass for feelings to change. The best example of this with my own work is this photograph below which is in the permanent collection at the Center for Creative Photography.
PPD-177 #23 March 1987 - William Karl Valentine
Officer Ware and Craddolph at search warrant related to a narcotics sales investigation.
When I displayed this photograph in the first couple decades after making the exposure most every viewer was compassionate for the child being raised in dangerous conditions and anger towards the parents for putting the child in the situation. Some people went on to acknowledge gratefulness for law enforcement for trying to protect the child and do something about the drug epidemic of the times. These are accurate opinions about what my image is about. But in the last decade plus a portion of our society has altered its perspective on law enforcement and I have been confronted about this image. I had an anonymous Instagram viewer question my ethics for taking the photograph when the woman was unable to defend herself. In 2020 the photograph was in a simple exhibition in Pasadena and several people demanded to have it taken down because they found it offensive, so that image was pulled from the wall by staff. I am fine with someone not liking my work or disagreeing with my interpretation of the world, but to censor me is outlandish. The First Amendment gives me as much right to express myself opinion as anyone else in this country. The fact that some people thing their feeling give them the authority to remove that right is infuriating. Most photographs are an accurate account of a fraction of a second of time, how we interpret them is another thing.
One final thing I want to get back to, the majority of Arthur Lubow’s opinion on Winogran’s color photograph of the couple at the Central Park Zoo is spot on. The image is not as good as the famous black and white image and for all the reasons Lubow points out in his description of the image. Lubow obviously knows how to look at photographs. The positioning of the subjects in the frame and Winogrand’s shadow make the color image way less impactful. If Winogrand had been using a digital camera, which obviously did not exist then, and decided to share this famous image in color I think it may have been impactful, but I can see how the bright colors could have been distracting from what was going on in the frame. I know in my own work sometimes bright colors in a color image distract the viewer from the shapes, forms, layers of meaning, and textures in the image which drew my eye. That was a big consideration I had with my Santa Anita book, I didn’t want the viewer to focus on the bright colors of the silks, the horses, and the grass, I wanted them to see the details and layers of information that came out in a black and white image. It is natural that our eyes are drawn to bright colors and when color is removed a photographer can direct the focus in an image. There are times that colors matter and for that I am thankful for the digital age where the decision can be made after the shutter was released. Knowing how many rolls of film that Winogrand exposed I can only imagine how many hard drives he would have filled and the thousands of more images he would have made.