American Dreams: Iconic Images of 20th Century Life

Richard Avedon, Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, 1981

Gertrude Käsebier, The Sketch (Beatrice Baxter), 1903

Lewis Hine, Powerhouse Mechanic, 1920

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936

Mary Ellen Mark, Lily with Her Rag Doll, Seattle, 1983

American Dreams is a wonderful exhibition that provides a survey of the great American photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition consists of of photographs from arguably the world’s most important photographic museum, George Eastman House, and is currently being shown at Australia’s Bendigo Art Gallery.

The works highlight the pioneering role these American artists have had on the world stage in developing and shaping photography, and the impact these widely published images have had on the greater society. Their far-reaching images helped shape American culture, and had an impact on the fundamental role photography has in communications today. Even more than this, we can see through these artists the burgeoning love of photography that engaged a nation.

These images show us not only the development of photography, but also provide some of the most powerful social documentary photography of the last century. We see extraordinary moments captured in the lives of a wide range of Americans, works that distil the dramatic transformation that affected people during the 20th century: the affluence, degradation, loss, hope and change, both personally and throughout society.

American Dreams: Iconic Images of 20th Century Life

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Garry Winogrand: Women are Beautiful

Garry Winogrand, Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1969

Garry Winogrand, Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1969

Garry Winogrand, Untitled, New York, 1968

Garry Winogrand, Paris, 1970

Garry Winogrand, Untitled, Women are Beautiful Portfolio, 1970

Garry Winogrand, Central Park Zoo, New York, 1967

Women are Beautiful is a collection of photographs by Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), which is currently on exhibition in Barcelona at the Foundation Foto Colectania. Winogrand is considered to be one of the greatest innovators of twentieth-century American photography. Winogrand’s pictures are focused on the reflection of reality, with no retouching or other ideas added. Garry Winogrand represented a new American style in photography, which broke new ground in the emerging era of street photography.

Described as an undisciplined mixture of energy, ego, curiosity, ignorance, and street-smart naiveté, throughout the 1950s, the Bronx native photographed incessantly, mostly on the streets, working as a freelance photographer for a picture agency and eventually publishing journalistic images in numerous magazines. Around 1960, after being shown a copy of Walker Evans’s book American Photographs, Winogrand began to take a more artistic approach in his work.

Winogrand eventually published four books of photographs, including Women Are Beautiful in 1975, which was composed mostly of candid shots of anonymous women on the street. He knew like no other photographer of his time how to capture the social transformation of females in the 1960s and 1970s through his portraits of women, which stand as an allegory of women’s emancipation and of their new roles in society.

Garry Winogrand: Women are Beautiful

Photo-Gallery: Garry Winogrand/Women are Beautiful

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