August 2007, Paris (Fuji Superia 400).

Sometime back I saw an old US TV program of Bill Moyers on Garry Winogrand which I highly recommend you see. You can see the program here (video hosted on Jim Arnold’s site). While I haven’t seen enough of Winogrand’s work to form an opinion on his photographic style the program is quite interesting for the gilmpse it offers us of his street shooting technique. He has this sneaky self-conscious style of photographing where he whips up his pre-focussed Leica with a wide angle lens and snaps a photo before the subject has even realized that a photo has been taken. It all happens in the blink of an eye. The bewildered looks of people whose photos he has just snapped attest to this. I couldn’t catch his super fast action even though I was waiting for it. He was that fast! I seriously doubt if one can get away with such a shooting technique these days. I think an angry mob would descend on such a photographer and hand him over to the anti-terrorist police 🙂 But it is amazing that Winogrand came away with some great photographs using such a technique for I think he had less than a second to frame his shots. His anticipation and timing must have been something.