Garry Winogrand & the Boxer

A fantastic interview with one Garry Winogrand's subjects from the mid-1950s, a then young-boxer named Nicholas Biondi. Nick was a teenaged Golden Gloves boxer who Garry was shooting for an asssigment from Sports Illustrated. What's amazing about the interview from my perspective is how Garry was able to "disppear" while shooting so as to leave his subjects to act exactly as they would if weren't there photographing them. Nick offers some interesting insights into Garry that you probably could only learn from someone at whom Garry was pointing a lens.

The interview was conducted by a San Francisco MOMA Assistant Curator of Photography, Erin O’Toole.

A good read. Absolutely recommended.

A few excerpts (http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/the-boxer/):

"[H]e followed me home one night, and that’s the picture you see at dinner. I have a number of those pictures, and if you look at the picture at dinner, you can see my father scolding me.

"O’Toole: Were you a bit of a troublemaker?

"Biondi: No, it was just a father-son thing, nothing that I can recall. But look at Garry! Where was Garry? You would get the idea that we were so used to having dinner guests that he just blended right in. Not so! When Garry was taking pictures, if we didn’t see a flash, we were suspicious—what did we know about cameras? Look at my father and mother, how natural they look. Garry was only the second guest we had in twenty years! [laughs]

"O’Toole: Do you feel that had a lot to do with him as a person, that he made you feel comfortable?

"Biondi: One of the things that still amazes me about the encounter was that neither I nor any of the other participants in the photographs were even remotely self-conscious. Normally when there’s a guy with a camera focusing his attention on you, a person might become self-conscious. Self-consciousness didn’t exist for me then, and looking at the photographs it doesn’t show itself in the pictures. I wasn’t aware of Garry the Photographer’s presence. He was like a ghost, and we simply went about our daily tasks. It helped enormously that he didn’t use flash, but it also made us wonder if he actually had film in the camera! In my opinion this ghostliness was a major component of his talent."

*     *     *

"O’Toole: Something else I wanted to ask you was about the pictures from [your] clubhouse.

"Biondi: Garry became fascinated that a seventeen-year-old kid had a social club in Manhattan, consisting of fourteen teenagers—a place they could go to socialize with their dates to get off the street corners, where the police would not arrest them. Where they would pay their dues and the rent each month and continue the social structure for five years. Garry came from the co-ops of the Bronx, and our club house was a co-op in Manhattan.

*     *     *

"O’Toole: The gym was in your neighborhood?

"Biondi: The gym was in the neighborhood; that’s how we did it then. The gym that I trained at was on Fifty-Fourth Street between First and Second Avenue in Manhattan and is still standing. I can tell you right off the bat, knowing a little bit about Garry, if I was having this kind of success in the Bronx or Queens or Brooklyn, he wouldn’t have taken the assignment. He was strictly a Manhattan guy.

"O’Toole: Yep, even though he was from the Bronx.

"Biondi: Even though he was from the Bronx, he was strictly Manhattan.

"O’Toole: And why do you think that’s the case?

"Biondi: Why was he strictly Manhattan? He just was a Manhattan guy. You know, he became one. But John Szarkowski  [director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 1962 to 1991 and a great champion of Winogrand’s work] called him a “city hick,” and I agree with that characterization 100 percent. Winogrand was fascinated with Manhattan."

 *     *     *

"O’Toole: Tell me a little bit about his personality, or your impression of him as a person.

"Biondi: C.H.H.I.

"O’Toole: What does that mean?

"Biondi: Character, Honesty, Honor, Integrity.

"O’Toole: Is this your motto?

"Biondi: Yes.

"O’Toole: And you feel he fit that bill?

"Biondi: Class A person. Nothing slimy or sleazy, nothing like that at all. Up-front and intelligent, creative. And I think when he was photographing it was like a gambler who’s into gambling, they just lose themselves. . . . There was a movie called The Leopard, by [Luchino] Visconti [based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa], and it says what we do in life from the minute we’re born is try to escape back into the womb. We do that by being involved in some occupation or pursuit and that’s when you’re the happiest—in pursuit of your dream."