Moments photographiques: 09/10

vendredi 17 septembre 2010

Sur la photographie

"Photography, photographers, photographs deal with facts.

I have been photographing the United States, trying by investigating photographically to learn who we are and how we feel, by seeing what we look like as history has been and is happening to us in this world.

Since World War II we have seen the spread of affluence, the move to the suburbs and the spreading of them, the massive shopping centers to serve them, cars for to and from. New schools, churches and banks. And the growing need of tranquilizer peace, missile races, H bombs for overkill, war and peace tensions, and bomb shelter security. Economic automation problems, and since the Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools, we have the acceleration of civil liberties battle by negroes.

I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newpapers, the columnists, some books, I look at some magazines (our press). They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn't matter, we have not loved life.

I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project."

Gary Winogrand, Statement of Plans,

John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Application, October 1963.

[le résultat est visible dans Winogrand, 1964, Arena Editions, 2002. Superbe!]