The seventh floor of the Denver Art Museum is full of elaborate Western American landscape paintings and metal statues of buffaloes. On Sunday, a new addition to the gallery pulled visitors out of the frontier and onto the streets of New York in the 1960s and 1970s.
Garry Winogrand: Women are Beautiful opened at the Denver Art Museum on Sunday. The exhibition features candid photographs of women selected from Winogrand’s book Women are Beautiful, and will be on display through Sept. 16.
This past Sunday the Denver Art Museum opened a temporary exhibit featuring Garry Winogrand: Women are Beautiful. (CU Independent/Courtesy: Denver Art Museum)
The titles of the images are simple and descriptive, such as “Woman Eating a Pretzel,” telling the viewer exactly what to expect. However, the rich black and white photographs seem to go beyond these minimalist titles. They present different women in different situations, highlighting their differences but also creating a sense of camaraderie between women who didn’t know each other. The similarities in their makeup and clothing link the women together in a specific age group and time period, regardless of their socio-economic standing or hometown. The viewer knows nothing about these women except for what Winogrand shows in his photographs.
Some of the images feature crowds of people with one or two women as the obvious focal point, while others focus on one woman in an empty landscape. Regardless, Winogrand effortlessly draws the viewer’s attention to the women, even when they aren’t entirely in focus. Winogrand plays off the other people in his photographs to highlight his subjects, from using the backs of two businessmen to emphasize a woman heading the opposite direction or focusing on the side of a man at a bar to push the focus onto the woman smiling at him.
The images are playfully set up, despite their candidness, and the thought that went into each is obvious. For example, one photograph, entitled “Woman with Five Dogs,” features a woman sitting in a park, partially hidden by the dogs. Only her face and part of her body is visible, and it is evident that the framing is intentional.
If not for the professionalism of the photographs, the images seem like they could be photos from a family gathering or a friend’s camera. They depict everyday scenes and everyday women in an honest manner. They are candid and raw, and they exemplify the idea that “women are beautiful.”
In a time where everything is digital and photoshopped, the collection of Winogrand’s photography offers a refreshing view of humanity, even if we have to go back to the 60s and 70s to get it.
The women pictured are not posing or retouched – some have their eyes half closed, some are making unflattering expressions. Winogrand captured these women in their element, at moments where they weren’t worried about looking their best. Some are smiling or laughing; others look at the camera with disdain, while others still are focused on their friends.
The clothes, body language, and facial expressions tell the women’s stories in Winogrand’s collection. Viewers hobble together details and visual cues to create a perceived idea of the subject’s personality and of what she was feeling at the time of the photograph. When the images are juxtaposed, the viewer pulls together a rough composite of the women in the 60s and 70s. The collection moves from a woman dancing bare foot at a party to a quiet woman sitting alone on a bus. Winogrand is thorough in his pursuit of everyday women, providing the viewer with an honest picture of the world 40 years ago.
As the description of the exhibition states, “everything the audience can know about [the women] is gleaned by the eyes.” The collection of photographs brings up questions like, “Why was she there?” and, “Where are they now?” The viewer is engaged in the lives of these women whom they have never met through raw black and white photographs, giving visitors a real look into the streets of New York in the 60s and 70s under a façade of simplicity.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ainslee Mac Naughton at Ainslee.macnaughton@colorado.edu.
