Has anyone so consistently chanced upon the random glamour of the street?
To make sure I was not reacting over-enthusiastically to this image, I looked through Martin Harrison’s survey of fashion photography, Appearances, to see how it fared alongside famous images by Arthur Elgort, Louis Faurer and the rest. It doesn’t have the conceived and fully achieved perfection that we see in page after page of Vogue. If it had been posed, the woman with her back to us would have been more elegant, less boxy-looking but, equally, we would have lost that lovely — touching — accidental echo of hands that holds the black and white women together.
Diane Arbus’s objection to fashion photography also works in Winogrand’s favour. She hated fashion photography “because the clothes don’t belong to the people wearing them . . . When the clothes do belong to the person wearing them they take on a person’s flaws and characteristics and are wonderful.” When we see someone wearing a fine garment, we might be tempted to ask, “Where did you find that?” In this instance, the terms have to be reversed. How did that red coat find its perfect owner, its perfect . . . model? It gives the lie to adverts which make you believe that if you buy this coat people will fall in love with you. No, she renders it unsellable. It’s her coat, only hers. And the picture is all about her, all about colour.
It was only recently that a black woman was able to walk with such confidence, affluence and pride. To that extent, she is animated by the force of history. In black-and-white pictures, she would be more integrated with the surrounding blacks and whites. Whereas here, the black woman, in her wonderful red coat, stands in striking contrast to so many people in black, grey or navy, most of whom are going in the opposite direction so that she seems, in every way, to be going against the current.
This is an edited extract from “The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand” by Geoff Dyer, published by the University of Texas Press.
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