Garry Winogrand was an American street photographer, known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.

Winogrand published four monographs during her lifetime: Animals (1969), Women are Beautiful (1975), Public Relations (1977), and Stock Photos: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). At the time of his death, his late work was still undeveloped, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film and 6,500 rolls of developed but uncorrected exposure.

His images often brought together many people unaware of being photographed, caught in a state of public privacy, and only one or two in a crowd who were aware of the camera’s presence and looked into the lens, not so much interacting with him as reacting to him, already too late. He was, in effect, stinging his subjects with the camera, and their gaze back was as an expression of their surprise—a surprise that performed, on camera, his own surprise in the presence of his subjects and the wondrous, shocking, horrifying, astonishing, absurd realities in which he found them.

There is no deliberate composition in his work. Some critics say his work is like free jazz. It’s a way of breaking with traditional aesthetics. And such photographic works make people think about the meaning of photography art again.