There are all types of photography; portrait, nature, time lapse, etc but none in terms of artistry lends itself to the camera as photojournalism or street photography. Cameras are built for speed and no other form including the movie or video camera can capture reality and sum up an emotion in one powerful frame like it, the research behind the work all of a split second. The best of these photographers, Henri Cartier Bresson called it "The Decisive Moment."
With the New York city streets as his studio from the 50s through the 70s Garry Winogrand recorded the day to day comings and goings of a place and generation that remains as not only the work of a unique rare lensman but a lasting historical document that captures the tumultuous period. Working the same streets as Wee Gee and Robert Frank before him, Winogrand's style did not flinch from the controversial with images from the day shocking not only then but standing the test of time to jolt with just as much impact today.
While the more famous photographs are recognizable little is known of the artist who died at 54 and this documentary does a lot in conveying Winogrand's quirky ways and style. Snippets of Interviews and speeches reveal an unpretentious down to earth artist. His disheveled lifestyle lacked order and he left thousands of unexposed images, his energies more devoted to being on the streets, the act of squeezing off the image satisfaction enough.
Winogrand eventually moved on to Texas and California where illness and injury took a toll and due to lack of mobility his work lacked the energy and confrontational style of his New York period but by this time he had a canon of work that established him as one of the finest and rawest photographers of the 20th Century with a body of work still being edited and looked upon with awe decades after his death.