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Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures Of Garry Winogrand
If Garry Winogrand photographed everything, all the time, as he is famous for having done, his pictures of airports convey the many still very familiar sights and spaces and sensations attached to air travel. Arriving at an airport, checking baggage, watching other travelers amble, walk and sometimes rush by, luggage trailing and flailing and neatly rolling along, passengers waiting forever on those long rows of attached seats, friends and relatives greeting each other and saying everything that happened and stills happens in these vast public spaces. Winogrand's airport photographs were taken over a period of 25 years, with the first frame shot around 1958 and the last in 1983, just months before his death. In Winogrand's archive at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, there are hundreds of contact sheets containing airport images, and over 1,100 prints of airplanes and airports that Winogrand made during his lifetime. Edited by Alex Harris, one of the first to publish selections from this body of work, in DoubleTake magazine in 1996, and longtime friend and colleague Lee Friedlander, The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand assembles 86 of the photographer's most compelling, never-before published images of travelers, flight attendants, airport waiting rooms, airplanes on runways and all the people and places in between.
- GenresPhotographyArt
112 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2003
About the author
Alex Harris
76 books3 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 22, 2022
Once upon a time, not very long ago, air travel used to be a special occasion. It didn’t start once airborne but rather the minute you arrived at the terminal. No matter how many bags or children were being dragged along, there was a certain indulgence in spending sometime in a busy airport, loitering around, enjoying a half-decent meal in a cafeteria overlooking around-the-clock take-offs and landings. The crowds at the check-in counters weren’t huge and even if they were, people weren't worried of not making it to the gate on time because of endless security checks. Then 9/11 happened and the world and air travel was never the same again. No need to explain; I guess we’ve all found ourselves at one time or another frantically tossing away half-empty juice bottles, outsized shampoo containers, overlooked nail clippers that should have been removed from carry-ons and be put in checked luggage – because we all know how lethal nail clippers are.
A year and a half ago the world changed once more. Passenger planes were grounded. Terminals became ghostly places, devoid of everything and everyone that made them jubilant or exasperating, depending on occasion and how much time one had between flights. They are slowly starting to come back to life these days – and guess what? On top of all those anti-terrorist procedures there is a new set of rules, the anti-Covid procedures, to make airport life hard as hell.
Still, and despite all that: here’s a small tribute, in celebration and NOT in memoriam of Air Travel. May it outlive all the nasty viruses and mean-spirited people out there, may the skies open up once again and make the world the reachable place it used to be. Because “It’s a Small World After All” and I absolutely refuse to see it otherwise.
So, here are a few favorite photos from Garry Winogrand, a beloved photographer who used to take a lot of planes while he lived and had found his camera helpful in assuaging his flying angst while waiting at terminals buzzing with Life.
The pleasure we take in Garry Winogrand’s pictures is the pleasure of travel. Turning these pages holds the possibility of turning the corner and seeing something new, of discovering something we’ve never quite seen this way before, even the possibility of seeing ourselves in a new light. On Winogrand’s guided tour, we rarely go up in the air. And though we wait in line, sit in restaurants, and stroll through lobbies, walk in and out of planes and terminals, and sometimes get so far as to load the baggage into the trunks of cars, we rarely get beyond the terminal. Garry Winogrand shows us that we don’t need to leave the airport to go on the trip of our lives.
Houston, 1969
New York, 1973
San Francisco, 1964
Los Angeles, n.d.
New York, 1978
Oakland, n.d.
Los Angeles, 1964
Los Angeles, 1964
A year and a half ago the world changed once more. Passenger planes were grounded. Terminals became ghostly places, devoid of everything and everyone that made them jubilant or exasperating, depending on occasion and how much time one had between flights. They are slowly starting to come back to life these days – and guess what? On top of all those anti-terrorist procedures there is a new set of rules, the anti-Covid procedures, to make airport life hard as hell.
Still, and despite all that: here’s a small tribute, in celebration and NOT in memoriam of Air Travel. May it outlive all the nasty viruses and mean-spirited people out there, may the skies open up once again and make the world the reachable place it used to be. Because “It’s a Small World After All” and I absolutely refuse to see it otherwise.
So, here are a few favorite photos from Garry Winogrand, a beloved photographer who used to take a lot of planes while he lived and had found his camera helpful in assuaging his flying angst while waiting at terminals buzzing with Life.
The pleasure we take in Garry Winogrand’s pictures is the pleasure of travel. Turning these pages holds the possibility of turning the corner and seeing something new, of discovering something we’ve never quite seen this way before, even the possibility of seeing ourselves in a new light. On Winogrand’s guided tour, we rarely go up in the air. And though we wait in line, sit in restaurants, and stroll through lobbies, walk in and out of planes and terminals, and sometimes get so far as to load the baggage into the trunks of cars, we rarely get beyond the terminal. Garry Winogrand shows us that we don’t need to leave the airport to go on the trip of our lives.
Houston, 1969
New York, 1973
San Francisco, 1964
Los Angeles, n.d.
New York, 1978
Oakland, n.d.
Los Angeles, 1964
Los Angeles, 1964
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