[Leica] The Man in the Crowd

["GREG A ACHENBACH" <GACHENBA@prodigy.net>]

There is a new Gary Winogrand book out titled The Man in the Crowd. It was
published by Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco in association with
Distributed Art Publishers as part of a Winogrand exhibition at the Gallery
over the past two months.(Did any Bay Area Luggers see it?) Approximately
half of the photos in the book have never been published before. I highly
recommend it to those of you who like street photography and especially
those of you who are Winogrand fans.
Winogrand mainly used an M4 and an M2-R with either a 35 Summicron or a 35
Summilux, and shot TriX developed in D-76 or Rodinal. The printing quality
in the book is very good with photographs which are stunning  both in
content and technique. The unmistakable crisp image quality of Leica glass
and the rich tones and grain of TriX combine for a superb effect.
All of this leads me to nominate Winogrand as the Greatest Leica
Photographer. He is a sort of hybrid between HCB and Diane Arbus. There is
elegance and sentiment in what he did, except everything is a bit wierd or
unhinged. He once remarked that he wasn't a street photgrapher but rather a
zoo photographer. That's the edgy attitude he brought to his craft and it
shows throughout his images.
Bruce Feldman posted a Winogrand link within the past few days and that's
worth quoting for those of you who are interested.

>There's a new Yahoo email club for Garry Winogrand fans.
>http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thewinograndclub

>Information about it is also on the Black and White World site:
>http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/index.html

>The owner of the site, Mason Resnick, studied under Winogrand and has
>written about the experience in Shutterbug and elsewhere.

>Bruce Feldman
>Warsaw, Poland

Greg Achenbach
Denver, Colorado