Public relations

PUBLIC RELATIONS is the result of a photographic project undertaken by Garry Winogrand in 1969, when he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph what he called "the effect of media on events." But, as Tod Papageorge notes, "Winogrand meant more than he said, and, after working for five years on this project, he had accomplished more that he had probably meant." The subjects of these photographs are those many events that, taken together, offer a mosaic of the fevers and fervors of an extraordinary decade. Tod Papageorge observes: "With what could be described as passion, fury, and a crone's curiosity, Winogrand photographed marches, rallies, press conferences, games, strikes, demonstrations, moratoria, funerals, parades, award ceremonies, dinners, museum openings, victory celebrations, a birthday party, and one moon shot. "For Winogrand these events all shared the fact that they were public occasions, and that they had been called to order as much for the benefit of the media that recorded them as for the direct pleasure or ritual relief of those participating in them. What Winogrand has captured in these pictures is the collective hysteria that locked us into 'the Sixties,' until 1972, when the economy seemed to resign, or until 1974, when Richard Nixon actually did. Such a description, however, simplifies the drama Winogrand has extorted from what seems to be a long series of follies. For what he has given us in these photographs is a unilateral report of how we behaved under pressure during a time of costumes and causes, and of how extravagantly, outrageously, and continuously we displayed what we wanted."