The Easel

10th April 2018

Stray Dog

Great essay. “Moriyama [is] interested in the dreams that cities sell. [He] doesn’t need Tokyo to give us his vision of modern urban life, of the marks human beings have made on the world. These are often lurid, ugly, aggressive, and destructive. But they can also contain a perverse kind of beauty. It takes a great artist like Moriyama to make us see it.”

Unknown Unknowns Come Sweeping In: On Geoff Dyer’s “The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand”

Winogrand, it seems, “lost it” later in his life Perhaps it was failing health, perhaps artist’s block. “Winogrand knew as well as anyone that he’d lost it, and he thought the best way to get it back was to take more and more photographs until he became good again.” Some of the fruits of that effort are now the subject of a book. More images are here.