If you can, check out the Garry Winogrand exhibition at SFMOMA. His images are really something else — the facial expressions he captures are like visual adjectives.
I lifted this letter, from Judy Teller, Winogrand’s wife, to her husband, because I thought it was hilarious. Makes me wish I had known both him and her. Makes me want to throw my own big studio party.
“Dear Garry, this is to set the record straight. Since you seem to have a great deal of difficulty keeping hard facts in mind as a basis for discussion, and also since you show no desire for rational discussion, maybe this will help you. (As for my tone of voice, I have been trying for the last year and a half to discuss and resolve our differences in what has been, for a least a good part of the time, a normal tone of voice. To no avail.
I would like to have children. For the past four years, I have heard you spewing grandiose dreams (i.e. the big new year’s eve party in the big studio, the big money, gigantic success at money making operations, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.) Followed by feeble attempts (or not attempts at all) to realize these dreams. I am now almost twenty-eight. The time I have to wait while you bumble is nearly exhausted. The question, moreover, is not whether you can make a large fortune. The question is whether you can make a decent living.
Including the payment of my analyst bill. (In our culture, men are expected to provide the women they marry with their necessities. I would say it magnanimous on my part to be asking for this for a limited time: the time during which we might have and raise two children to school age.) But my analyst bill is not even relevant at this point. What is extremely relevant is the money you owe the government in back taxes. Your inability to pay the rent on time. You constantly running out of money. Your credit rating. And most of all, your flippant, irresponsible, nonsensical attitude towards these very real problems. (“I’ll wait till the government catches up with me. Why should I pay them any money now?) You seem incapable of exercising your mind in any cogent way…”
