…it’s risky business, this effort to breathe life into the world by means of art […] It’s riskier still because it takes Winogrand to visual outposts at the edge of incoherence where eyes accustomed to a tamer, more polite photography might see only wildness an miss the art. It also means that as Winogrand works without preconceived visual restraints, he works without social taboos, staring at everything – failed lives, a failed society in an abundant world – in order to create his own world of possibilities. And this means he has to contend with his own conflicting responses to life as he stirs ours and entertains us.
From an essay by Ben Lifson: “Gary Winogrand’s American Comedy” ©1982, published in Aperture (nr.86)