Museum Monday: Welcome to California, Jane

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Garry Winogrand, 1964: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

While bands, dancers and floats filled with people dressed in traditional German clothing marched up 5th Avenue as part of New York City’s German-American Steuben Parade on Saturday, I ducked inside the Metropolitan Museum of New York and spent a few minutes in the Garry Winogrand photography retrospective.

Winogrand’s best images document daily life in New York and elsewhere during the 1950s through the early 1980s and include some shots taken at airports. Standing before the picture below, taken by Winogrand at JFK International Airport in 1968, I listened to a dad explain to his kids what phone booths were. “You had to go into this little box and put a nickel or dime into little holes above the phone before you could call anyone if you weren’t at home,” he said.

Winogrand’s photograph at the top of this post, taken at Los Angeles International Airport in 1964, is my favorite. Wish we knew the story that went along with that big sign.

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Garry Winogrand, 1968. Collection of John and Lisa Pritzker. From the Gary Winogrand retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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