“It costs about $1.50. It is a toy camera that works well. The company also makes a cheaper model that squirts water when you press the shutter.”
taken from “The Snapshot” ©1974, Aperture, Inc., New York.
What photograph is not a snapshot, still life, document, landscape, etc.? [….] Neither [….] are descriptions of separate photographic aesthetics [….] Still photography is the distinctive term.
Garry Winogrand in “the SNAPSHOT”, ©1974 Aperture, Inc., Vol.19 Number 1.
…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)