El Morocco

During its peak from the 1930s through the 1950s, it was nearly impossible to get a table at the famous Manhattan nightclub, El Morocco, which was frequented by A-list entertainers, politicians, and those in and on the make in high society. For a few nights, the doors opened for a scrappy, Bronx-born photographer, Garry Winogrand, whose photographs of the scene exploded the idea of the snapshot. They blur the line between journalistic and artistic photography by introducing a new, exceedingly confrontational style of small-camera picture making. Direct, invasive, yet intuitively choreographed, this approach won the artist high praise and a steady stream of work from a wide variety of magazine editors from Harper’s Bazaar to Pageant and Sports Illustrated.