Like many creators, Garry Winogrand was tortured by doubt, but not enough to keep him from taking thousands of shots, many of which influenced generations of street photographers.

Several cuts above the usual American Masters profile, this deeply engaging doc allows insiders to re-create a world in which photography itself was not taken seriously. Like Robert Frank, he ignored conventions and catalogued a multi-ethnic, class-stratified America as it was—albeit with the poetry of just the right light (plus a soupçon of old-school sexism). And like the recently discovered Vivian Maier, he left behind trunks full of undeveloped film cassettes, raising ethical questions about what defines an artist’s eye.