Joel Meyerowitz is best known for his street photography, revolutionising the genre through his use of colour from the 1970s.
Read MoreThe Bronx-born photographer is recognised as a pioneer and advocate of colour film, gradually gaining public and artistic acceptance of the medium in an era where black-and-white photography dominated as the primary art form.
Meyerowitz has often acknowledged his upbringing in the Bronx as a key influence shaping his perception of interpersonal relationships and human behaviour, which would later translate through images.
Meyerowitz studied art, art history, and medical illustration at Ohio State University, graduating with a BFA in 1959. In the early 1960s, he worked as an art director in advertising, where he met Swiss photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank.
Frank's mobile approach to photography inspired Meyerowitz to borrow a camera and take photographs out on New York's streets. Unaware that black and white was the convention of art photography, Meyerowitz began shooting in colour. He met fellow American street photographer Garry Winogrand, and together they photographed the streets of New York City every day for several years.
Meyerowitz taught photography at The Cooper Union, New York in the early 1970s. He has since spoken and lectured at significant events and institutions around the world, including the Perez Art Museum, Miami (2021); Martin Parr Foundation, England (2021); Fotografiska, New York (2020); Aperture Foundation, New York (2020); Les Rencontres d'Arles (2017); Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York (2012); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2012); and St. John's University, New York (2011).
In his early career, Joel Meyerowitz produced both black-and-white and colour photographs before switching exclusively to colour in the early 1970s—a radical decision at the time. Early black-and-white photos such as Los Angeles (1964), Paris (1967), and The Bronx (1968) illustrate his propensity for the candid or incidental, capturing relaxed moments of human engagement.
Over his career, Meyerowitz's subjects expanded to include landscapes, portraits, events, and objects, in addition to the street. Images by French photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget further influenced his approach to the camera, informing his consideration of elements such as light, framing, and composition to culminate in the 'decisive moment'.
Meyerowitz became known for his atmospheric landscape photographs, in which tonal variations of colour form as significant part of the image as the subject itsel—such as in White Sands, New Mexico (1971), Gold Column, Porch, Provincetown (1977), or Bay/Sky, Dawn, Fall (1986). His urban and street photographs possess a cinematic quality, translating fleeting moments of everyday life into unstudied filmic freeze-frames. Images such as Gold Corner, New York City (1974) and New York City (1975) document the vibrant inner streets of New York.
In an interview with Jim Casper for Lens Culture in 2020, Meyerowitz stated: 'I'm trying to make [my photographs] portals into the momentary characters of reality so the viewer can enter in as if they're standing in my shoes. ... I try not to be too managerial. I try not to lock it down so that it has certain familiar characteristics about framing or formal organization. I like the loose, broken, open-ended quality of photography because then the viewer enters and has an experience of their own, of that moment in time.'
Meyerowitz has published dozens of photobooks, each bringing together collections of images under a common theme, place, or subject. Cape Light: Color Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz (1979) is one of the artist's most acclaimed books and an influential publication of 20th-century photography. Photographing scenic resort-town shots bathed in warm, diffuse light distinct to Massachusetts' Cape Cod, Meyerowitz identifies and captures harmonies in colour, light, and composition that characterise the region—presenting shots that are at once complex and minimal, vast and focused, with a sympathetic vision for the subtleties of colour.
Other notable books by Meyerowitz include Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive (2006), a collection of photos taken by Meyerowitz in the aftermath of 9/11, as the only photographer granted unrestricted access to Ground Zero in the wake of the attack; and Provincetown (2019), for which Meyerowitz captured people in the cosmopolitan seaside town with an 8 x 10 camera.
Meyerowitz has also worked in film. He directed and produced his first film Pop in 1995, inspired by his father and stylistically influenced by street photography.
In 2019, Meyerowitz was made an Honoree of the International Photography Hall of Fame. He has received numerous awards and honours including the Leica Hall of Fame Honoree (2016); Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship, Royal Photographic Society (2012); Lifetime Achievement Award, The Lucie Foundation (2012); Aperture Honoree (2009); and Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (2006).
Major historic recognitions include the Guggenheim Fellowship (1971, 1978) and the Century Award for Lifetime Achievement, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (1999).
Meyerowitz has exhibited prolifically across the United States and worldwide in solo and group exhibitions since the 1960s.
Significant solo exhibitions include Joel Meyerowitz. Why Color? Retrospective, C/O Berlin (2017); Joel Meyerowitz: Survey, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto (2016); Joel Meyerowitz — Retrospective, Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna (2015); Joel Meyerowitz: A Retrospective, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2013); Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, The Art Institute of Boston (2011); Aftermath: Inside the Forbidden City, Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas (2011); Out of the Ordinary 1970—1980, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (2007).
Works by Meyerowitz are held in major institutions throughout the U.S. and internationally. Select museums include the Berkeley Art Museum, California; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Art Institute of Chicago; International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Miami Art Museum; The Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; San Antonio Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Joel Meyerowitz's website can be found here, and his Instagram can be found here.
Misong Kim | Ocula | 2021
