De FOTOgraaf van 25 October 2007
Dutch
Joel Meyerowitz gave a new meaning
to the word street photography
Hans Arend de Wit
For the general public street photographer as a profession did not connote value. It was seen as work for a pushy vendor of picture postcards or a man who made snapshots of by-passers as souvenirs to be sent to their homes or delivered on the spot with the advent of the Polaroid camera. But then Henri Cartier-Bresson was a street photographer, and so was Walker Evans, Cas Oorthuys, Aart Klein, Ed van der Elsken and so many other photographers with a high reputation and wide acclaim. The American Joel Meyerowitz showed us that street photography can be a niche in the visual arts of high value and power of expression, revelation, social criticism and above all inspiration and consolation.
Cape Light, the first book
With the book Cape Light the American Joel Meyerowitz (1938) gained attention in 1978 and high appreciation in our country, followed by the book St Louis and the Arch in 1980. We had seen a surprising series of shots of the Empire State Building in the Municipal Museum, with the tower in the distance almost hidden behind gates, walls, dilapidated facades, consciously leaving barely space for the tower to appear in the image. Meyerowitz must have lugged around with his heavy large format Deardorff camera like a one-man film crew. The photos in Cape Light were large, finely detailed and great, with refined subtle colors, and so were the Empire State Building photos, which had the quality of impressive cartoons for covers for The New Yorker.
Meyerowitz started out directing Robert Frank
Those who had bought the Cape Light book had read that Meyerowitz had organized his career as a photographer after he had been an art director in an advertising agency and had directed Robert Frank on photo shoots. That's how he became mesmerized by photography. Meyerowitz was seized for good by the magic of photography, and wanted to be involved, hands-on. He shot his first photos with a 35 mill Pentax that was loaned to him by the boss he said good-bye to. Whereas Frank had an ironic eye for the tragedy in life, Meyerowitz was more triggered by comedy and the colorful and the hilarious. I changed from the quick, intuitive 35mm, Meyerowitz said, shooting of the urban scene and its complex spaces to the more meditative, spacious and luminous view camera work. In fact, my behavior and my sense of time underwent a transformation that deeply influenced my work from that time on.
A Summer's Day is a photographic monument
In 1986 a surprising large format tribute to the beach life on the Eastern seaboard was published in a slipcase with a fine print enclosed. For a book it was expensive, but the print it was a rich addition to the wall. The photos radiated an impressive deep and almost monochrome tranquility, directly opposed to his later work in the streets on Manhattan, shots that froze the colorful whirlpool of fast moving people and cars in a glimpse. In A Summer's Day we see the vast absence of hectic urban life, and we feel the sun and the sand, the warm and friendly atmosphere of our youth, when life was pleasant and light as a breeze.
No redheads on the exhibition in the Fotomuseum
Those who feel involved with redheads will have been disappointed not to have seen them in the Fotomuseum but will have to go for the book Redheads that was published in 1990, a jubilant, glorious tribute to freckles, delicate skin tones, lovable personalities, and the all American boy, but for the time being only in the book. Next time?
The public started to appreciate street photography
In 2005 the Dutch art loving public got a boost in interest in postwar American street photography seeing the collective exhibition of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Henry Wessel, Joel Meyerowitz, and the younger Mitch Epstein, with work that gave a refreshing and new look at street life and a new impulse to see street photography from a new angle.
Photos of a reality that's bigger than life
After a few days of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Meyerowitz began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero and the immediate neighborhood. The World Trade Center Archive now numbers more than 8,000 images and will be available for research, exhibition, and publication at museums in New York and Washington, DC.
Phaidon Press has published over 400 of Meyerowitz's World Trade Center Archive photographs and over 100 stories in a monumental book entitled "Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive."
Recognition
Meyerowitz is a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of both the NEA and NEH awards. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many others.
Out of the Ordinary
"Out of the Ordinary 1970-1980" has been organized in close collaboration
with the artist by the Jeu the paume in Paris where the exhibition was
originally premiered in October of 2006.
Joel Meyerowitz, "Out of the Ordinary 1970-1980"
At Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
September 16 - November 25 2007
Books
1978 Cape Light
1980 St Louis and The Arch
1983 Wild Flowers
1986 A Summer's Day
1990 Redheads
1992 Bay/Sky
1994 The Nature of Cities
1996 At the Water's Edge
2001 Bystander, A history of Street Photography, with Colin Westerbeck / Phaidon
2003 Tuscany
2005 52 Mondays
2006 Aftermath
All Photographs: Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
http://www.joelmeyerowitz.com/photography/index.html
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