Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz

 

Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is a street photographer, and portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in colour in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of colour during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of colour photography as serious art. In the early 1970s he taught the first colour course at the Cooper Union in New York City where many of today's renowned colour photographers studied with him.

 

Inspired by seeing Robert Frank at work, Meyerowitz quit his job as an art director at an advertising agency  and took to the streets of New York City with a 35mm camera and black-and-white film, alongside Garry Winogrand, Tony Ray-Jones, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus. He drew inspiration from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Eugène Atget — he has said "In the pantheon of greats there is Robert Frank and there is Atget."
After alternating between black-and-white and colour, Meyerowitz "permanently adopted colour" in 1972, well before John Szarkowski's promotion in 1976 of colour photography in an exhibition of work by the then little-known William Eggleston. Meyerowitz also switched at this time to large format,  often using an 8×10 camera to produce photographs of places and people.
Meyerowitz appeared extensively in the 2006 BBC Four documentary series The Genius of Photography.

 

 

 In this photograph it looks like a busy day and a man has fallen over it looks like no one cares their just too busy. There's quite a few cars it looks like rush hour and it looks like the  people have just of the tram. The focal point of the picture would be all the people and the man lying on the ground. It looks like this picture was taken in the 60's 70's. In my opinion the people couldn't care and they'd rather get on with their own life. In my opinion I do like the picture I shows day to day life.

 

 In this photograph it looks like Joel has just took a mug shot of a man who is walking to work. Surrounding the man are quite a few people. In the background you can see buildings and a taxi and what looks like a bus. The sun is shinning directly onto the man making him the focal point of the picture. From the way the sun is shinning you can see the shadows of people from in front of him. This picture looks like it was taken in the 70's. In my opinion I think the picture looks alright I like how the light is directly on the man making him stand out.