The oral and visual autobiography of one of American photography’s most legendary figures.
Joel Meyerowitz is one of the pioneers of color photography, as well as an essential reference figure for street photography, large-format photography, and portraits. "The Pleasure of Seeing. Conversations with Joel Meyerowitz on sixty years in the life of photography", his first biography, offers a look behind the scenes of the life and career of one of America's photographic legends. In conversation with historian and photographer Lorenzo Braca, Meyerowitz speaks vividly about his beginnings, studying art history, meeting Robert Frank, photographing on the streets of New York City with Tony Ray-Jones and Garry Winogrand, traveling extensively across America and Europe, learning from John Szarkowski, director of photography at MoMA, working on numerous exhibitions and publications, photographing at Ground Zero in 2001 and 2002, and about the most recent still lifes and self-portraits projects. The book contains over one hundred pictures, including Meyerowitz's most iconic photographs as well as new and previously unpublished material. This comprehensive visual biography testifies to the author's continuing evolution throughout the six decades of his career and discusses his work in relation to his personal life, to the history of photography, and to the incessant transformation of the medium. Meyerowitz reveals anecdotes, personal memories, and the story behind many of his famous photographs.
Joel Meyerowitz (born 1938 in New York) is considered, together with William Eggleston and
Stephen Shore, one of the most representative exponents of New Color Photography of the 60s and 70s. After an experience as an art director, in the 1960s he began to devote himself to photography inspired above all by Robert Frank. He then began to collaborate with several important authors such as Garry Winogrand, Tony Ray-Jones, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus. The small format camera (35 mm) allowed Meyerowitz to cross New York and behave like a real street photographer, recording small random events, minimal and revealing details, faces and urban landscapes. Thanks to collaborations with William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Meyerowitz then approached the large format until arriving at the important work he carried out after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Meyerowitz was the only one authorized to photograph Ground Zero closely immediately after the attacks: many of these photographs were then collected in the volume Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive. An ever-evolving photographer, lately inspired by the works and events of Paul Cézanne, he creates a series of photographs of the French artist's objects. Meyerowitz's photographs are featured in important public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and The Art Institute of Chicago. Among the many personal exhibitions held since 1966, we mention On the street, Color photographs, 1963-1973 (Chicago Art Institute, 1994-95), and Aftermath: inside the forbidden city (travelling exhibition since 2003).
Lorenzo Braca (born 1977) is an Italian historian and photographer who has published widely on the literature, the mentality, and the imagination of the late Middle Ages. He is working for the Catholic University of Milan. As a photographer, his work is oriented towards the urban environment, its evolution, and the overlooked signs of human presence.
