"On knowing when and where..." by Joel Meyerowitz

Having the pleasure know and work with Joel Meyerowitz during my years at Time-Life and since has been inspirational. Joel's fame is much deserved and derived from his sensitivity to the world around him, his unique perspective, his passion for life and his ever present openness. I am truly honored to call Joel my friend. You can personally experience Joel's work in museums and exhibitions around the world.

Joel Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. He was born in New York in 1938. He began photographing in 1962. He is a “street photographer” in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, although he works exclusively in color. As an early advocate of color photography (mid-60’s), Meyerowitz was instrumental in changing the attitude toward the use of color photography from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. His first book, Cape Light, is considered a classic work of color photography and has sold more than 100,000 copies during its 25-year life. He is the author of 15 other books, including Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive, Bystander: The History of Street Photography, and Tuscany: Inside the Light. Click here for Joel's complete biography.

1966 Malaga, Spain, copyright Joel Meyerowitz

I'm often asked how I know when and what to shoot. You feel it out. It's like walking on ice. You have to feel your way and use your intuition.

For me, I know when I'm there. Simple human terms are the motivation and the response. It's like conversation. When you go to a party and you talk to somebody, you may at first stand at a social distance, or, if there's some opening from that person, and you feel connected, you may get slightly closer and speak in a more intimate way. Or if you dance with someone, you may dance close or you may dance at a social distance. You feel it out. That's what it's like when I'm photographing, I move in and out as I get called into what's happening and I try and find the right relationship to it, of course this is all happening in an instantaneous way. After all the camera has a thousandth of a second on it which means we can react and relate in those minute fragments of time. One learns to live in those here and now and then vanished moments.

It's all about seeing the things only YOU can see. After all you see everything every day, and most of it seems boring, right? But then, every once in a while you see something and it makes you have a little 'gasp', isn't that so? Just a little intake of your breath when you are startled by that small thing, or that brief moment when something in the world says, "look at me, pay attention to ME!" Well, that's it! That's when you take the picture and when you have done that for a while you will have lots of picture that will look only like pictures that you can see, and not like anyone else's pictures. And that's the secret. there are no rules to follow, there is only your 'instinct'.

Wherever I go, the camera is on my shoulder, and it's been like that for more than forty years. I am just there trying to be present and conscious. And at some given moment I sense that I've walked into a zone of energy that awakens me. I suddenly lose my forward momentum. There's no reason to go forward. It's not something I eyeball. It's not a bunch of red flowers, or an obvious object, it's some thing that's giving off energy. It's a force field that I enter and in it there are relationships that come together in a way that strikes me as meaningful .

Sometimes for example, when you walk on the streets of New York, and you walk under construction scaffolding, you step out of the daylight and into the shadow, and as you pass that place where the door leads into the site you smell the presence of wet concrete, of acetylene torches, and the dust of construction. It's a very palpable, powerful smell. You step under the scaffolding and there's nothing; you hit the door and there's a smell of everything; and then you take one more step and there's nothing again. You've left the zone. All that's happened is that a current of air has rushed across the path that you're on. Photography is like that; a sliver of sensation that becomes visible in some way and then is gone, but when you were in it it was total.

I don't mean to be mystical, but when I hit that space I say, "Whoa, something is here. What's here?" The first thing that's there is me. I take the opportunity to see what it is that's defining me. And every time I do that I make a picture that has some special meaning to me. When I look at them afterwords, I know I was in the right place and the right time. I use that beat to allow it to come into being, to stop myself from pushing through it. Because the easiest thing is to be blind, and to keep right on rolling until you get to someplace that's a familiar, observable reality. But this is not only about an observable reality; it's a sensory reality. I trust that now, more than any other form of approach.

My central premise as an artist is to connect to my own feelings, and by so doing, when I'm really close to them, I may be able to make something that transports people back to the experience through the openness of the photograph. That's what I do, I try and disappear and let the image do the work of transmitting the experience. I've come to understand this over 40+ years of shooting, that the heart of my work is conveying what I felt while I was briefly awakened by the moment. These 'glimpses' of reality are powerful calls to consciousness.

-- Joel Meyerowitz

Click here to be magically transported to Joel's website. Joel also maintains an online store where you can purchase his works and books. Definitely a must see and a "must collect".