TPG Golden Editions #9: Joel Meyerowitz
© Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Smithtown, Long Island, 1968
8 x 10 inches
HP Archival Pigment Print
Edition of 25 + [1 Artist's Proof]
From £1,500 + VAT, unframed
The ninth release in TPG’s 50th Anniversary Golden Editions series is this gloriously nostalgic image by renowned American photographer Joel Meyerowitz (b. New York, 1938).
The photograph of the cheerleaders at the Milk bar was made in Smithtown, Long Island, and was a ‘pure chance’ image. I was driving on the back road where the Milk Stand was when I saw them on the porch of the and immediately pulled over, jumped out, and made a few exposures from across the road. In just a few moments they picked up their shakes and sodas, etc. and went their separate ways. Like so many moments in photography; things are always in the process of disappearing, and only the camera can hold on to these brief and surprising visions.
Joel Meyerowitz
The image is featured in the reissue of Meyerowitz’s classic 1983 book Wild Flowers (Third Edition, 2021), published by Damiani. Spanning street photography, portraits, still life, landscapes, cityscapes and more, Wild Flowers brings together photographs from Meyerowitz’s entire career, from his use of colour photography beginning in 1962 to 2020, all of which are floral in varying ways.
Born in the Bronx in 1938, Meyerowitz believes it was that basic “street” education that nurtured his delight in human observation, a perception that is at the heart of his photography. After studying art, art history, and medical illustration at Ohio State University, he worked as an art director in advertising in the early 60’s.
In 1962, Robert Frank made photographs for a booklet Meyerowitz designed, and it was while watching Frank work that he discovered that photographs could be made while both the photographer and the subject were in motion. The power of this observation made Meyerowitz quit his job immediately, borrow a camera, and go out onto the streets of New York. Meyerowitz began by using color film, unaware of the consensus that black and white was the ‘art’ of photography. As an early advocate, he became instrumental in changing the attitude toward color photography from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance
Biography
Joel Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer, whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. Celebrated as a pioneer of colour photography, he is a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of both the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for The Humanities Awards, as well as a recipient of The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal.
Over the course of his prolific career, Meyerowitz has published a wide number of acclaimed books, including Photographs From a Moving Car (a one person show at MoMA in 1968), his Guggenheim Fellowship project, Still Going: America During Vietnam, his work with the large format, 8x10 view camera which resulted in such diverse books as Cape Light (1978), St. Louis and The Arch (1980), A Summer’s Day (1985), Redheads (1991), Bay/Sky (1993), Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2006) and many others.
Meyerowitz was the only photographer to gain unrestricted access to Ground Zero after 9/11, which produced a body of work that led Meyerowitz to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2002. His work is in the collections of Tate Modern; MoMA; THe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Centre Pompidou and many others worldwide. Meyerowitz lives and works in New York and in Italy.