London and New York-based street photographer Joel Meyerowtiz sits down with Monocle’s photography director, Matthew Beaman, to discuss quitting his job after working with Robert Frank, finding “decisive moments”, how smartphones changed the world, his love of Leica and large-format cameras and how time has affected his photographs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you think about what photography is recording, it's recording a fragmentary sensation that you intuit as being potential.
All these things are vague, you know, fragmentary potential, intuition.
They're not substantial, but they're essential.
They are what define you as the being you are and the artist you are.
So if you're looking to be a photographic artist, then you're going to be searching for your identity on the street.
You're not looking for pictures, you're looking for what is it that makes me go?
Because that is inspiration, right?
You intake your breath, which means your system, your sensory being has been shocked by something in front of you that manifests itself out of the chaos of everyday reality.
You're looking for these moments of transformation.
This week's guest is Joel Meyerowitz, the pioneering photographer who first took to shooting the Streets of New York in 1962 and went on to change the attitudes of the art world towards color photography when black and white was considered the only respectable medium.
Inspired by the likes of Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand to wander in search of decisive moments, Meyerowitz has gone on to become one of the most authoritative names in the history of street photography.
He is co author of Bystander, the standard work in the genre and beyond.
The Streets has produced classics in portrait and landscape photography like Redheads and Cape Light.
His peerless reputation made him the only photographer given unimpeded access to photograph ground zero in the immediate aftermath of 9, 11.
60 books and 350 exhibitions later, Meyerowitz is about to present a major retrospective in Spain of early and unseen works shot on his travels around Europe between 1966 and 1967.
I'm Matthew Beaman, Monocle's photography director and I spoke to Joel Meyerowitz on the Big Interview.
Joel Marowitz, welcome to the Big Interview.
Thank you.
Before we get stuck into your new exhibition, I'd like to talk about your experiences growing up in New York a bit and what prompted you to pick up a camera in the first place.
I know you had a background as an art director, so was there something that happened during your time as an art director which inspired you to.