Joel, a massive influence to the street photography genre is a 75 year old who
shoots the streets with other greats in this genre such as Gary Winogrand, Tony ray
jones and even stumbled upon Henry Cartier-Bresson at one point in his career.
He is one of the most influential photographers as he was one of the first to use
colour film for most of his work, starting to shoot in the streets of new York he would
carry around with his Leica with Black and white film, with iso 1200 film (which
allowed him to shoot at 1/1000thof a second) this was a very high shutter speed at
the time which gave him a unique style to other photographers of the times.
At times he would carry around two Leicas; One with colour film and the other with
black and white film.
Although meyerowitz didn’t always use film, he also experimented with large 8x10
format camera, the work he did in cape cod helped him gather the publics attention,
in this project he focused on colours and light
Meyerwitz would “just shoot” he once said that some people fall victim “paralysis by
analysis” in which they would lose out too much of the action surrounding them and
miss out very obvious shots.
Joel also liked to document events, such as the terrorist attack in America on
September 11th
Whenever an interviewer asked him why he would shoot using colour film he replied
with “Because it describes more things” and “When
I say description, I don’t only mean mere fact and the
cold accounting of things in the frame. I really
mean the sensation I get from things—their
surface and color—my memory of them in other
conditions as well as their connotative qualities. Color
plays itself out along a richer band of feelings—
more wavelengths, more radiance, more
sensation. I wanted to se more and experience more
feelings from a photograph, and I wanted bigger
images that would describe things more fully, more
cohesively. Slow-speed color film provided that.” –
Meyerowitz