JOEL MEYEROWITZ (*1938)
Porch, Provincetown, from the series 'Bay Sky Porch', 1977
© Joel Meyerowitz / Courtesy Kicken Berlin
Biography
Born in New York City in 1938, Joel Meyerowitz began photographing in 1962 after being inspired by the street photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Eugen Atget, among others. As an early advocate of color photography already in the mid-1960’s, Meyerowitz was instrumental in changing the attitude toward the use of color photography from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. Within a few days of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Meyerowitz began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero and the immediate neighborhood. The World Trade Center Archive consists of over 8,000 images, which were also on view when he represented the United States at the 8th Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2002. Meyerowitz 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 Deutsche Fotobuchpreis. In 2017 he was honored for his lifelong work with a place at the Leica Hall of Fame. He is also the author of numerous award-winning photo books.
