Celebrated Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Receives Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award

The World Photography Organization and the Sony World Photography Awards have introduced that acclaimed photographer Joel Meyerowitz will obtain the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award on the Sony World Photography Awards 2026.

Born in New York City in 1938, Meyerowitz studied portray and medical drawing at Ohio State University earlier than beginning his profession as an promoting artwork director. Inspired by watching photographer Robert Frank shoot an promoting marketing campaign for him in 1962, Meyerowitz give up his job and commenced taking footage, heading out into the streets with a borrowed digital camera and a few rolls of coloration movie. This proved to be a fateful resolution, propelling Meyerowitz towards an extended, distinctive profession in pictures.

Over the years, Meyerowitz’s work has been featured in over 350 exhibitions at famend museums and galleries worldwide, and his images have been revealed in practically 60 monographs.

“I am honored to be selected as this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient,” Meyerowitz says. “The photographs I have made over the years show the world as I see it, and the moments of beauty, humor and fun that can be found everywhere, if we take the opportunity to look. I hope this exhibition will encourage visitors to look again at their surroundings and engage with all of the life that unfolds around them.”

Meyerowitz’s work, which spans each coloration and black-and-white pictures, is widely known for its depth, masterful framing, and pointed storytelling. From fast-paced road pictures to huge seascapes, his topics are numerous and wide-ranging. Among Meyerowitz’s strongest works is his sequence documenting work at Ground Zero following the 9/11 terrorist assaults. In current years, his self-portraits have additionally earned acclaim.

The photographer was among the many first to totally embrace coloration pictures, serving to convey the medium extra consideration and acceptance within the broader photographic house. The Sony World Photography Awards notes that Meyerowitz was instrumental in serving to set up coloration pictures as a type of nice artwork.

As a part of Meyerowitz’s award, a particular retrospective of his work will probably be proven on the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 exhibition at Somerset House in London. The exhibition will function Meyerowitz’s pictures alongside the video and audio installations created in collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Chris Ryan. The exhibition will function Meyerowitz’s very early road pictures via his most up-to-date works.

Joel Meyerowitz joins 18 prior recipients of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, together with, most not too long ago, Sebastião Salgado in 2024 and Susan Meiselas earlier this yr. Other distinguished winners embody Mary Ellen Mark (2014), Martin Parr (2017), Graciela Iturbide (2021), and Edward Burtynsky (2022).

The Sony World Photography Awards 2026 ceremony will happen on April 16, 2026. This is when the general winners of the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 will even be introduced. It is among the many most prestigious pictures competitions on the planet, and the successful pictures are all the time spectacular.

Image credit: Images supplied by Sony World Photography World, © Joel Meyerowitz