This Colourful Joel Meyerowitz Picture Is the Leica Picture of the Year 2025

American photographer Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938) has been an exceptionally influential photographer because the Sixties. He helped coloration pictures earn respect in advantageous artwork circles, and his avenue pictures exudes unmistakable type. One of his most well-known pictures has been named the Leica Picture of the Year 2025.

As a part of Leica’s “100 Years of Leica” celebration, Meyerowitz created a strong motif of 100 of his most interesting photographs. In this retrospective, The Joy of Seeing, Meyerowitz included the {photograph}, “Puerto Rican Day Parade, Manhattan, New York 1963,” which is now the Leica Picture of the Year 2025 and will probably be out there completely at Leica Galleries International as a restricted version print.

Meyerowitz is contemporary off being named the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award winner on the Sony World Photography Awards 2026, so it has been a fantastic previous few weeks for the celebrated photographer.

As Leica notes, Meyerowitz’s outstanding photographic profession spanning over six a long time will be traced again to a really fateful 90 minutes within the early Sixties whereas the photographer was nonetheless working as an artwork director for a New York promoting company.

Watching photographer Robert Frank seize pictures together with his Leica impressed Meyerowitz a lot that Meyerowitz give up his job that very day, grabbed a digicam, and dove headfirst into avenue pictures. Leica notes {that a} Leica M2 shortly grew to become Meyerowitz’s most popular device, and he used it to seize New York City’s bustling streets and distinctive model of chaos.

“I used the parades as a way to overcome my shyness. Because the people in the crowd were absorbed by the passing show in the street, I could slip in under their gaze like a plane flying too low to be picked up on radar,” Meyerowitz recollects. “They were about the heat of the moment.”

The Puerto Rican Day Parade that Meyerowitz photographed in 1963 began only a few years prior, in 1959, and has been an annual staple in New York City ever since. Every second Sunday in June, the parade winds by the streets of Manhattan.

For Meyerowitz’s celebrated shot, he did what many nice avenue photographers have completed over time, and blended in, captured a definite second, after which moved on. Meyerowitz describes avenue pictures as a wonderful means of coaching his photographic eye.

“One of the very first things I learned working on the street was that when the moment arrives you simply make a picture of the moment,” Meyerowitz says. Leica provides that his picture of the 4 ladies “speaks volumes about perception and spontaneity, and can still be viewed today as a document of the times.”

The Leica Picture of the Year is on the market now in any respect 27 Leica Galleries worldwide. Meyerowitz, who has been a member of the Leica Hall of Fame since 2016, follows within the footsteps of many greats, together with Ralph Gibson, Thomas Hooper, Elliott Erwitt, and Herlinde Koelbl. The restricted version print is made on Canson Infinity Satin 260 g/m² paper and the picture itself is 10 x 15 inches on 15.75 x 19.69-inch paper. The print features a signature label, version quantity, and a certificates of authenticity. The print is €1,250, or about $1,455 at present alternate charges.

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Image credit: © Joel Meyerowitz