Europe At Pace: Early Street Photography from Joel Meyerowitz 1966-67

“I know that the experience of making photographs in Europe changed me and gave me the perspective I needed …to see America in a different way.”

– Joel Meyerowitz

Escalona household and associates, Málaga, Spain, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz was 28 when he launched into a year-long street journey throughout Europe in 1966. His drive via ten nations and 6 months spent within the southern Spanish metropolis of Malaga gave him a contemporary outlook.

“I know that the experience of making photographs in Europe changed me and gave me the perspective I needed to see myself, and then,” he says, “when I returned home, to see America in a different way.”

Málaga, Spain, 1967

Meyerowitz carried two cameras – one loaded with shade movie, and the opposite, with black and white. He typically took images of the identical topic in shade and black and white. “If description is what photography is really about, then a black and white photograph misses something by removing color,” he says.

Paris, France, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

Greece, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

Meyerowitz took snapshots utilizing a automobile window as his body. When he returned to New York, MoMA hosted his first ever solo exhibition, that includes 40 images taken from the window of his shifting automobile throughout his European street journey. This set of unique prints are included in his present exhibition in Málaga.

‘This {photograph} [above], constituted of a shifting automobile, turned an necessary a part of my manner of seeing whereas driving 20,000 miles via Europe that yr,” he says. “Things seen at 100km an hour are fleeting, and yet are often filled with meaning. It is nearly inexplicable in the moment, but later I would see how telling that moment really was. Here, on a winding country road in Corfu, this vision appeared, so close to me that the flapping of her scarf alerted me to their almost mythic presence.”

Paris, France, 1967

Semana Santa, Málaga, Spain, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

“In a way this was my first conceptual work. I thought of myself as sitting inside a moving camera on wheels, and that the window was the frame which showed me the continuous scrolling of events flying by outside. All those humble instants sped past me and left their heartbreaking beauty on film and in my memory.”

– Joel Meyerowitz

London, England, 1966

“On my first day in London in 1966 – a chilly August day – I was walking along the main streets around Oxford Circus and, just as I turned a corner, this woman with a candy floss hairdo came into view. I reacted just as I would have in New York City, and I immediately knew London would be fun to work and play in.”

– Joel Meyerowitz

Jeu de Paume, Paris, France 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

Ireland 1966

“Ireland, especially its landscape, seemed full of myth and mystery to me, but it was the people who claimed my sharpest attention, often in subtle ways. Here, two young schoolgirls pass under the watchful gaze of a woman who, in that moment, seemed to experience the reverie of her own time, not so long before, when she too was filled with innocence”

The image above of individuals at a Paris cafe is a favourite from the journey. As he says:

“Upon coming to Paris for the first time, I was struck by the nonchalance of the Parisian attitude, and how nothing would stand in their way when it came to sitting in a café for their coffee or glass of wine.”

…

“I look at that picture and it’s an absurdity – there’s no way for them to get away from the table! People are absurd and I think part of the joy of making photographs is that you run across this kind of insanity every single day in one form or another.”

Paris, France, 1967, by Joel Meyerowitz

Rt 31, Bodensee, Germany, 1967

Málaga, Spain, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

Malaga 1966

‘This {photograph} was an actual turning level for me at a time after I was studying find out how to see all around the body on the identical second, reasonably than making the topic the centrepiece of the picture. I used to be making an attempt to deal with all of the complexities of life in a fraction of a second, by sensing the refined connections between every thing.”

Wales, 1966 © Joel Meyerowitz

London, England, 1967 © Joel Meyerowitz

See the exhibition Europa — Brilliant Early Street Photography from Joel Meyerowitz 1966-67 on the Museo Picasso Málaga.