ence. In color work, he was able to discard narrative
subject matter and emphasize the formal qualities of
the photograph in regard to light and its emotive
qualities. These characteristics were essential to the
aesthetic development of color photography as it
emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In the mid-1970s, Meyerowitz received acclaim
for his earliest color series taken during summers
spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when he
began photographing the seascape of Cape Cod.
Instead of shooting with a 35-mm camera for this
series, he used an antique 810-inch Deardorff
view camera, which enabled him to create large
negatives that yielded nearly grainless images with
clarity and detail. Meyerowitz expressed a sensitiv-
ity to the mood of a scene by capturing various
atmospheric conditions, light effects, and the chan-
ging quality of color throughout various times of
the day and into dusk. The most notable images
from this period include a series of photographs
taken on the porch of his summer home. As in
the workPorch, Provincetown, 1978, Meyerowitz
carefully observed the light as it fell upon the archi-
tectural elements that framed an open expanse of
sea in the distance. The photographs were included
in the bookCape Light, a publication that even-
tually became a classic work of color photography.
Works from the Cape Cod series led to subsequent
color work and publications. He produced photo-
graphs of St. Louis in 1977 for a project commis-
sioned by the Saint Louis Art Museum. While on
four extended trips to the city during different sea-
sons of the year, Meyerowitz made over 400 nega-
tives. The St. Louis Arch became a significant,
recurring element throughout this series in terms of
its scale, its role in relation to the city, and its con-
stancy throughout a variety of weather conditions
and changes of season. Briefly, Meyerowitz turned
his attention away from the land to the individual
and embarked on a new series of portraits of red-
heads while vacationing at his summer home in Cape
Cod; they appeared in his 1990 bookRedheads.
In the last two decades of the century, Meyerowitz
photographed the Manhattan skyline. After spend-
ing his summers in Cape Cod, he would return each
fall to the city, and, beginning in 1981, he regularly
shot from his twelfth-floor studio on West 19th
Street. With 50 feet of windows and a clear view
looking south, he observed the play of light as
storms and weather systems passed over lower Man-
hattan. He became captivated by the skyline of New
York City—he noted:
I thought I was being called by the scale of the city seen
against the sky, but, of course, what really excited mewas the towers of the World Trade Center on the hor-
izon. The towers were by turns hard-edged and glinting,
like the Manhattan schist they stood on, or papery, or
brooding and wet, smothered in tropical cloud banks
carried up by the sea. Some days they were pewter, or
gilded, or incandescent...
This body of work, which he amassed without
exhibiting, was originally conceived as an urban
landscape series. He made what turned out to be a
final photograph just days before the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center were destroyed by Islamic
terrorists on September 11, 2001, and the entire series
of images immediately took on new significance.
Meyerowitz was away from New York during
the attacks. Returning to find that photography of
the site, which quickly came to be called Ground
Zero, was prohibited, he was determined to gain
access to record history and create an archive for
the city of New York. He stated, ‘‘My task is to
make a photographic record of the aftermath: the
awesome spectacle of destruction; the reverence for
the dead; the steadfast, painstaking effort of recov-
ery; the life of those whose act of salvation has
embedded itself deeply into the consciousness of
all of us in America and around the world.’’ He
was granted access through his alliance with the
Museum of the City of New York (the only photo-
grapher allowed complete access to the site), and
the museum selected photographs from this series
for inclusion inAfter September 11: Images from
Ground Zero, a special exhibition that has traveled
worldwide since 2002.
Meyerowitz is the author of numerous books,
including the well-regarded historyBystander, The
History of Street Photography, co-authored with
Colin Westerbeck. He has had one-man exhibitions
at the Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of
Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
and Boston Museum of Fine Art, and has work in
museums and private collections in the United
States and abroad. He has recently produced and
directed his first film,POP, an intimate diary of a
three-week trip he made with his son Sasha and his
father Hy, who has Alzheimer’s Disease.
NancyBarr
Seealso:Frank, Robert; Street Photography; Wino-
grand, GarryBiography
Born in New York City in 1938. Studied painting and medical
drawing at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1956–
1959, receiving a B.F.A in 1959. Self-taught in photogra-
phy. Worked as an advertising art director, New York,
1959–1963. Independent photographer, New York, sinceMEYEROWITZ, JOEL