library worthy of note. The Center also coordinates
the activities ofFotoseptiembre(PhotoSeptember),
the bienniels of photography and photojournalism,
and the publication of the magazine,Luna Co ́rnea.
The health of Mexican photography can be gauged
in the feverish effervescence of the many activities
undertaken in the Centro de la Imagen.
JohnMrazSeealso:Archives;Bravo,ManuelA ́lvarez; Documen-
tary Photography; Modotti, Tina; Photography in
Latin America: An Overview; Photography in South
America; Pictorialism; Portraiture; Propaganda;
Socialist Photography; Weston, Edward
Further Reading
Debroise, Olivier.Fuga mexicana: Me ́xico. Consejo Nacio-
nal para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994. Un recorrido por la
fotografı ́aenMe ́xico.
Garcı ́a, He ́ctor.Escribir con luz. Mexico City: Fondo de
Cultura Econo ́mica, 1985.
Jefes, he ́roes, caudillos: Archivo Casasol. Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Econo ́mica, 1986.
Jime ́nez, Blanca, and Samuel Villela.Los Salmero ́n. Un
siglo de fotografı ́a en Guerrero. Mexico City: INAH,
1998.
Masse ́, Patricia.Simulacro y elegancia en tarjetas de visita.
Fotografı ́as de Cruces y Campa. Mexico City: INAH,
1998.
Meyer, Pedro.Truths and Fictions: A Journey from Docu-
mentary to Digital Photography. New York: Aperture,
1995.
Mraz, John.Nacho Lo ́pez y el fotoperiodismo mexicano
durante los an ̃os cincuenta. Oce ́ano-INAH, 1996.
Mraz, John, ed. Issue onMexican Photography,History of
Photography, 20, no. 4, 1996.
Mraz, John, and Jaime Ve ́lez.Uprooted: Braceros Photo-
graphed by the Hermanos Mayo. Houston: Arte Pu ́ blico
Press, 1996.
Noble, Andrea.Tina Modotti: Image, Texture, Photogra-
phy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2000.
El poder de la imagen y la imagen del poder: Fotografı ́as de
prensa del porfiriato a la e ́poca actual. Chapingo, Mex-
ico: Universidad Auto ́noma Chapingo, 1985.
Ve ́lez, Jaime, et al.El oho de vidrio: Cien an ̃os de fotografı ́a
del Me ́xico indio. Mexico City: Bancomext, 1993.JOEL MEYEROWITZ
American
Originally a street photographer, Joel Meyerowitz
came to prominence as an advocate and pioneer of
color photography in the 1970s. His early style was
characterized by black-and-white urban scenes in the
1960s. Over a decade later, he created color photo-
graphs of seascape, landscape, and cityscape with a
quiet, emotive sensibility. In his introduction to the
Meyerowitz publicationBay/Sky, novelist Norman
Mailer once asked, ‘‘Is there one of his prints that
does not express his ongoing quest for the instant
when nature can reveal itself through mood, light,
mist, seaweed, wind, or the endless vortices of water
in its dialogue with sand?’’
Meyerowitz was born and raised in New York
City in 1938. After high school, he enrolled at Ohio
State University, Columbus, where he studied paint-
ing and medical drawing from 1956–1959. After
graduation from college, he worked as an art direc-
tor in New York City. While on location supervising
a shoot with photographer Robert Frank, Meyero-
witz became inspired by Frank’s quick but focused
working method. He eventually quit his job and
devoted his time to photographing in 1962. Influ-
enced by the tradition of street photography that he
knew from the work of Frank and French pho-
tographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and through a
close working relationship with Garry Winogrand,
he began shooting black-and-white images with a
35-mm Leica camera. For the subject of his photo-
graphs, he chose urban life in New York City during
the 1960s, and he captured the irony and strangeness
he found in the streets.
By the 1970s, Meyerowitz began to shoot color,
and as an early practitioner of the medium, he was
instrumental in changing prevailing attitudes in the
art world toward color photography. Serious fine art
photographers had, for the most part, disregarded
color film and the resulting prints, finding that the
color produced was often exaggerated or unrealistic.
Meyerowitz found that color was critical to the
accurate representation of the visual world and that
color illuminated his own memory of that experi-MEXICO, PHOTOGRAPHY IN