© Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY 2009
FULL 4-DAY MASTER CLASS WORKSHOP
JOEL MEYEROWITZ: The Search For Artistic Identity
This is your chance to study with one of today’s most respected and accomplished photographers. The Joel Meyerowitz Master Class Workshop will be divided into the two ways of seeing that are at the heart of most photographic activity; walking the streets anywhere in the world and being out in nature. You will spend four days shooting with Joel on the local streets and out in nearby wilderness. You will have an opportunity to better understand how instinct, on the street, plays a role in defining who you are, as a person and as an artist; the same is true of the way we experience ourselves in nature and why we feel compelled to make photographs about its mystery and magnitude.
Your search for your identity as artists will be an important aspect of this workshop. Since the question about what to photograph, and how to make it distinctly your own is of prime importance to anyone carrying a camera, the workshop will start from these points of view.
Each of you is capable of making a work of art.
Day 1- Street Shoot
The class will begin with a review of work and discussion (please bring up to 10 prints for review). After that the group will go out on the streets where Joel will demonstrate how to be present and yet “invisible” while photographing in a public space. He will work with the class in small groups as well as individually.
Day 2- Landscape Shoot
The morning will be a review of work from the previous day and then the group will go out into nature to work, again with both group and individual instruction.
Day 3- Review, Editing Tips and Free Shoot
The morning will be spent reviewing work and discussing editing methods. The rest of the day will be free for shooting.
Day 4- Final Day – Free Shoot and Final Review
TBD-Morning to shoot and afternoon to review all work and present individual slide shows. Final discussion.
BIOGRAPHY
Joel Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. He was born in New York in 1938. He began photographing in 1962. He is a “street photographer” in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, although he works exclusively in color. As an early advocate of color photography (mid-60’s), Meyerowitz was instrumental in changing the attitude toward the use of color photography from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. His first book, Cape Light, is considered a classic work of color photography and has sold more than 100,000 copies during its 25-year life. He is the author of 17 other books, including the newly released book by Aperture, Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks.
In 1998 he produced and directed his first film, POP, an intimate diary of a three-week road trip he made with his son, Sasha, and his father, Hy. This odyssey has as its central character an unpredictable, street-wise and witty 87 year-old with a failing memory. It is both an open-eyed look at aging and a meditation on the significance of memory.
Within a few days of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Meyerowitz began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero and the immediate neighborhood. The World Trade Center Archive consists of over 8,000 images, and was created with the sponsorship of the Museum of the City of New York, to whom a set of digital files was donated for their archives and for exhibition. The Archive is an historic, photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and the neighborhood as it evolved. The U.S. Department of State mounted 35 exhibitions of this work and they were shown around the globe from their inauguration by Colin Powell in Spring 2002 until 2005. Over 4 million people have seen these shows from Jerusalem to Islamabad, Rome, Paris, London, Kuwait, Moscow, Istanbul, and 200 other cities.
In addition to the traveling shows, Meyerowitz was invited to represent the United States at the 8th Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2002 with his photographs from the World Trade Center Archives. In September 2002, he exhibited 73 images – some as large as 22 feet – in lower Manhattan. The show that was exhibited in Venice is currently touring the United States.
Meyerowitz created a traveling exhibition of 117 vintage and modern prints entitled “Out of the Ordinary 1970-1980,” which premiered in 2006 at the Jeu de paume in Paris, France. It has traveled throughout Europe and been shown widely including at the Museum der Modern in Salzburg, Austria, Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Musee de la Photographie in Charloi, Belgium. A retrospective book spanning Meyerowitz’s entire 45-year career will be published by Phaidon Press in Spring 2011 with an accompanying exhibition.
Most recently, Meyerowitz completed the ambitious project of documenting and creating an archive of New York City’s 29,000 acres of parkland. It is the first long term visual documentation of NYC parks since the 1930’s when they were photographed as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA program. Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, invited Meyerowitz to produce a comprehensive database for future use by the Parks department and to share these images of the parks with communities in all 5 boroughs. Aperture has published the book, Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City and a museum exhibition is on view at the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan until March 2010.
Meyerowitz is a two time Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of both the NEA and NEH awards, as well as a recipient of the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Art and many others.
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