'A Sense of Wonder' Chronicles Six Decades of Joel Meyerowitz's Intimate Street Photography

In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz worked as an art director in New York City and designed a booklet illustrated with photographs by Robert Frank. Watching Frank work transformed Meyerowitz and taught him to value time and instinct as photographic resources. He left his agency, received a Pentax from his boss, bought film, and took his first street photograph in Manhattan, launching his career. A Sense of Wonder surveys his six decades of work and highlights more than ninety images that redefined street photography with pioneering use of color. His photographs emphasize empathetic seeing, capturing fleeting, intimate moments across crowds, quiet mornings, empty pools, and the 2001 World Trade Center devastation.

Working as an art director in New York City in 1962, Joel Meyerowitz was tasked with designing a booklet, the imagery for which was shot by Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank. Knowing very little about photography or the acclaimed documentarian, Meyerowitz's life and career were nevertheless indelibly altered during that collaboration. "When I watched him work, something transformed in me," Meyerowitz says in an interview with SKIRA CEO Catherine Castillon. "I understood that time and instinct were the resources of photography."

Meyerowitz returned to the agency he worked for and announced he'd be leaving to take up photography, even though he didn't yet own a camera. His boss removed a Pentax from his desk drawer and handed it over. After purchasing a couple rolls of film from a local camera store and reading how-to instructions on the spot, Meyerowitz took his first photo from a Manhattan street corner, unwittingly spurring a lifelong career.

The volume highlights more than 90 images that helped redefine street photography through his unique and pioneering "use of color to interpret and fully capture the complexity of the modern world," the publisher says. No matter his subject, from throngs of people on city sidewalks to empty residential streets, Meyerowitz emphasizes the fundamental experience of seeing-empathetically observing and immersing himself in daily life in order to capture fleeting, unique, intimate moments.

Read at Colossal