Press Release

Berlin, November 10, 2017

Joel Meyerowitz
Why Color? Retrospective

C/O Berlin is presenting the exhibition Joel Meyerowitz . Why Color? Retrospective
from December 09, 2017 to March 11, 2018. The opening will be on Friday, December
08, 2017, at 07:00 pm at Amerika Haus in the Hardenbergstrasse 2224, 10623 Berlin.

Take it in absorb it. Joel Meyerowitz

Skyscrapers, Fifth Avenue, steam rising from manhole covers, beauty salons, billboards,
diners It is 1963; a group of four young women stand outside a store. They are putting make
up on, either looking into the camera or coyly averting their gaze, and appear satisfied. Their
clothes are brilliantly colored, their pumps white, their backcombed hair immaculate. What
would this picture be without color? It would almost certainly be impossible to discern the in-
tense contrasts, the nuances, and the tiny details that make the image, such as how their hair-
pins glitter. In black-and-white, this picture would probably lose a good deal of its charm, and
might even appear mundane.

New York, 1965: A man carrying a poodle or a couple locking lips outside a cinema in busy
Times Square. The use of black-and-white strengthens the graphic structure of how the sub-
ject is presented, transforming the photograph into an image.

Time and again, the New York photographer Joel Meyerowitz manages to fish surprising and
sometimes peculiar fleeting moments from the stream of everyday happenings. His precise
use of color enables him to bring their very individual vividness and pictorial intensity to the
fore. His gaze is steered by chance and by his eye for the extraordinary in the everyday. He
leads us through the streets, cities, and urban landscapes of America. Starting in 1962 Meye-
rowitz began experimenting with using color photography first and added black-and-white
photography to his work just shortly afterwards. He uses color photographys special qualities
to enhance specific parts of the image with vibrant, colorful nuances. Yet Meyerowitz views
color as more than simply a means of expression: It lends shape to the world around him, hel-
ping him to understand and connect with that world in all its possible shades. He nevertheless
makes deliberate use of black and white in order to highlight contrasts between elements of
the image, be they artistic or graphic.

Photography was born under an overcast sky; for a long time, the dictum of artistic photogra-
phy and photojournalism remained staunchly black-and-white. The first workable diapositive
film came onto the market as early as 1935, and yet, even into the 1980s, color photography
remained confined to the world of advertising, unable to shed its vulgar, amateur, and com-
mercial image. Today, color photography has its undisputed place in the history of art. With his
work spanning more than five decades, Joel Meyerowitz has not only made a core contributi-
on to this paradigmatic shift: He has also left a visible impact on many younger generations.

 /O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
Press Release
Berlin, October 10, 2017

Alongside Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz was quick to recognize the
unmistakable power of color and its unique pictorial quality. He was trained in classical pain-
ting and designed graphics for advertisements before his first meeting with Robert Frank in
1962 left him with a Pentax camera in his hand. From then on, he never stopped taking photo-
graphs. Equipped with money earned from an advertising campaign Meyerowitz bought
himself a Volvo in 1966 and for the next twelve months drove across the whole of Europe. Du-
ring that year abroad he shot over 600 rolls of film almost equally divided between color and
black and white as he traveled through England, France, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece,
Hungary, Morocco, and what is striking is that within a few years after his return he began wor-
king exclusively in color. This was not just a break with the convention of the times: It establis-
hed photography and, more specifically, color photography, in the artistic canon. This period
was also marked by some of his best-known works, which to this day make him one of the
most influential pioneers of New Color Photography. It was during this chapter in Meyerowitzs
career, at the very latest, that his different working methods and the decisive impact of photo-
graphic images taken with a small-format camera versus a plate camera on a heavy tripod be-
came apparent. His work as a street photographer is as equally shaped by life on the streets
as it is by early color photography. From the mid-1970s onward, he created precisely compo-
sed studies in light on Cape Cod on the East Coast. A master of color photography, he skillfully
captured the subtleties of the early morning and the last light before nightfall, when lurid neon
signs shine bright against the night sky. These unusual lighting conditions captured in the tran-
sition from day to night create an unmistakable tension and a new element that would define
Meyerowitzs style. Even today, his pictures of 1960s and 1970s New York and his Cape Cod
light studies beginning in 1976 are regarded as icons of contemporary photography.

C/O Berlin is the first and only German institution to present the exhibition Joel Meyerowitz
Why Color? Retrospective, which is primarily focused on the New York photographers vin-
tage color prints from the 1960s to the present day. It is the first show, which places those co-
lor photographs in relation to developments in Meyerowitzs early black-and-white works. The
exhibition will be accompanied by a new retrospective book Where I Find Myself published by
Laurence King Publishing and Elephant Magazine.

Joel Meyerowitz was born in New York in 1938 and grew up in the Bronx. He graduated with
a degree in painting from Ohio State University in 1959 before working as a commercial gra-
phic designer in New York, where Robert Frank photographed a project of Meyerowitzs de-
sign. In 1962, when he began, his first rolls of film were Kodachrome, and only after the first
year of working in color did he realize that black and white prints enabled him to hold images in
his hands rather seeing them on a screen. He is now considered one of the most influential
founders of Street and New Color Photography. Meyerowitz has received numerous prizes for
his work, including the 2017 Leica Hall of Fame Award in recognition of his lifes work. Count-
less museums and institutions around the globe have shown his photographs in solo and
group exhibitions, including the NRW-Forum in Dsseldorf (2014), the Miami Art Museum
(2011), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2004), the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art (1981), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1980), and the Museum of Modern
Art in New York (1968). His Aftermath series (2001) documented the devastation and reconst-
ruction of the World Trade Center at Ground Zero in New York in the wake of 9/11. Joel Meye-
rowitz lives and works in New York and in Buonconvento, Italy.

 /O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
Press Release
Berlin, November 10, 2017

Accompanying Program
Artist Talk and Book Signing December 10, 2017 . 12:00 noon
Joel Meyerowitz with Christoph Ribbat
Professor of American Studies . Universitt Paderborn

Christoph Ribbat is Professor for American Studies at Universitt Paderborn. His publications
include: Flickering Light: A History of Neon (Reaktion, 2013) and In the Restaurant: Society in
Four Courses (Pushkin, 2017). He lives in Berlin.

Location C/O Berlin . Amerika Haus

Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

Talk in English
Tickets available at C/O Berlin and www.co-berlin.org

 /O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
Press Release
Berlin, November 10, 2017

Joel Meyerowitz
Why Color? Retrospective

Exhibition December 09, 2017 March 11, 2018

Opening December 08, 2017 . 07:00 pm
Press Tour December 08, 2017 . 11:00 am

Artist Talk and Book Signing December 09, 2017 . 12 noon

Joel Meyerowitz with Christoph Ribbat
Professor of American Studies . Universitt Paderborn
Tickets available at C/O Berlin and www.co-berlin.org

Opening Hours daily . 11:00 am08:00 pm

Admission 10 Euro . reduced 6 Euro

Location C/O Berlin . Amerika Haus

Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

Organizer C/O Berlin Foundation

www.co-berlin.org

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Press Contact Trang Vu Thuy

T +49.30.284 44 16 41 . vuthuy@co-berlin.org

Media partners

 /O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 2224 . 10623 Berlin

C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org