The late great Robert Frank inspired Joel Meyerowitz. One day while watching him work on a brochure in his office, Meyerowitz quit his job in NYC as an art director and dedicated his life to being a photographer. If you are lucky enough to be in NYC, you can still walk by Robert Frank's studio on Bleecker Street and glimpse a few photographs pinned to the wall above the closed curtain. I was lucky enough to meet Robert sitting outside his studio one summer day in a lawn chair on the sidewalk, and like Meyerowitz, he will always remain a personal inspiration of mine as well. Meyerowitz is one of the great American photographers who has a talent for capturing the world around him on film and offering us a way into exploring the different landscapes of people’s lives. His early photography from the 1960s and 70s in the USA, during the Vietnam War, is some of my favorites. Color and black-and-white images of the country and its people going through a time of constant anxiety while also living their day-to-day lives. Images of motorcycles on street corners, backyard weddings, milkshakes at drive-ins, Floridians in bikinis, and images of the Bible Belt, New Yorkers playing on the beach, Texans shopping for guns, and young folks hanging out in Atlanta, to name a few. There is an ease to which he has with the camera, from being able to capture the joy of a mother holding her newborn baby in a grocery store in LA to the humor of a man with a large exposed belly in blue shorts standing under a blimp in the sky. I find Meyerowitz has a unique and genuine eye, and I am always overjoyed to come across one of his photographs.
-Jen Fisher