Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Says Smartphones Are a Good Thing, Not So Keen on AI
Legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz sees the ubiquity of camera phones as a good thing, telling the AFP that it gives everyone the “means of expression.”
Meyerowitz was speaking at the Sony World Photography Awards last night where he was being honored with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award.
“Nowadays… there are billions of people every day making photographs and there’s a culture of imagery that is teaching people values about photography, about humanity, about dignity,” he tells AFP.
Meyerowitz’s embrace of smartphones is significant because he was an early advocate for serious color photography at a time when most photographers shot exclusively in black and white. The Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) notes that Meyerowitz was instrumental in helping establish color photography as a form of fine art. The 88-year-old photographer says it never occurred to him to use black and white.
“It’s thrilling to be recognized,” Meyerowitz tells the French news agency. “When I began, it wasn’t about a future in which I might win an award. It was about just doing the work… so I’m grateful.”
“The energy of life in the street, the way people carried themselves, the interactions between people, instantaneous events happening and disappearing — photography is about that,” he adds.
While Meyerowitz is famous for his street photography, he is also well-known for covering the September 11, 2001 attacks extensively at Ground Zero.
The great photographer’s embrace of new technologies stops short at artificial intelligence. “You might say (it’s) lensless photography,” he tells AFP. “We’ll know in the future what this means right now. I’ve chosen not to use it.”
The SWPA award isn’t the only honor Meyerowitz has been handed recently: he recently won Leica Picture of the Year for his photograph of four Puerto Rican girls in New York City, 1963.
Meyerowitz’s remarkable photographic career spanning over six decades can be traced back to a very fateful 90 minutes in the early 1960s while the photographer was still working as an art director for a New York advertising agency: watching photographer Robert Frank capture photos with his Leica inspired Meyerowitz so much that he quit his job that very day, grabbed a camera, and dove headfirst into street photography.
Image credits: Sony World Photography Awards.
