Joel Meyerowitz Art Photography

 Joel Meyerowitz

@joelmeyerowitz

Jul. 26, 1984: Rick Grossman in pond with suit jacket (4:30pm) clean raking sunlight, hard edge cool shadows from water on face, yellow green sand and lines hazy blue sky, man, pond, suit, trees, sand, surreal, domesticity. I took myself off to Provincetown on Cape Cod so I could summer with my family, and learn how to see in 8x10, in which the image is upside down and reversed, while beginning to learn to use Time in seconds, rather than in 1000th of a second. Well, Cape Cod is not 5th Avenue, but the light out there on that 60-mile-long sandbar in the Atlantic is unlike light on the mainland. Every molecule of moisture refracts light like a prism; while on the mainland there is a particle of dirt in every drop of atmosphere. Once I recognized that, then everything changed. Light, in all its intensity and tone, became my subject. Just as in 35mm, you can only photograph where you are and what you see there.