Joel Meyerowitz
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How did Joel Meyerowitz first get into street photography in 1960s New York?
Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading creative people choose the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own work. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the photographer John Meyerowitz, a pioneer of the art form. He first began capturing life on the streets of his native New York in the early 1960s and helped to establish colour photography as a fine art medium. After travelling throughout Europe, he made his name with a groundbreaking show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, John Meyerowitz became the only photographer to secure access to Ground Zero and, over several months, captured the scenes of devastation.
His work has been the subject of more than 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. And he's the recipient of many awards, most recently the prestigious Outstanding Contribution Prize at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026. John Meyerowitz, welcome to This Cultural Life.
Oh, I'm so happy to be here.
I notice you have a camera on the desk in front of you. Do you always carry one?
Always. Even if I'm going to the laundromat or the shopping, the camera's on my... You never know if you're going to see something of interest out there.
I mean, we always have a camera now in the form of a phone camera. Has it made us more appreciative of good photography now that photography is ubiquitous, do you think?
Well, that's an interesting question. I think what it's done even before that is it's given everyone, several billion people, an opportunity to make a photograph about anything, their food, their family, their friends. It's expanded the culture of seeing in such a way that I think more people do appreciate photography.
I noticed you said make a photograph there rather than take a photograph. There is a distinction.
For me, there is. I mean, lots of people, most, the majority take pictures of something because it exists and they want to frame it like it looks. But I think serious photographers try to make something happen out of the chaos of ordinary life or whatever they're looking at. Putting things together to work inside a frame is different than just centering an object and hitting the bullseye. And so making is what I think is the art of photography.
Well, we're going to be exploring how you have been making photographs over more than six decades now. But let's go back to your childhood. You were born in the Bronx, New York City in 1938 into a working class family. What are your earliest memories of family life?
Well, I was the first of three sons from my poor mother. And each of my parents had a large family. My mother came from, I think, nine children, my father from seven. So there wasn't a big extended family. We didn't all live in the same area, but we were within reach of each other in the Bronx and in New Jersey. Tenement life? One long block in the Bronx had 3,500 people on that block. And they were composed mostly of Italian immigrants from the South, Eastern Europeans, Irish, Jews, Germans, Poles. That was the working class substance of the block. And it was an outside life. They were out there playing dominoes and cards that women were shelling peas or tatting. I mean, it was lived outside. And I think it gave me a real foundation for the craziness of humanity.
Do you think it stimulated your visual imagination as well? Were you an artistic child from a young age?
Yeah, my father had gone to the Art Students League, hopefully to be an artist at some point, so he could draw. And so I think I drew as a child. I drew cartoons, you know, read the comic books.
And was your artistic imagination encouraged by parents and school?
Well, it wasn't encouraging the school. My high school was 4,000 students and, you know, roughnecks from the Bronx. We didn't actually get an education. I don't know what it was we got. We managed to get out and everything. But I think, you know, my father's abilities to draw and to understand art and my mother's
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did Joel Meyerowitz first get into street photography in 1960s New York?
0:07–5:51
2
Why does Meyerowitz always carry a camera, even on mundane trips?
5:51–12:45
3
How did his Bronx upbringing shape his visual imagination?
12:45–29:48
4
What role did meeting Robert Frank play in Meyerowitz’s artistic development?
29:48–43:11