The Huxley-Parlour exhibit Joel Meyerowitz Dialogues opens on 18 January and continues until March. Dialogues is Joel Meyerowitz’s fourth solo show at the gallery and coincides with a major exhibition of his work at London’s Tate Modern.
This theme is even more profound as Dialogues presents the work in pairs to show the unexpected parallels in Joel’s images. This brings to light the photographer’s fascination with colour.
Joel describes the images on display as “relational”, each one linked by colour, light and composition. The pairing technique is used in both exhibitions to explore the colour of Joel’s photographs and his use of “complex structure, unresolved imagery and non-hierarchical imagery”.
Joel tends to use distinctly American aesthetics in his work. This includes the stars and stripes while mixing them with meditative colours. The photos on display range from 1964 to 2011 and include less-known images as well as some of his most famous pieces.
Huxley Parlour says that Meierowitz, alongside William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, was one of the pioneers in bringing colour photography to the forefront of fine art photography.
Joel’s innovative approach to colour is easy to overlook in a world where anything can be captured and reviewed by a few smartphone screen taps. The gallery explains that, while black and white photography has always been considered a serious medium in the past, colour photography was viewed as a less-than-serious and inferior form of art. It was mainly used for advertising campaigns, TV, and holiday photos.
Meyerowitz’s work showed how the medium could be used to contemplate form, composition and mood.
The Tate Modern in London is currently displaying Joel’s transition from colour to black-and-white during the 1960s. This was the time when Joel began to accept the aesthetics and limitations of colour film. A Question of Color is one of the featured works. Joel used two cameras to shoot nearly the same scene in both colour and black and white.