Field photographs

Another American colour photography pioneer, Joel Meyerowitz worked in a completely different style from the late Pete Turner – capturing the moment rather than celebrating the colour dynamics:

“If we accept the idea that a photograph basically just describes things, then a color photograph describes more things, that there is more content in color and I wanted to see what those kinds of photographs might look like…

“Because of using colour my efforts on the street moved away from the ‘caught’ moment toward a more dispersed observation, toward an image in which everything played an equal role; the people on the street, the architecture, the quality of the day, the angle of the light, the weight of the shadows, the simultaneity of minor events…

“This overall-ness I called, ‘field photographs’. I meant them to be about the ‘experience’ of being on the street, in that specific city, on that day, in that precise season and year, so that viewers might experience for themselves what it felt like in that moment.”

New York City 1963