I have a confession: most of Joel Meyerowitz’s work isn’t very appealing to me. That’s completely different from saying that the man hasn’t made great images. He surely has made wonderful photographs that continue to captivate photographers today. However, I think he’s probably one of the single greatest indirect photography teachers today. Make no mistake, Joel Meyerowitz: A Question of Color doesn’t have any of his greatest images; but it contains his greatest teachings ever. In fact, I think even advanced photographers will rediscover something in his words.
The book starts with him talking about how he first got into photography, the people he rubbed shoulders with, and lots of the things he learned. Joel came up at a time when color photography wasn’t really taken seriously. However, the book explores his journey of how he more or less overcame an identity crisis and convinced people to give him a chance to prove himself. This, perhaps more than anything else, is important for photographers.
In school, they teach you all about how to be a great artist and photojournalist — but they never arm you with the people skills that you need. At least, it often seems like that. Lots of the best photographers on social media don’t have the best people skills and are often introverted folks. While it’s wonderful that they’re authentically themselves, I don’t consider them to be photographers more so than content creators. Much of real photography is done in-person and with invoices and contracts attached to the gigs you’re doing. Otherwise, you’d be on staff somewhere.
Folks need to understand this before diving deeper into Joel’s book. Ibarionex Perello is a working staff photographer who also does a popular podcast, the Candid Frame. Additionally, he’s a Fujifilm ambassador. By all means, on taxes, he’d state that he’s a photographer, podcaster, or blogger. That’s different from Jared Polin, who makes his living from Youtube and selling tutorials.
Joel Meyerowitz is completely different from all of them — he takes contracts, and these days, he makes money from print sales, book sales, licensing, etc. On taxes, Joel would say he’s a working photographer, and no one would doubt him.
A working photographer has a lot to offer the current generation of shooters, and Joel Meyerowitz: A Question of Color does more than traverse his photographic identity crisis. There are very important nuggets of knowledge that he dishes out.
The Most Important Less from Joel Meyerowitz
Perhaps one of the best things Joel talks about is the difference between projecting images on a wall vs the print. Modern marketing likes to say that still photos aren’t engaging — and that’s only because of how algorithms work on social media posts. Social media is a completely different platform, though — it’s so entrancing because it activates three senses: touch, sight, and sound. A person needs to use their finger to tap and interact while listening to something and while looking at it. It’s often overstimulation. Take a person to a movie theater, and they might fall asleep because sight and sound are all that’s stimulated. Joel found similar things to be the case. When all he did was project his images on a wall for an audience, they didn’t really care. But when he printed them out and put them in front of people, they were much more stimulated by them. That’s because he was stimulating the touch and sight senses.
This, essentially, is where the hidden superpower of photography lies. However, we’ve largely forgotten it because we’re printing less and spending more time on social media. It gave me multiple ideas:
Photo galleries should have more books and encourage people to actively go through them. But they should also consider burning incense to set a mood.
Photo books could come with an audio portion where people will stare at the images, listen to the photographers talk about the images, and touch the pages.
These are surely ways to engage more people with your images; but we also don’t need to overstimulate people and similarly drain them to what social media does. This, in effect, begs the answer to a question. Are we overstimulating people too much? Is that what we have to do to keep the still photograph relevant? Or do we need to serve as a relaxing escape from the normal drains of social media?
To recap, Joel’s book doesn’t contain his best images — that means that you really need to read the stories to find major value in this book besides the difference between scenes in black and white or color. However, it does a great job of trying not to split them all right down the middle. When it happens, though, it’s done so in a very annoying way.
The book tackles his evolution as a photographer and the innovative ways he thought of at the time. Because of this, I wouldn’t really consider this a photo book. Instead, it’s an educational book documenting the journey of a photographer struggling with an identity crisis, evolving, and learning to stand on his own. Without Joel, modern photography wouldn’t be what it is today.
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Rating: 5 out of 5.
Joel Meyerowitz: a Question of Color is an important book that every photographer should pick up because it will help them with their own identities. Reading about how Joel evolved will surely make you think about yourself, where you are right now, where you started from, and whether or not you’re being authentic to yourself.
We’re giving this book five out of five stars. It’s for any photographer who’s struggling to understand their identity in a world where social media seems to be dominant. You can pick it up at Amazon.
Joel Meyerowitz Delivers The Greatest Advice for the Modern PhotographerJoel Meyerowitz: a Question of Color is an important book that every photographer should pick up because it will help them with their own identities. Reading about how Joel evolved will surely make you think about yourself, where you are right now, where you started from, and whether or not you’re being authentic to yourself.
