The NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is exhibiting many recently acquired photographs by Joel Meyerowitz that address the question of time on different levels of interpretation.
Since 1962, Joel Meyerowitz has captured life in motion chronologically and thematically in his photographic process. This is what the exhibition at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, curated by Bonnie Clearwater, director and curator of the museum, and Ariella Wolens, curator of Bryant-Taylor, brings to light once again.
In his sixty-year career, this 86-year-old Bronx native, now living in London, has managed to capture "time and space in a thousandth of a second, while keeping them within an unchanging frame." While he is responsible for countless scenes of American life, he is also the only photographer to have gained access to Ground Zero immediately after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
In 2024, the Florida institution acquired more than 1,800 works from the archives of this icon of color photography. It thus invites the viewer to journey through the progressive changes in his visual language that constitutes "the present".
Timeline
The "Temporal Aspects" exhibition draws on the reflections of the 1964 group exhibition "The Photographer's Eye," organized by John Szarkowski, director of photography at MoMA in New York. It was the first presentation of the work of Joel Meyerowitz, then 25 years old, which was included in the "Time Exposure" section.
Among the other photographers were his mentors Henri Cartier-Bresson, father of the "decisive moment," and Robert Frank, the instigator of photographic narrative, who inspired him to pursue this profession. The analysis explored the question of the temporal field.
"According to Szarkowski, the time of a photograph is always the present."the curators explain, adding: "Unique in the history of photography, this image only describes the era in which it was taken. Photography only alludes to the past and the future insofar as they exist in the present: the past through its surviving relics, the future through a prophecy visible in the present."
Duration of a photograph
Viewers can thus (re)discover "the complete and visceral descriptions in her color photographs and the graphic and human subtleties in her black and white prints." The curators also invite viewers to explore the lifespan of a final image print and how colors evolve over time.
The duo takes this reflection further by exploring a photographer's studio practice through prints bearing Joel Meyerowitz's personal annotations. This approach is complemented by a presentation of multiple prints of the same image, allowing the viewer to follow the progression of his work towards the final result.
All these works acquired by the Florida museum show how this great street, portrait and landscape photographer continues to intensify his ability to compose and decompose the time of this eternal "decisive moment".
“Joel Meyerowitz: Temporal Aspects”
NSU Art Museum
One East Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale (United States)
Until August 17, 2025
