The NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is exhibiting a number of recently acquired photographs by Joel Meyerowitz, which approach the question of time from different perspectives.
Since 1962, Joel Meyerowitz has been capturing life in motion chronologically and thematically in his photographic process. The exhibition at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, curated by Bonnie Clearwater, the museum's director and curator, and Ariella Wolens, Bryant-Taylor's curator, brings this to light.
In a career spanning sixty years, this 86-year-old Bronx native, now based in London, has captured "time and space in a thousandth of a second, while keeping them in an immutable frame". While he is credited with a myriad of 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 Floridian institution acquired over 1,800 works from the archives of this icon of color photography. It invites the viewer to journey through the progressive changes in his visual language that constitute "the present".
Timeline
The "Temporal Aspects" exhibition builds on the reflections of the 1964 group show "The Photographer's Eye", organized by John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at MoMA in New York. This was the first presentation of the work of Joel Meyerowitz, then aged 25, which was included in the "Time Exposure" section.
Other photographers included his mentors Henri Cartier-Bresson, father of the "decisive moment", and Robert Frank, instigator of the photographic narrative, who inspired him to enter the profession. The analysis explored the question of the temporal field.
"According to Szarkowski, the time of a photograph is always the present," explain the curators, adding: "Uniquely in the history of the image, it describes only the time in which it was taken. The photograph alludes to the past and the future only 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 (re)discover "the complete, visceral descriptions of his color photographs and the graphic, human subtleties of his black-and-white prints". The curators also propose an exploration of the print life of a final image and the evolution of colors over time.
The duo explore the studio practice of a photographer through prints featuring Joel Meyerowitz's personal annotations. This approach is complemented by a presentation of several prints of the same image, allowing the viewer to follow the progression of his work towards the final realization.
All these works acquired by the Florida museum show how this great street, portrait and landscape photographer never ceased to intensify his ability to compose and decompose the time of that eternal "decisive moment".
"Joel Meyerowitz: Temporal Aspects"
NSU Art Museum
One East Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale (USA)
Until August 17, 2025
