I grew up around photography. It wasn't an exalted thing. My father, Joel Meyerowitz, photographed everywhere he went. Often while we were driving, he would snap his arm across to the passenger window, sometimes grazing my nose or chin. I remember the sound of the lens of the Leica touching the glass.
Over the years my father shared with me many of his personal reflections on photography. It wasn't technical information. He expressed a deep passion and commitment and thought deeply and creatively about the medium. I recall his principle tenet: photography allowed him to interact with the world around him, to "see" more than what's on the surface, and to appreciate randomness and beauty.
It wasn't until I lived in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado that I took my photographic inheritance more seriously. I wanted a way to respond to the irresistible display of color and light across this 60 x 90 mile wide valley, one of the most dramatic landscapes in the state. I created two substantial bodies of work there from 2002 to 2008.
Over that period, I came to think of photography as an act of interruption. Beauty and space and unusual forms or perspectives stop our thoughts, if we let them, if we desire a different awareness. Photographing is like living in that possibility of interruption, and then conveying it across the paper to viewers.
Other bodies of work: Painters Helpers, submitted here; Urban Edge; and a new project about the 9th Street Bridge in Brooklyn.
