Meyerowitz Captures Air, Water in Photographs
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
While inside an underwater observation room, world-renowned American photographer Joel Meyerowitz watched as divers entered the water, creating ripples and bubbles of air.
``I watched as the air bubbles the diver brought in with her slowly gathered together, rose to the surface and went back into the atmosphere. After seeing this numerous times, I suddenly had the fresh thought: `air and water are both elements each with part of the other within them, yet they are both separate and can never remain in a fixed state,''' Meyerowitz said, in an email interview.
This prompted him to take a ``hard look'' at the ``phenomena'' of the four different elements ― air, water, fire and earth. ``Essentially, I was asking myself, `can I make a photograph that simply looks at phenomena (and print it large enough to produce a space the viewer can engage with) as if the viewer were there with the phenomena,''' Meyerowitz said.
Visitors can see how Meyerowitz captured air and water in a series of fascinating, vividly colored photographs in ``The Elements: Air/Water Part 1'' at Gallery Kong in Samcheongdong, northern Seoul.
At the gallery, visitors can also watch Meyerowitz' short video showing the cycle of air moving through water. The film opens with a peaceful scene of cotton white clouds floating in the sky. Then, the serenity is broken, as a diver gracefully falls into the pool.
``The video was begun as a separate work for another exhibition entirely. But when I saw what was going on, I realized I could use the diver as the human link between air and water. Watching the diver fall through the atmosphere and enter the water space, and then watching the air coalesce, rise and disappear back into the atmosphere above seemed so simple yet beautiful to me,'' he said.
Born in New York in 1938, Meyerowitz started taking photographs in 1962 and was known as a ``street photographer.'' He was one of the early advocates of color photography in the 1960s.
``I believed that color was an undervalued quality of the larger photographic world. At that time, I was a voice in the wilderness and now, when we look around we see that color is the most natural thing in the world, and black and white seems like the strange form it has become,'' he said.
He has released numerous books, including the groundbreaking ``Cape Light,'' ``Bystander: The History of Street Photography,'' and ``Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive.''
Days after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Meyerowitz started taking photographs of the tragedy's aftermath. The result was an archive of over 8,000 images and the exhibit has traveled around the world.
``I was so moved by being in Ground Zero that I vowed from that time forward I would try and be a more socially useful artist whenever the opportunity appeared,'' he said.
The 70-year-old artist shows no signs of slowing down. He is busy finishing his new project: an archive of the wild spaces within New York's parks; a new retrospective book that looks back through his 45-year career; and a continuation of ``The Elements'' but this time on fire and earth.
``This is an ongoing experiment, one that has about it something of the `last look' feeling, as if I am now opening myself to look hard at where I've lived for 70 years and now I want to know it in a deeper way and not simply take it for granted as the air I breathe or the ground I walk on, but to look more carefully at the essence of it,'' he said.
The exhibit runs through Aug. 3. Also on display are some of Meyerowitz' vintage prints from his ``Provincetown'' series from the 1970s. The gallery is closed on Monday. Visit www.gallerykong.com or call (02) 738-7776.