Before 1970, color photography was snubbed by the medium’s greats. “There are four simple words which must be whispered,” Walter Evans wrote in an essay, “color photography is vulgar.” Robert Frank declared, “Black and white are the colors of photography.” Color was expensive to print, difficult to use, and appeared garish. After the first Kodachrome was released, in 1938, it was relegated to lowly advertising campaigns.
In 1962, Joel Meyerowitz was working at an advertising agency when he met Frank on a collaborative project. The latter’s fluid and poetic black-and-white shots struck him. Despite having no formal training, and not even owning a camera, he quit the firm. “I’m going to be a photographer,” Meyerowitz told his boss. He bought a 35-mm. camera and took to the streets, catching magic. Perhaps it was his background in advertising, but by 1976 the New York photographer had turned almost exclusively to color, which he mastered alongside the English photographer Tony Ray-Jones, who was studying with Alexey Brodovitch in Manhattan.
