Falling For The Street
First Published in PUBLICATION#1 Nov 2009. Available here.
When I was studying photography at the University of Westminster in London in the late eighties it could have lead me anywhere. I could easily have made my fortune in the lucrative world of advertising photography or spent a lifetime shooting beautiful girls in wonderful clothes, or, perhaps, traveling the world discovering and shooting wonderful new destinations for the glossy magazines. So why is it that I now spend most of my days wandering crowded city streets on my own for no payment?
There are 475,000 American troops in Vietnam, Twiggy is modeling mini skirts in London, England, 'The Graduate' is showing at cinemas, China tests its first Hydrogen Bomb, the Beatles release Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Israel is at war with its neighbors, the worlds first heart transplant is performed in South Africa, its 1967 and a 29 year old American photographer, Joel Meyerowitz is traveling around Europe with his Leica Rangefinder camera. Just five years earlier in 1962 Meyerowitz was working as an Art Director at a small New York Ad agency, his knowledge of photography was very limited but the agencies senior creative Harry Gordon had a passion for it and regularly commissioned the great names of the day including Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Gordon sent Meyerowitz down to oversee a commercial shoot of some teenage girls for their client Conde Nast, the photographer was Robert Frank who, four years earlier, had published the seminal book of his road trip around America, 'The Americans'. As Meyerowitz watched Frank photographing the young girls he had an epiphany that would change the course of his life.
"I suddenly realized that photography was something you did physically, and there was movement to it. You didn’t have to direct your models to stop, to hold that pose, or to move their heads a little bit to the right or left: all that was unnecessary. Robert was barely speaking to these girls: just moving around them; and every time I heard the click of the Leica it seemed almost like a seizure in time, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I learned that life has these little clicks in it: and you can keep moving; and as I was watching the models, I started trying to anticipate when the clicks would come, and he and I were in sync a number of times. As the shutter went off it seemed, for an infinitesimal part of a second, as if life had set itself, and then started moving again. Leaving there two hours later I couldn’t get it out of my mind; and walking out into the street, I kept seeing moments frozen in time: people sticking out a hand for a taxi, or pausing momentarily to look into a shop window, suddenly seemed framed, and infinitesimally frozen for the camera. Innocent everyday non-incidents, became stop time moments; and by the time I got off the bus at 53rd Street I was so hooked that I went upstairs and quit my job. I went straight to Harry and said “I’m going to quit this job and go out to make photographs.”
Meyerowitz spent the next three years walking and shooting on the streets of New York with the older experienced Garry Winogrand and another young photographer Tod Papageorge. Garry had been working on a series of pictures at Central Park Zoo which would later be published in 1969 as 'The Animals'. When Joel left for Europe in 1966 he would have the prints from 'The Animals' in his bag to show the Paris publisher Delpire who had published the first edition of 'The Americans'. For several summers in a row Meyerowtiz had made trips across the US just as Frank had famously done, on a Guggenheim grant, for 'The Americans' and Walker Evans had, before that in 1936. It may have been in the spirit of this American Road trip tradition that Joel would head for London in 1966 to tour Europe.
The mid sixties were very early times for color photography, it wouldn't be until 1976 that William Eggleston would have the first one man show of color photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which makes it fairly remarkable that half of the six hundred rolls of film shot by Meyerowitz in Europe ten years earlier were color photographs, it happened to be color film that was in his small rangefinder on the warm day in Paris in 1967 when he came across a remarkable scene.
Fallen Man, Paris, 1967, Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY
The junction of Boulevard Haussman and Rue La Fayette is very busy, on one corner is the huge ten story Paris department store Galleries Lafayette and opposite is the large classical structure of the Societte Generale Bank. On another corner is the Metro station entrance with its low green metal railings and steps sloping down and away below ground, but in 1967 the Metro station still had its original beautiful and iconic Art Nouveau railings designed in 1900 by Hector Guimard. It was these railings and this Metro entrance way that Joel Meyerowitz saw in 1967 as he arrived, camera in hand, at an extraordinary and perplexing scene. The junction was busy with traffic at a stand still and commuters and shoppers were bustling to get down the stairs to the Metro, a bus was passing behind them. In the center of all this was that 'extraordinary' element that makes the heart of a street photographer flutter, a well dressed young man is lying on his back on the floor, his arms splayed above his head as if he's just hit the ground but we see he has also rolled under the metal chains of a fence, one of them just grazes his stomach. This immediately raises questions in the mind, has there been an accident? is he drunk? we feel a certain empathy, concern for his well being. This concern is reflected in the faces of those around him, the commuters look on, one holds a rolled up newspaper to his mouth as he watches, a cyclist stops to see what's happening. Then we slowly realise that it is more likely that he is having a fit or a seizure, a medical problem and our concern becomes tempered with a certain revulsion, this is not just an accident, an act of God, there's something wrong with him. Now we see, also, this revulsion in the faces of the passers by and we realise that actually there are fifteen people here who are not helping this temporarily disabled and fallen man, fifteen people who are visibly wrestling with how they feel and what they should do. The fallen young man reminds them and us of our vulnerability and its something we all prefer not to consider, he got up this morning, ate his Croissant, put on his suit and tied his red tie and now he is lying incapacitated on the dirty Paris pavement.
This emotionally complex scene is made fabulously special by the moment Meyerowitz selected to make his picture, the tension is heightened by the arrival of a stocky workman in big boots and a flat cap who gingerly steps over the motionless body of the fallen man holding an enormous hammer. This workman adds a wonderful humor to the scene, I don't think anyone really believes he has knocked the young man down but we make the connection in our minds and a smile is forced across our lips. But, again, our feelings are short lived because here is a man who is actually stepping over a fellow human being in need, completely free from concern, he continues with his work. As Joel Meyerowitz later wrote:
"Which is the greater drama of life in the city - the fictitious clash between two figures that is implied, or the indifference of the one to the other that is actual?"
This is one small drama on one street in one small city in one small country, it affects just a handful of people for a brief period of time, even in the photograph itself there are people stuck in traffic, passing on the bus and cleaning windows in the background who are all oblivious to the fallen young man....but the 'presence' of the street photographer, both physically and mentally has brought this tragic/comic drama into view for many thousands.
I contacted Joel at his NYC studio to ask him about that trip and that day:
Nick Turpin - You had travelled around the US during previous summers, what made you decide to travel to Europe in 1966?
Joel Meyerowitz - In 1965 I made, what was for me then, a large sum of money on an ad campaign, my first. I took the money, bought a Volvo to be picked up in London - Primrose Hill to be exact - and sailed to Europe to spend a year seeing who I was, what did the world look like to me and to ask the question could I photograph outside of what was my familiar territory. At that time I had been photographing for only 4 years.
NT -When you arrived in Paris, was it your first visit? What were your first impressions of Paris in the sixties?
JM - It was a dream come true corny as that sounds. It was close enough then, in time, to the mystical artist's Paris of the 20's to give a young, wide-eyed artist the feeling that I could still take in some of the passion of that period, so I walked Paris top to bottom and all around for 6 weeks and shot every day both in color and black and white. I had just come from living with Gypsies for 6 months in Spain and I was in the 'zone' and my eyes were open to all the possibilities that presented them selves. Walking around with 2 cameras and 20 rolls in my bag was freedom!
NT - I understand that you were making pictures in both black and white and color at this time and even carrying two cameras. Were you shooting solely color on the day you shot the Fallen Man in Paris or did you select color over black and white at the time you saw the scene?
JM - I generally kept the color Leica in my hand and the b&w on my shoulder - I was already leaning toward the belief that color was IT for me, but due to the predjudice of that era I continued to shoot b&w as well. So the camera was there and ready in the instant the scene unfolded.
NT - What can you tell us about that day and the circumstances around the making of that shot?
JM - I was out on the Right Bank just strolling (I was a 'flaneur' without knowing the word existed) and came to this Metro stop and noticed a crowd and a man down and as I inserted myself into the space to get closer this worker with the hammer came quickly around the pole to make his way to some construction going on behind me, and BOOM! as he stepped over the man it all came together.
NT - Did you shoot many frames of the scene or was it, as it appears, a moment that was quickly gone?
JM -One shot only, gone in a bling, I mean the bones of the scene rested there for a few minutes but the instant is just that - the instant.
NT - Was there a different attitude to a man with a camera in the street in those days?
JM - Those days were heaven. If you were fast and learned how to be invisible - like Bresson - you could do, it seemed, anything and no one was aware. Not like today where everyone is primed to think about 'fame', or celebrity, and wants to own their 'brand' so they're more aware and hostile to being seen. Then the camera wasn't as common as the ball point pen, as it is now, so carrying one didn't make you suspicious, or lecherous seeming as it does today when everyone is afraid their likeness or their child will appear on the internet as some strange trophy.
NT - Did that trip to Europe change you as a photographer? How were you different when you returned to the streets of New York?
JM - It changed me totally. I was independent as never before. The year abroad was my 'coming of age' frankly, and whatever I learned there about knowing my own instincts and desires I was able to use to see my way differently once back in America. I was able to see with fresh eyes the crazy complexity of the country as it struggled with its identity during Vietnam and made me more political than before. It also changed my work habits. prior to the trip Garry Winogrand and I and also Tod Papageorge were a trio on the streets every day, but after that solitary year I felt my own separateness and began to go my own way, a difficult thing as I loved them both, but I knew something about myself after that year that I wasn't prepared to dilute by being part of a trio any more. I certainly saw them regularly as friends but I chose to spend more time on my own.
NT - Although your work subsequently explored various different avenues, I always got the impression that your heart was in street shooting, do you still make street photographs with a small camera?
JM - I still shoot on the street and always carry a Leica with me (some days it's a digital M8, and others a film camera) it still teaches me things about our time and my own age, which by the way does influence one when shooting on the street, things that might have fascinated me when I was younger now seem familiar-hey, that's what happens as one gets older, you see the repetitive nature of life and so the urge to try and see beyond the familiar begins to limit what there is to get excited about on the street. And it's not a question of being 'jaded' by life, but of wanting to raise the level of one's sensitivity to see - for me - being 70 allows me to see from that perspective things I could not have seen when I was 30.
When I first saw this photograph in a book in the Library at The University of Westminster as a student I thought it was the most exciting picture I had ever seen, it was busy and complex, visually and emotionally, it triggered feelings, feelings that were genuine because this was not a created photograph this was a document of a scene, these were real people, that fallen man was probably still alive somewhere. This was also a different kind of reality to that found in the other books in the Photography section by Phillip Jones Griffiths, Don Mcullen or Eugene Richards, this was a remarkable drama on an insignificant everyday street that revealed something of human nature, it was a small detail of life but its big significance was not lost on me. From then on I knew I wanted to photograph candidly in public places.
Years after leaving University and after a first career as a Newspaper Photographer I returned to street photography and quickly became aware of a number of great young contemporary street photographers working around the world, many of whom I subsequently invited to join the newly formed street photographers group in-public. Two of these photographers turned out to have been students of Joel Meyerowitz, It can be no coincidence that Melanie Einzig and Gus Powell, both based in NYC, are the authors of two of my favorite street images of recent years, the surreal momentary coming together of disparate elements in Melanies 'Spring Corner' is the essence of what street photography is about for me and the complexity of possible meanings and interpretations of Gus's picture 'Paso Doble' with it's central couple watching the fall of a cigarette butt to the sidewalk is one of those sublime details of life in which the street photographer deals.
Spring Corner, NYC, Melanie Einzig
Paso Doble, NYC, Gus Powell