By Christine Kemp

I recently discovered the Palm Springs Photo Festival Podcast, and just listened to the episode featuring Joel Meyerowitz, originally published in November 2021. It was a great listen, in which Joel talks about his responsibility as a renowned photographer to share his knowledge; his friendships with Gary Winogrand, Tony Ray Jones, and Lee Friedlander; large format photography; and more.

His passion for observing the world is evident, and he spoke with great sincerity. A few of my favorite quotes are below.

On his responsibility to use his position to share knowledge with other photographers:

“I feel that throughout my life that whenever I have an opportunity to be in public, that is a real gift. That means the work has been interesting enough for people to want to know about it and I feel it’s my public obligation to communicate and connect.”

On comparing baseball and street photography:

“I read the street in much the same way as I played baseball… A team sport, especially an interactive one like baseball, where a lot of tension and waiting, you know, depends upon the ball being hit - I think that’s like photography in some way. And so I just used this intuition and I learned to read the street for my own purposes.”

On complex compositions:

“If you put stuff all over the frame, so that everything is coming at you at the same time but at different velocities, you begin to have a picture that has muscle and sinew and tension and energy and elasticity, and these are characteristics that make for interesting photographs, like language in way.”

Check out the podcast here.

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Listen: The Palm Springs Photo Festival Podcast, featuring Joel Meyerowitz