Joel Meyerowitz
Between the Dog and the Wolf
July 2022
Huxley-Parlour Gallery
Extract ---
This July, Huxley-Parlour is pleased to present thirteen large-scale photographs by American
photographer, Joel Meyerowitz. Taking his acclaimed photoseries - Between The Dog and the
Wolf - as a point of departure, the exhibition radically extends his historic body of work with the
addition of photographs from contempraneous series. All the works are shot on the same large
format camera, and causally linked by their unique exploration of colour and evening summer light.
Spanning two decades, Joel Meyerowitz’ pictures bespeak his position as a pioneer of modern,
colour photography.
Originally published as a photobook, Between the Dog and the Wolf captures serene swimming
pools girdled by expansive seas and endless, twilight horizons in Cape Cod throughout the 70s and
80s. The contrast between pools and the ocean is not only an aesthetic one, but a philosophical
contrast too: the title comes from the French phrase ‘entre chien et loup’, alluding to oncoming
twilight. Meyerowitz notes, “It seemed to me that the French liken the twilight to the notion of the
tame and the savage, the known and the unknown, where that special moment of the fading of the
light offers us an entrance into the place where our senses might fail us slightly, making us vulnerable
to the vagaries of our imagination.”
Meyerowitz is widely acknowledged to be one of the first photographers - amongst others such
as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and Ernst Haas - to bring colour photography from the
periphery to the centre of Fine Art photography. Historically, where black and white photography
was understood to be a serious medium, colour was widely considered to be technically inferior
and aesthetically limiting - occupying the realm of advertising campaigns, television, and personal
holiday photographs. In defiance of this, Meyerowitz’ work demonstrated how the medium allowed
nuanced contemplation of form, composition, and mood. The works in Between the Dog and the
Wolf were shot on a large format, Deardorff camera, the sheer weight and size of which necessitates
slow and immersive long exposure photographs, revealing the full range of colour in the landscape.
In this exhibition, the addition of works from Cape Light and Wild Flowers emphasise Meyerowitz’
command of colour to cast a cerebral, magical sheen on otherwise mundane, distinctly American
scenery. Largely unpeopled, the photographs in the exhibition shore permanence and
impermanence, the man made and the sublime, against one another. This exhibition also builds
fruitfully on Huxley-Parlour’s two previous exhibitions with Meyerowitz: Cape Light, (2016) and
Towards Colour, (2017). By continuing to present his colour photography at its most potent, Between
the Dog and the Wolf notes the enduring importance of contemplative and considered imagemaking in an era of increasingly accessible and omnipresent photography.
Joel Meyerowitz was born in 1938 in New York. He studied art and medical illustration at Ohio State
University, and went on to work in advertising in the early 1960s. After a chance encounter with
photographer Robert Frank, he went on to establish himself as an eminent street photographer, in
the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank.
In situ
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From top to bottom: Bay/Sky, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1985; Florida, 1978; Florida, 1978. All by Joel Meyerowitz
Extract ---
This July, Huxley-Parlour is pleased to present thirteen large-scale photographs by American photographer, Joel Meyerowitz. Taking his acclaimed photoseries - Between The Dog and the Wolf - as a point of departure, the exhibition radically extends his historic body of work with the addition of photographs from contempraneous series. All the works are shot on the same large format camera, and causally linked by their unique exploration of colour and evening summer light. Spanning two decades, Joel Meyerowitz’ pictures bespeak his position as a pioneer of modern, colour photography.
Originally published as a photobook, Between the Dog and the Wolf captures serene swimming pools girdled by expansive seas and endless, twilight horizons in Cape Cod throughout the 70s and 80s. The contrast between pools and the ocean is not only an aesthetic one, but a philosophical contrast too: the title comes from the French phrase ‘entre chien et loup’, alluding to oncoming twilight. Meyerowitz notes, “It seemed to me that the French liken the twilight to the notion of the tame and the savage, the known and the unknown, where that special moment of the fading of the light offers us an entrance into the place where our senses might fail us slightly, making us vulnerable to the vagaries of our imagination.”
Meyerowitz is widely acknowledged to be one of the first photographers - amongst others such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and Ernst Haas - to bring colour photography from the periphery to the centre of Fine Art photography. Historically, where black and white photography was understood to be a serious medium, colour was widely considered to be technically inferior and aesthetically limiting - occupying the realm of advertising campaigns, television, and personal holiday photographs. In defiance of this, Meyerowitz’ work demonstrated how the medium allowed nuanced contemplation of form, composition, and mood. The works in Between the Dog and the Wolf were shot on a large format, Deardorff camera, the sheer weight and size of which necessitates slow and immersive long exposure photographs, revealing the full range of colour in the landscape.
In this exhibition, the addition of works from Cape Light and Wild Flowers emphasise Meyerowitz’ command of colour to cast a cerebral, magical sheen on otherwise mundane, distinctly American scenery. Largely unpeopled, the photographs in the exhibition shore permanence and impermanence, the man made and the sublime, against one another. This exhibition also builds fruitfully on Huxley-Parlour’s two previous exhibitions with Meyerowitz: Cape Light, (2016) and Towards Colour, (2017). By continuing to present his colour photography at its most potent, Between the Dog and the Wolf notes the enduring importance of contemplative and considered imagemaking in an era of increasingly accessible and omnipresent photography. Joel Meyerowitz was born in 1938 in New York. He studied art and medical illustration at Ohio State University, and went on to work in advertising in the early 1960s. After a chance encounter with photographer Robert Frank, he went on to establish himself as an eminent street photographer, in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank.
In situ
From top to bottom: Bay/Sky, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1985; Florida, 1978; Florida, 1978. All by Joel Meyerowitz