{"id":398198,"date":"2026-04-18T05:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/398198\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T05:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:29:10","slug":"photographer-joel-meyerowitz-says-smartphones-are-a-good-thing-not-so-keen-on-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/398198\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Says Smartphones Are a Good Thing, Not So Keen on AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AnPortrait of Joel Meyerowitz <\/p>\n

Legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz sees the ubiquity of camera phones as a good thing, telling the AFP that it gives everyone the \u201cmeans of expression.\u201d <\/p>\n

Meyerowitz was speaking at the Sony World Photography Awards last night<\/a> where he was being honored with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays\u2026 there are billions of people every day making photographs and there\u2019s a culture of imagery that is teaching people values about photography, about humanity, about dignity,\u201d he tells AFP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meyerowitz\u2019s embrace of smartphones is significant because he was an early advocate for serious color photography at a time when most photographers shot exclusively in black and white. The Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) notes that Meyerowitz was instrumental in helping establish color photography as a form of fine art. The 88-year-old photographer says it never occurred to him to use black and white.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s thrilling to be recognized,\u201d Meyerowitz tells the French news agency. \u201cWhen I began, it wasn\u2019t about a future in which I might win an award. It was about just doing the work\u2026 so I\u2019m grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe energy of life in the street, the way people carried themselves, the interactions between people, instantaneous events happening and disappearing \u2014 photography is about that,\u201d he adds. <\/p>\n

While Meyerowitz is famous for his street photography, he is also well-known for covering the September 11, 2001 attacks extensively at Ground Zero. <\/p>\n

\"A\u00a9 Joel Meyerowitz, Dairy Land, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1976 <\/p>\n

The great photographer\u2019s embrace of new technologies stops short at artificial intelligence. \u201cYou might say (it\u2019s) lensless photography,\u201d he tells AFP. \u201cWe\u2019ll know in the future what this means right now. I\u2019ve chosen not to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SWPA award isn\u2019t the only honor Meyerowitz has been handed recently: he recently won Leica Picture of the Year<\/a> for his photograph of four Puerto Rican girls in New York City, 1963.<\/p>\n

Meyerowitz\u2019s remarkable photographic career spanning over six decades can be traced back to a very fateful 90 minutes in the early 1960s while the photographer was still working as an art director for a New York advertising agency: watching photographer Robert Frank capture photos with his Leica inspired Meyerowitz so much that he quit his job that very day, grabbed a camera, and dove headfirst into street photography.<\/p>\n

Image credits: Sony World Photography Awards. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portrait of Joel Meyerowitz Legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz sees the ubiquity of camera phones as a good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[344,437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,97626,100451,102835],"class_list":{"0":"post-398198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artificialintelligence","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-joelmeyerowitz","18":"tag-smartphonephotography","19":"tag-sonyworldphotographyawards"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}