MALAGA.- A major exhibition of early work by renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938, New York) opened at the Museo Picasso Málaga. The exhibition brings together for the first time more than 200 photographs taken by Meyerowitz during his formative European road trip from 1966-67, many of which have not been seen before.

In 1966, at the age of 28 and shortly after leaving his advertising job in New York to pursue photography, Meyerowitz embarked on a year-long road trip around Europe. He drove 20,000 miles through 10 countries and took 25,000 photographs. During this period, Meyerowitz settled in Málaga for six months, where he was befriended by the Escalona family, one of the great flamenco families in the city. While in Málaga, Meyerowitz took 8,500 photographs and captured hours of high-quality sound recordings of live flamenco.

This unique experience, which resulted in an extraordinary photographic record of Spain, was hugely influential for Meyerowitz and had a long-lasting impact on his signature style of photography. Meyerowitz is now recognised as one of the leading photographers of his generation who redefined how reality, particulary in color, can be captured and communicated with a camera. After returning to New York, Meyerowitz had his first ever solo exhibition at MoMA in 1968, featuring 40 photographs taken from the window of his moving car while in Europe.

Featuring vintage and large-format prints in colour and black and white, the exhibition presents an in-depth account of Meyerowitz’s travels through England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Greece and Italy, centring on the significance of his extended stay in Málaga.

Tracing Meyerowitz’s artistic evolution during his time in Europe, the exhibition features portraits of local people, unique moments captured in everyday street scenes, urban and natural landscapes, and photographs taken from inside his moving car. The exhibition also includes the whole set of original prints from Meyerowitz’s first solo exhibition at MoMA in 1968.

Miguel López-Remiro, curator of this exhibition and Artistic Director of Museo Picasso Málaga, said: “Joel Meyerowitz, the guest artist in our programme at the Museo Picasso Málaga, introduces his European work into the central space occupied at the museum by Picasso, with the hope of generating physical, aesthetic and emotional connections with his work. In 1966-67 Meyerowitz lived in this city where Picasso was born. The work he presents here establishes a dialogue with Malaga as the city that unites the two artists. His goal is to create a new narrative concerning the identity of an artist through the structure of his work as a whole, and in relation to his roots.”

Joel Meyerowitz (born in New York, 1938) is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. His discovery of the work of the photographer Robert Frank in 1962 marked the start of his dedication to the art form. While most photographers at that time worked with black-and-white film, Meyerowitz was one of the first artists to work in colour, which later led to the acceptance of colour photography as an art medium.

Meyerowitz is a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of both National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and a recipient of The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal. He has published 53 books. His photographs of Ground Zero after 9/11 led to him representing the United States at the Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2002. Meyerowitz’s photographs are represented in leading collections including MoMA, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Joel Meyerowitz is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, Polka Galerie in Paris and Huxley-Parlour in London. Meyerowitz lives and works in New York and London.