Traces a key turning point in the history of photography: the young Joel Meyerowitz’s early experiments in colour photography.

An early advocate of colour photography, Joel Meyerowitz has impacted and influenced generations of artists. For fifty-eight years, the master photographer has documented the US’s ever-changing social landscape.

For a while, during the late 1960s, Meyerowitz carried two cameras: one loaded with monochrome stock, the other with colour. Just how, when and why US fine-art photographers switched from black-and-white image-making, which was prized within the gallery system, to colour photography, once seen as the preserve of the holiday snapper, has been the cause of much debate.

In this book, Meyerowitz tells the story of his early days as a photographer when he was told that serious photographers took black & white pictures. ‘But why?’ he asked, ‘when the world is in colour?’ He proceed to buy a colour camera and various rolls of films and to read manuals and experiment with colour techniques: a passion he continued to pursue all his life…