Customer Reviews

St.Louis and the Arch

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Meyerowitz was invited to contribute his view of the city by the St Louis Art Museum in the fall of 1977. Four visits and four hundred images produced this fascinating take on the towering Gateway Arch and surrounding metropolis.

The commission was something different for Meyerowitz because he is probably most famous for his expressive street photography using a 35mm light-weight camera. For the Arch he used 1938 Deardorff eight-by-ten view camera, probably the same one that was used for his 1976/77 Cape Light: Color Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz. In the Foreword to that book it says the large format camera is better suited to capturing subtle changes of color when looking at light and atmosphere rather than the bright local color of street photography.

The fifty-nine photos in the book have some lovely examples of atmospheric color. Nearly all of them are exteriors and about half feature the Arch, either as the dominant image or a suggestion in the distance. As usual with this kind of book I tend not to like every image but all of them reflect the Meyerowitz creative eye and there are some that are just stunning. One (on page eighty-nine) is a close-up of the bottom of one leg of the Arch resting on its base, it shows just seven or so of the blocks (each one looks about six foot high) but it has such power because you realize that this is one end of a structure you can't see but you know it soars into the sky. Another (on page fifty-five) shows the Arch reflected in the window of the Arch View Cafeteria, the composition rich in signs and exterior building detail and lovely color.

I've looked through this book many times over the years and it never fails to impress.

***LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.