Klezmer band. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 2005 By William Meyers
SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS PHOTO: “FREYLACH #8” BY KLEZMER JUICE (re-post from 2012)
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography editor at Blogfinger.net.
Every once in a while I will post a guest photographer segment which might be about a famous artist or just someone who sends us an image. Or, as in this case, it could just be a photographer whose work I stumbled upon. I don’t know William Meyers personally, but I saw one of his images (above) recently and I saved a copy for this post. I can’t even recall where I saw it, but his work has been exhibited and published extensively.
William Meyers was born in 1938, and perusal of his web site indicates that he shoots mostly black and white, and mostly in New York City. His themes include NYC lifestyles, music subjects, and Jewish life here and in Israel. He seems to like music and his photos seem to like women. In that sense he is like one of his heroes Garry Winogrand, a pioneer of street photography.
Meyers has been a photography writer for the Wall Street Journal as well as a successful photographer.
I am drawn to some of his work because his sensibility seems to be similar to my own. In 2015 he published a book of images from the outer boroughs of New York. Those black and white photos are all made with film, and all his photos are silver gelatin darkroom prints. Myers does not do digital.
Darkroom work is exhausting to do and requires great skill and is very time consuming. For those photographers who have gone digital, many consider the new technology to be a relief. The finished product is said to be indistinguishable from a dark room print, but others, including myself, would disagree. William Meyers has first-rate printers do his prints for him. Many famous artists in the past including Cartier-Bresson did the same. In my case, I did my own, but these days I mostly show my work on the Internet, but lately my prints are digital done by an expert lab.
“Busker” Union Square Subway Station. NYC. Feb. 2011. William Meyers
San Francisco Girls Band. Photographed at Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side. November 2011. William Meyers
Deborah Rosenthal, painter. New York City. 1998. William Meyers
