Joel Meyerowitz — Polka Galerie
Polka Gallery presents Immersion, a retrospective exhibition of Joel Meyerowitz, a pioneer of color photography, which sets some of his iconic works alongside the continuous projection of an interview with the artist.
Touching and deeply illuminating, it reveals a sharp mind, always accompanied by his camera, detailing his visions as much as he composes, through his gaze, the sum of possible images to come. Precision, inventiveness, and the constant search for the striking point, the very one capable of sparking wonder for both him and the viewer, continue to inhabit Joel Meyerowitz’s exhibitions. After giving a face to so many cities and so many spaces, it is the artist himself who reveals his image in this personal presentation at Polka Gallery.
For beyond technique, beyond the formal rupture of his practice in the last century, Meyerowitz has used his medium to uncover the links and hidden relationships between all the things that populate the margins of what we see, the obvious elements before us that we no longer notice. As he himself likes to say, photography “offers the opportunity to preserve intact the excitement and wonder for everything around.” The silence of an empty house, the poetry of a stray reflection: his works grant space a magical stillness that, in a suspended moment, could tilt any definitive decision.
In a way, he opens a breach in the gravity of everyday life, bringing it back to what it may hold of the singular, of a potential sentimentality that does not burden itself with sentimentality.
Fascinating and moving, the exhibition tour might certainly have deserved more breadth and a scenographic ambition equal to its subject, but it nonetheless offers a striking reminder of the historical significance of his work and a powerful photography lesson, condensed, yes, but no less alive, much like the color that, according to him, renders it so truthfully.
Joel Meyerowitz, Immersion, from November 14, 2025 to January 17, 2026, Polka Gallery, 12 rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris. Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m
