Sasha Dorje Meyerowitz

I grew up around photography. It wasn't an exalted thing. My father, Joel Meyerowitz, photographed everywhere he went. When driving he would often snap his arm across to the passenger window, sometimes grazing my nose or chin. I remember the sound of the lens of his Leica touching the glass. In our family, we all carried cameras, especially on trips. We would walk, my sister, my mother and I, with my father in the lead. It was how we went through the world. It felt like a natural approach to life. 

Over the years my father shared with me many of his personal reflections on photography. It wasn't technical information. He expressed a deep passion and commitment and thought deeply and creatively about the medium. I recall his principal tenet. Photography allowed him to interact with the world around him, to "see" more than what's on the surface, and to appreciate randomness and beauty. He still strives to revise and reinvent how he photographs the world. 

It wasn't until I lived in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado that I took my photographic inheritance more seriously. I sought a way to respond to the irresistible display of color and light across this 60 x 90 mile wide valley, one of the most dramatic landscapes in the state. I created two substantial bodies of work there from 2002 to 2008, the San Luis Valley Series and Valley Sculpture Series.

Over that period, I came to think of photography as an act of interruption. Beauty and space and unusual forms or perspectives can stop our thoughts, if we let them, if we desire a different awareness. Photographing means living in that possibility of interruption and then conveying it across the paper to viewers. 

I hope we all can take a moment to pause and appreciate the world around us.