more copycat?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 09:45AM 
Cars and drivers/passengers ~ © Andrew Bush (left) and ©Joel Meyerowitz (right) • click to embiggenSince I've been around for quite some time, picture viewing wise, it came as no surprise that I was familiar with about 80-85% of the pictures on exhibit in the Pioneers of Color exhibit at the Edwynn Houk Gallery. In fact, I had seen many of them "in the flesh" in the late 1970s when they were often spread out on my studio floor as I was helping Sally Eauclaire (you can find my name in the Acknowledgments) with her seminal 1981 book / exhibit, The New Color Photography.
However, one picture in particular, one with which I was not familiar, was a Meyerowitz picture from the mid-1970s - a picture made from his moving car on the NYS Thurway. My immediate reaction upon seeing it was, "hey, what's that guy's name who exhibited his pictures, taken from his moving car, at the Yossi Milo Gallery a year or 2 ago?" My friend, who is not a picture maker but nevertheless an occasional gallery-crawling companion, offered no answer.
I remembered the exhibit at the Milo Gallery because I just flat out liked the pictures and one in particular - titled: Family traveling northwest at 63 mph on Interstate 244 near Yale Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at approximately 4:15 p.m. on the last day of 1991 - is on my got-to-have-that-picture life-list.
Call me a victim of classic racial stereotyping, but when I first saw that picture, I damn near busted a gut L(ing)OL as a medley composed of the theme songs from Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and Good Times (dyn-o-mite!) spontaneously burst into my head. There might have even been a soft echo of Shaft rattling around in there somewhere as well. With apologies to Jimmi Nuffin, I just couldn't help myself.
In any event, what struck me, re: the Meyerowitz picture, was the recent Burdeny / Sze Tsung Leong "copycat or not" dust up.
To my knowledge, there has never been any indication of any issue about the extreme similarity between the Meyerowitz From the Car work and the Andrew Bush Vector Portraits work. Meyerowitz' pictures were made a decade-and-a-half prior to Bush's and I have no indication that Bush was influenced in any way by - or even aware of - the Meyerowitz From the Car series. However, the similarity between the works is remarkable.
See more of the Andrew Bush Vector Portraits (aka, Drive) work HERE. Unfortunately, I can find no indication that the Meyerowitz From the Car series, other than bits and pieces / here and there, is anywhere to be found on the web.
Reader Comments (5)
it's just that so much has been done, I doubt many artist even know about the others. I recently had a project idea that I thought was original and spoke to my gallery about it. They quickly sent me two links of artists that have done the EXACT same thing. Almost even the same way that I was thinking aobut shooting it.
p.s. what do you know... just looked at Featureshoot.com and saw this very similar work to that of Loretta Lux.
http://www.featureshoot.com/
I'd also point out the work of the late Douglas Kent Hall who did a series of such car portraits in the early 70's, I believe, though I can't find them online.
Everything's been done... the question really, how to go deeper, take it a step further, make it more personal and original?
Apology accepted. Although I will accept reparations in the form of an ipad, to relieve any white guilt that you might be feeling.
Jimmi - I'd get you an iPad except I don't think that it comes in black.
Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis? iPads ARE Black. They just wear shiny silver clothing.