Man on the Champs-Elysées, Paris, France

Over the past five decades, Joel Meyerowitz has examined the world in color, producing sustained photographic series of Cape Cod, the Gateway Arch, Tuscany, and New York’s Ground Zero, among other sites. In 1966 Meyerowitz was inspired by watching Robert Frank photograph on a commercial shoot to quit his job as an art director and take his camera to the streets. He decided to educate his eye abroad, so in August of that year he bought 700 rolls of film—both black and white and color—and trekked across Europe, using his 35mm camera as an artist-traveler in earlier times would have used pencils and paper. Photography, however, can be more invasive than sketching, as evidenced by this Paris image, in which color adds humor and intensity to the photographer’s quick stalking of his street prey.