Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt (Elio Roman Erwitz) was born in Paris, France on July 26, 1928. He is best known for his black and white photographs capturing humor and irony of everyday life. Many of his photos can be seen everywhere and have appeared in advertisements, posters, mugs, and postcards. He arrived in New York City roughly before World War II after several moves with his family. His parents then divorced and he went to live in Los Angeles with his father, but at age 16 he ended up living by himself because his father left him to go to New Orleans.
Erwitt became a wedding photographer, while finishing high school, to support himself and attended Los Angeles City College. From 1948 to 1950, he took photography and filmmaking classes at the New School for Social Research. In New York, Erwitt met several photographers, such as Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker that had a big influence on his career. Roy Stryker, the former head of Farm Security Administration, got him a job to document Pittsburgh, which became Erwitt’s first significant photo essay.
He then joined Robert Capa in Magnum Photos and launched a successful career where he incorporated commercial, journalistic, editorial, and personal photography. He worked as a freelancer in many illustrated magazines, such as Collier’s, Look, LIFE, and Holiday.
In 1955, the exhibition “The Family of Man” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York featured a photo of his that included his first wife, his six-day-old daughter, and first cat. It became a piece that he was widely known for. He also documented film production on sets for movies, such as On the Waterfront and The Seven Year Itch, where he captured iconic images of Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. In 1957, he documented the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution in Moscow.
Then, in 1959, he took one of his well-known photographs, later called the “Kitchen Debate”, which showed President Richard Nixon pointing an accusatory finger at Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In the 1960s, Erwitt continued to take photographs of notable figures, such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara, to name a few.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Erwitt branched into filmmaking, such as Beauty Knows No Pain and Glassmakers of Herat. Erwitt also produced programs and movies for HBO, such as The Great Pleasure Hunt. In addition to his photojournalism, Erwitt became well known for his book of dog photographs, which were first published in 1974 that lead to three more books in the 1990s and 2000s.
Since then, Erwitt has been recognized with numerous exhibitions, such as “Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best,” at the International Center for Photography (ICP) in 2011 and he received several awards, such as the ICP Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011. He is still alive and continuing to take photographs today.
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Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elliott-Erwitt
https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/elliott-erwitt/
https://time.com/4447552/first-take-elliott-erwitt/
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/arts/design/elliott-erwitts-photographs-review.html
https://www.famousphotographers.net/elliott-erwitt
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/elliott-erwitt/
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/talking-photography-with-elliott-erwitt/#