Elliott Erwitt(1928-2023)

Elliott Erwitt is a French-American artist who was born in France in 1928. His parents were Jewish-Russian immigrants who migrated to France. The parents moved to Italy after Elliot Erwitt was born. Around the age of 10, his family moved to the United States. Elliot developed an interest in photography and filmmaking when he attended Los Angeles City College and New School for Social Studies. Elliot Erwitt started his photography career in the 1950s when he served as a photographer’s assistant in the United States Army while stationed in France and Germany. When he moved to New York in 1948, he met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa, and Roy Stryker. Roy Stryker invited Elliott Erwitt to the Standard Oil Company for a photography project. He later became a freelance photographer and worked on his work until he was invited by Robert Capa to become a member of Magnum Photos in 1953.

Elliott Erwitt photoshoots his work mainly in black-and-white film photos and did some photoshoots in color film in his work. In his photography work, all of them are documentary photographs of streets and places he has been to. Some subjects are human, some subjects are dogs, and some are landscape. There are also documentaries of public figures, such as the documentary portraiture of  Marilyn Moroe and John F. Kennedy. He also published social-political events photographs and portraitures of dogs because he’s a dog person.

Elliott Erwitt also involved himself in a filmmaking career in the 1970s. Some of his featured works are Arthur Penn: the Director(1970), Beauty Knows No Pain(1971), and Red, White and Burglass(1973).

Presentation Link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vio06wDjLH_RxX7op2v9L0aOGqV7fzCkCg42yuTwf2w/edit?usp=sharing