A pillar of the venerated Magnum agency, US photographer Elliott Erwitt, who has died aged 95, became world renowned for catching the humorous details of daily life, in black and white.
Two lovers embracing in a rearview mirror in California Kiss, and Marilyn Monroe’s white dress blowing up over a New York subway grate are among his most famous images.
Politicians, film stars, couples, children and hundreds of dogs — Erwitt immortalized them all over a seven-decade career.
Photo: AFP
“The kind of photography I like to do, capturing the moment, is very much like that break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful picture seems to come out of nowhere,” he wrote in 1996 in his book, Between the Sexes.
Born on July 26, 1928, in Paris to Russian parents, Erwitt grew up in Milan, Italy, before emigrating in 1939 to the US with his family just before World War II broke out.
After 10 years in New York he moved to Los Angeles, where he started to learn photography. He was taken on as a printer in a laboratory specializing in portraits of stars.
Erwitt was conscripted to the army in 1951 as an assistant photographer and continued working for several publications while stationed in New Jersey, Germany and France.
After his military service in 1953 one of his mentors, renowned photojournalist Robert Capa, recruited him to Magnum.
Erwitt would combine the abilities of its two founders — French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his “decisive moment,” and Capa’s sense of history.
“Erwitt became known for benevolent irony, and for a humanistic sensibility traditional to the spirit of Magnum,” the agency said on its Web site.
He toured the world several times. It was the golden age of illustrated magazines and he contributed to Collier’s, Look, LIFE and Holiday.
Some of his many legendary snapshots also include former Cuban president Fidel Castro and Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in 1964, a GI sticking out his tongue at the height of the Korean War and then-US vice president Richard Nixon pointing an angry finger at then-first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev in 1959.
Erwitt would also be remembered for a snapshot of a veiled Jackie Kennedy at her husband former US president John F. Kennedy’s funeral, a tender private conversation between Erwitt’s wife and baby girl, and an old Russian woman in curlers.
However, arguably his best known is California Kiss in which in one click in 1955 he sums up the optimism offered by the US West Coast.
In the 1970s, he turned to video, making documentaries on subjects ranging widely from Japan and country music to Afghan glassmakers. In the 1980s he made 18 comedy and satirical television programs for the US channel HBO.
Aged 90 in 2018 he published a book on Scotland.
Married four times and father to six children, Erwitt also owned eight dogs.
“Taking pictures of celebrities is exactly like taking pictures of non-celebrities”, he said in Elliott Erwitt’s Personal Best in 2006. “Above all do not be intimidated. Remember that even the most exalted celebrities brush their teeth at night before going to bed.”
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS