ELLIOTT ERWITT

By Lynn Hilditch LRPS

For those of you who are not familiar with the work of the American Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, I encourage you to go and see the current exhibition at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT) in Bradford. I came across Erwitt when I started lecturing a few years back on the work of three American Magnum photographers who joined the agency during the 1950s: Eve Arnold, Dennis Stock and Elliott Erwitt. While all three are unique and brilliant in their own way, I developed a soft spot for Erwitt due to his wonderful combination of humour, compassion and love of humanity.

Erwitt first became interested in photography as a high school student while working in a commercial darkroom. After graduating, he moved to New York where he hustled as a photographer. Before being drafted into the army, he met the war photographer and founder of Magnum Photos, Robert Capa, who had seen examples of his work, and who promised him a job once he was decommissioned. Erwitt says, “I joined Magnum about twenty minutes after I got decommissioned. I did not have any hesitation about it. To me it was a great honour. I joined because it seemed like a positive place to be.”

Erwitt spent a lot of time making extra money to support his family and often Magnum itself by taking photographs for commercial advertising, something fellow Magnum photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson deeply disapproved of. But his most widely published photographs are those that combine art and humour. Eve Arnold writes, “Elliott uses his subjects, nudist camps, beaches, dogs or whatever as a metaphor for the human condition that he then converts into the human comedy. With sympathetic gentle irony, he has added an extra dimension to photography.” He is also known for carrying a small bicycle horn around with him so that if his subject’s attention starts to wander, he gives the horn a toot. He even used the horn to get former Soviet Leader Nikita Khruschev’s attention during a photo shoot.

Amsterdam, 1972

Erwitt is also well-known for photographing dogs, the best of which display the close relationship between man and man’s best friend. On photographing dogs, Erwitt says:

You see a situation, you wait around, and maybe something happens. I very often bark at dogs to get their attention or get them to react. Once I barked at a dog and the owner turn around and kicked it. She thought it was the dog barking. I sometimes use my own dogs in my pictures. I have one photograph of my dog peeing on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate is an icon, so why not have a dog pee on it, just to reduce it to its basic significance? My dog pees on command. My dream assignment is to take him to every important monument in the world and have him pee on it.

New York City, 1974

Elliott Erwitt: A Retrospective is showing at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford until 1st May 2006.

Please send any comments to Lynn