https://www.elliotterwitt.com/
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/elliott-erwitt/
https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2016/elliott-erwitt-collection.html
(Will Van Overbeek and I spent a day with Elliott Erwitt in Austin, Texas while he was here to negotiate the donation of his archives to the HRC*. We were the local facilitators for his visit. We picked him up from the airport, delivered him to his hotel, took him to the HRC for meetings, took him to El Azteca Restaurant for lunch, Progress Coffee for an afternoon coffee, over to the LBJ Museum to look around, and finally delivered him to the Blanton Museum where he did an evening slide presentation for a packed house.
He carried his rangefinder camera (with 50mm lens) everywhere.
He was quiet but possessed of a very dry and very wonderful sense of humor. Will and I had a great time hosting him).
What an amazing career! May he rest in peace.
*The Humanities Research Center at UT. Aka: The Harry Ransom Center
6 comments:
Amazing stuff! Just took a quick look at the website and two photos immediately stood out: the dog on the lead and the steam train running parallel with the road. Such atmosphere. Thanks for posting this.
Great eye and a great sense of photographic humor. He was an all-around photographer, street, celebrities, occasional portraits, but the thing he did best IMHO was dogs. I look at his book "Dogs" a couple times a year, and it's astonishing how good the photography is. I understand he'd occasionally bark at passing dogs, just to catch their reactions. (He caught some hovering over the street, as if levitating.) And, of course, he worked in Paris, the best dog big-city in the world. Your story about spending a day with him makes me a bit envious.
Sad day. Not many of that generation left. Paul Caponigro comes to mind, I am sure there are a few others.
The giants are slowly leaving us.
It their digital photography in the afterlife?
Many, many years ago there was a profile of Elliot Erwitt in one of the many photography magazines that were published back then, in which he related an attempt, as one of the invited photographers, to make fun of the wedding of one of Richard Nixon's daughters. He said the event was so well staged that he could not find a way to do it.
One of my favorite photographs: "Bratsk Wedding," 1967, by Elliot Erwitt.
"He carried his rangefinder camera (with 50mm lens) everywhere."
Boom. That says it all.
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