Elliott Erwitt

Fotografiska Shanghai collaborates with Magnum Photos in conceiving the retrospective exhibition Through the Playful Eyes of Elliott Erwitt, paying tribute to the legendary photographer, Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023). The exhibition encompasses seven decades of Erwitt’s over 100 works in the field of photography, some were never presented before.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

A chance to press the shutter is the beginning of an adventure. The retrospective exhibition invites the audience to step into moments of everyday life brimming with warmth, emotion, a touch of humor and profound insight, discovering encounters beyond imagination and paying tribute to the legendary figure’s extraordinary journey.

Erwitt had a unique ability to be in the right place at the right time. Through his lens, he captured moments from everyday life, everything portrayed with a lot of warmth and emotion but also with a touch of humor.

In the exhibition, the earliest photographs were taken as early as 1946. His iconic black and white photographs are presented together with lesser-known works as well as several of his later colour photographs. The photographs are organized according to different series, such as Cities, Between the Sexes, Regarding Women, Kids, On the Beach, Personalities, Museum Watching, Abstraction, as well as Dogs, here presented in a video slideshow.

“Cities”

“You don’t have to fight your camera, or even reason with it. You just get behind it, point it.”

“I am Elliott Erwitt and I've been that for a number of years. When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and go about my business, and if I am going anywhere interesting I take my camera along.”

“I rarely stage pictures. I wait for them... let them take their own time. Sometimes, you think something’s going to happen, so you wait. It may pan out; it may not. That’s a wonderful thing about pictures – things can happen. It’s not that I’m against staging, or anything else, when you’re not cheating or working with false purposes. Even as you wait, you are, in a way, arranging and manipulating. You’re getting ready to frame the event, when it happens, the way you want it to be framed. Maybe I’m contradicting myself. Well, okay.

Maybe this should be a secret: photography is a lazy man’s profession. You don’t have to train, like a musician or a doctor or a ballet dancer. You only need the modest ability to achieve order and composition or find the right balance of mood. And, occasionally, you may reveal a message in what you do. That is sufficient. Being in the right place at the right moment can also help.“

The text is an extract from the foreword Dedication written by Elliott Erwitt for the book Personal Exposures, published in 1988.

“Dogs”

“I Bark at Dogs.”

“I bark at dogs. That is why the little dog in one of my photographs has jumped straight up into the air. A lot of people ask about that. Well, I barked. He jumped. I barked. He jumped... Once I was walking down a narrow street in Kyoto behind a lady who was walking a dog that looked interesting. Just to see, I barked. Immediately, the lady turned and kicked her bewildered dog. I guess we had the same kind of bark.”

“The dog pictures work on two levels. Dogs are simply funny when you catch them in certain situations, so some people like my pictures just because they like dogs. But dogs have human qualities, and I think my pictures have an anthropomorphic appeal. Essentially, they have nothing to do with dogs… I mean, I hope what they’re about is the human condition. But people can take them as they like.

If somebody likes what I do on any level, that’s fine with me.”

The text is an extract from the foreword Dedication written by Elliott Erwitt for the book Personal Exposures, published in 1988.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Elliott Erwitt was born in Paris to Russian parents. Erwitt spent his childhood in Milan, then emigrated to the US, via France, with his family in 1939. As a teenager living in Hollywood, he developed an interest in photography and worked in a commercial darkroom processing “signed” prints for fans of movie stars, before experimenting with photography at Los Angeles City College. In 1948, he moved to New York and exchanged janitorial work for film classes at the New School for Social Research. While in New York, Erwitt met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker, the former head of the Farm Security Administration. Stryker initially hired Erwitt to work for the Standard Oil Company, where he was building up a photographic library for the company, and subsequently commissioned him to undertake a project documenting the city of Pittsburgh. The following year Erwitt returned to Europe traveling and photographing in France and Italy with his trusty Rolleiflex camera, thus marking the start of his professional career. In 1951, he was drafted for military service and undertook various photographic duties while serving in a unit of the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France.

In 1953, Erwitt was invited to join Magnum Photos as a member by its founder Robert Capa. He worked as a freelance photographer for Collier’s, Look, LIFE, Holiday, and other luminaries in that golden period for illustrated magazines. In the late 1960s, Erwitt served as Magnum’s President for three years. While continuing his work as a photographer, Erwitt began making films in the 1970s, he produced several notable documentaries and in the 1980s eighteen comedy films for HBO.

Erwitt had a unique ability to be in the right place at the right time. Through his lens, he captured moments from everyday life, everything portrayed with a lot of warmth and emotion but also with a touch of humor.

Erwitt has been one of the leading figures in the competitive field of photography. His journalistic essays, illustrations, and advertisements have been featured in publications around the world for over half a century. He became known for benevolent irony, and for a humanistic sensibility traditional to the spirit of Magnum.

Presented by Nespresso

Through the Playful Eyes of Elliott Erwitt marks the first collaboration between Fotografiska and Nespresso, this partnership utilizes imagery as a medium, bringing a multi-dimensional sensory experience and inviting the audiences to jointly seek the true expression of emotions by presenting the "Art of Moments".

#Nespresso, The Art of Moments