2023-12-01 10:43:59
by STEFANO BUCCI
a master of the twentieth century died on November 30 in New York. Black and white artist, he photographed adults and ordinary people with sweetness and irony. As a child he lived in Milan and was a Magnum columnist
Elliott Erwitt is a man of few, very few words, but who takes extraordinary photos: this is how his friend-colleague Gianni Berengo Gardin defined him in an article for Lettura del Corriere della Sera, on the occasion of the recent presentation of a volume of unpublished shots (or found) published by Contrasto. One of the greatest photographers of the post-war period, Elio Romano Ervitz – this is his real name as the son of Russian Jews – died on 30 November in New York. He was 95 years old. He was the black and white artist whose photographs – to use Berengo Gardin’s words again – tell a lot about him, about his sensitivity and style; they are first of all good photos, in the sense that in each shot there is a shared story of a fragment of reality, in which instinct, experience and curiosity towards man are found.
Erwitt has traversed the history of the world, casting his gaze on the powerful of the earth alongside anonymous and very private scenes. With an incredible ability to tell the great events that have made history and the small accidents of everyday life in the same way. And with a look that always managed to delicately underline the comical, unusual or ridiculous character of some aspects of existence, with a predilection for stolen shots, captured on the street, often without the knowledge of the subjects being photographed, as evident in the Museum series Watchers or in shots dedicated to dogs.
Born in Paris on 26 July 1928 to Jewish parents of Russian origins, Erwitt spent his childhood in Milan until, in 1939, he moved to the United States with his family to escape the racial laws. His adolescence would be spent in Hollywood, where he soon began working in the darkroom of a photography studio before enrolling in a photography course at Los Angeles City College. In 1948 he moved to New York where he studied cinema at the New School of Social Research. In 1949 he decided to return to Italy and France where, this time, he would arrive as a photographer, accompanied by his faithful Rolleiflex. In 1951 he did his military service for the US Army in Germany and France, where he had the opportunity to take photographs again.
The turning point in his career as a photographer came in New York, when he met Robert Capa, Edward Steichen and Roy Stryker. The latter would have hired him at the Standard Oil Company for a photographic book and a reportage on the city of Pittsburgh. In 1953 Erwitt joined the Magnum agency and at the same time began to collaborate as a freelancer with magazines of the caliber of Life. At the end of the 1960s he was president of Magnum for three years.
After this period he began his career as an independent photographer, working for Collier’s, Look, Life, Holiday and for companies such as the airlines Air France and KLM. From the 1970s Erwitt would concentrate on cinema, making films and documentaries, becoming from time to time a camera operator for Gimme Shelter (1970), a still photographer for Bob Dylan: No Direction Home (2005) and an assistant photographer for Get Out Yer Ya Ya (2009).
Elliot Erwitt was a photographer universally recognized for the delicate irony of his gaze, which he always preferred to direct at the absurdities present in our society rather than at its pathologies. Although he takes photography extremely seriously, he has always supported the extreme importance of humor: Making people laugh is one of the greatest results one can achieve. very difficult, that’s why I like it. Erwitt’s irony always appeared present, in every shot, in every situation (in the Icons series as in the Family series to which the Mudec in Milan dedicated a beautiful exhibition in 2020). An always good-natured look at the world, accompanied by a good dose of condescension.
Dogs were one of his favorite subjects and not because he was particularly fascinated by them, but because with their natural and irreverent attitude, they act as a perfect counterbalance to the pomposity and refined composure of their owners. His marked attention towards the apparently more frivolous aspects of society would have made him a protagonist sui generis of the extraordinary forge of Magnum. Yet even when he would have tried his hand at the most classic photojournalism, Erwitt would have been able to give his viewers images capable of fixing historical passages of global importance in the memory of entire generations: from the photo of Jacqueline Kennedy during her husband’s funeral, to that of Richard Nixon pointing the finger at Nikita Khrushchev’s chest, from the portraits of Che Guevara to those of Marilyn Monroe.
November 30, 2023 (modified November 30, 2023 | 10.27pm)
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