© Elliott Erwitt, 1976, Self-Portrait, California, USA

EXHIBITION ‘Elliott Erwitt. Retrospective’

The photographer Elliott Erwitt delights in focussing his gift of observation on animals as well as humans – and, especially, on all-too-human situations. In his often humorous photos, he combines irony with insight, lightness with profundity. This comprehensive retrospective presents a highly active and versatile photographer who has also been called the “Woody Allen of photography”.

Elliott Erwitt, the son of Russian immigrants, was born in Paris and grew up in Milan. In 1939 he managed to flee the Nazis via France on the last ship to the USA, and since 1941 he has lived in New York. Throughout decades of work as a highly successful advertising photographer and photojournalist and as the director of documentations and films for television, Erwitt has always also remained an “amateur” – in the sense of its Latin root, meaning “lover” – of photography.

  © Elliott Erwitt, 1959, Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon, Moscow, USSR

Erwitt, who later became president of the Magnum Photos agency, achieved fame not only for his documentation of the debate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, which brought him his reputation as the “invisible insider”, but also for his benevolently ironic and affectionate portraits of children, dogs and dog owners, nudists and, not least, museum visitors. (read more)

The Exhibition “Elliott Erwitt. Retrospective” is on view at the Kunsthaus Wien (Vienna, Austria) until September 30, 2012.

“Dogs in particular are easy targets. They don’t mind being photographed, they are sympathetic, they are reliable in most parts of the world, and they don’t ask for prints.” Elliott Erwitt talking about the exhibition and more at Kunsthaus Wien:

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© Al Fenn / Getty Images, Sep. 1959, Russian head Nikita Khrushchev and his wife, center, meet the press at the top of the Empire State building

“All the sparrows on the rooftops are crying about the fact that the most imperialist nation that is supporting the colonial regime in the colonies is the United States of America.”
(Nikita Khrushchev)

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