Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt is one of the leading figures in magazine, advertising, and commercial photography. A member of photography’s elite, Magnum, since 1953, he also began making film documentaries in the 1970s. But he is best known for the warmth, humour, and wry observations in his personal work, which he has continued to produce in tandem with his commercial practice, and which are collected in best-selling volumes such as Personal Exposures (1988) and Snaps (2001).

Although frequently noted for offbeat humour, Erwitt's photography is based on a graphic sensibility that instinctively organizes the formal elements of scene to create a personalized comment on the subject. This sensibility pervades all of Erwitt's photographs, whether they are photojournalistic documents, advertising assignments, or personal pictures, and has had a substantial impact on contemporary photography. In addition, through his insistence that the maker, rather than the publisher, of an image hold the copyright, he has affected the entire magazine photography industry.

His early career, when he was an accredited Whitehouse photographer, yielded some famous images, including those of the “kitchen cabinet debate” between Nixon and Khrushchev in 1959, and images of Jacqueline Kennedy at John F Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.

Elliott Erwitt lives and works in New York. The author of twenty books, he has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Reina Sofia, Madrid; and the Museum of Art of New South Wales, Sydney. His work is held in major public and private collections across the world.