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.

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.

In cooperation with Magnum Photos.