This post is about Elliott Erwitt’s coffee table book “Snaps”. For the book introduction and a few of Elliott’s photographs continue after the jump…
Elliott Erwitt (born 1928) is my principal Street Photography Hero. Without doubt one of the greatest photographers of our time, he describes himself as “a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.” A member of the famous Magnum agency since 1954, he has taken his camera all over the world and his pictures have been the subject of many awesome books (like “Kolor” and his famous books about street life in Paris, Rome and New York) and in exhibitions worldwide. Artist, documenter and commercial photographer (he shot also many advertisement images), his work spans many traditions, subjects and approaches to photography. What I believe sets Elliott Erwitt’s work apart, is his easily distinguishable humorous style, showing his viewers a snapshot of the famous and the ordinary, the strange and the mundane, covering a period of more than half a century. In his images, this amazing photographer often plays with ambiguity, thus also playing visual games with his viewers. I admire him because his photographs are a showcase to create images that carry a story, and sometimes more than one.
“Snaps” contains more than 500 photographs, many of which have never been published before. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Elliott Erwitt’s work. You find his famous images like the one of Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon arguing in Moscow in 1959, the Che Guevara portrait or the one of Marilyn Monroe with the cast of the movie The Misfits, to his many much more personal images of people, animals, places and simple objects.
The book contains nine chapters, all with a one-word title: Look, Move, Play, Read, Rest, Touch, Tell, Point, Stand. This shows also Erwitt’s approach to Street Photography, documenting life as it happens, and the chapters cover simply the things people do, be it the rich or the ordinary. The whole book, as is practically his whole body of work, is a celebration of life. , these are the basic actions of life – the things people do.
One of my treasured photographic possessions is a print of Erwitt’s Hungarian schoolgirls following a flock of geese, a photograph that is also in this book. The print, which I acquired in a Magnum photo sale, is autographed on the backside by Elliot Erwitt himself.
All images in this post (except the first and the last two) are by Elliott Erwitt and taken out of the book for the sole purpose of this review.
I hope you liked the second of my new series “buy books not gear”, and there is more to come.
If you look for tips and inspirations around photography, check out my free Learning Center. Here, I will also post the links to all my book reviews.
Wish you a great Weekend!
Marcus
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