Elliott Erwitt Snaps Book

Elliott Erwitt may not be a name that rolls off the tongue, but many of the photographs featured in Snaps, Phaidon's delightful retrospective of his work, will be instantly recognisable. And those that aren't, often prove even more eye-catching. Born Elio Erwitz in 1928 to Russian parents, but raised in America, Erwitt was already a member of the elite Magnum photographic agency when he was in his 20s. The mortgage was paid with high-profile, big-budget colour assignments, but he always carried his hobby camera, a Leica, for his alternative canon, so to speak, of black-and-white, one-take wonders. These second sights make up Snaps, a consciously casual title that captures the essence of Erwitt's professional philosophy as perfectly as he captured his subjects, encapsulating the moment as well as the medium. Put simply, he could not take a bad picture, and this uncropped, unmanipulated collection, reactive rather than conceptual, encapsulates the deceptive simplicity of his sustained talent, from a time when photographers just--snapped. Most famous for portraits of cute mutts and bug-eyed Chihuahuas in his bestselling Dogdogs, in skirting the sentimental, Erwitt unashamedly embraces the affirmative, yet his compositions are sympathetic and often cheekily playful; one can identify his influence on the likes of Martin Parr, for example. For Snaps, pairs are found for most pictures, to spar or smooch, often across the years or decades, with recurrent studies of juxtaposition, advertising signage, city life, fowl carcasses, children, and something of a leg fetish. Standout images include the famous Nixon/Khrushchev confrontation, stills from the Nevada set of The Misfits, Muhammad Ali mid-fall against Joe Frazier in New York in 1971, a smouldering portrait of Che Guevara, and a brilliant groupshot of Erwitt's fellow Magnum-ites, all obscuring their faces. The sheer quality of his work is also borne out by the less grand images, where he can insinuate the quietly political from the personal, whether a gesture, gait, expression, or the naked human body. In showing another side to 20th-century photography--and Magnum--beyond war reportage, Snaps presents the ridiculous, indomitable beauty of everyday life, and a brilliant career that has celebrated it. --David Vincent Read More