Elliott Erwitt

New York

In conjunction with the publication of Elliott Erwitt’s New York (teNeues, 2008), Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of 25 gelatin silver prints from Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt. The exhibition will include images spanning the artist’s entire career, including many unseen works from the 1950’s and 60’s. The show will take place from 30 January 2009 through 7 March 2009.

Elliott Erwitt’s visions of New York City are sometimes gritty, sometimes elegant, sometimes candid, and sometimes serendipitous, yet always true to life. Embodying a documentarian, and humoristic impulse, Erwitt’s photographs yield a certain wit, charm, and nostalgia. Erwitt states, “Some people say my pictures are sad, some think they’re funny. Funny and sad, aren’t they really the same thing?”

Possessing what Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker describes as a “light touch,” a light touch that “runs naturally into dry melancholic poetry,” Erwitt’s New York depicts a place of stolen moments, anticipation, and endless self-creation. At the center of this project is a city defined by its people, its innovation, and its capacity for human tenderness. Erwitt’s New York provides a glimpse of the city’s tiny triumphs and casts the viewer upon what Gopnick labels, “the ocean of our common loves.”

Born on July 26, 1928, in Paris. Elliott Erwitt spent his childhood in Milan. His family returned to Paris in 1938 and immigrated to New York the following year. His interest in photography began as a teenager living in Hollywood, California. While a student at Hollywood High School, Erwitt began working in a commercial darkroom developing celebrity portraiture. In 1948, Erwitt moved to New York where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson. Shortly thereafter he was invited to join the Magnum Photography Agency by its founder, Robert Capa.

Elliott Erwitt has participated in a variety of one-person exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Smithsonian Institution; The Art Institute of Chicago; Zurich's Kunsthaus; and Madrid’s Reina Sophia Museum. Elliott Erwitt has published over 15 books including Personal Exposures (W.W. Norton and Company, 1988), Personal Best (teNeues, 2006), Unseen (teNeues, 2007), and his most recent, Elliott Erwitt’s New York (teNeues, 2008).