The retrospective of one of the foremost contemporary photographers will be on display from 20 March to 20 September at the DSH gallery (20 Karowa Street, Warsaw).
Elliott Erwitt was born in Paris. He spent his childhood in Italy. A decade later his family returned to France to move to the United States immediately before the outbreak of World War II. Elliott took up photography in his early youth. Over his several-decade-long career, he documented the political and social history of the 20th century. As a photojournalist, he travelled across the USA, Europe, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Japan and Pakistan. He also worked in advertising and film. When he joined the prestigious Magnum agency in 1953 at the invitation of Robert Capa, he was already working as a freelancer, and his photographs were published in leading American magazines. On assignment from the Time magazine, the photographer visited Poland twice (in 1959 and 1964), taking pictures in Warsaw, Kraków, Częstochowa and Gdańsk, among other locations. In the late 1960s, Erwitt served as Magnum President for three years.
Over several decades, Elliott Erwitt recorded the daily lives of ordinary and extraordinary people, documented fleeting and historical moments with remarkable diligence, but most importantly with humour and commitment. The way he looked at Paris, New York, Saint Tropez and Warsaw changed the way that people viewed and spoke about these places. Nobody else has portrayed dogs’ owners as aptly by photographing their dogs; that is probably why these works are among the most beloved and iconic in his remarkable body of work.
ELLIOTT ERWITT. RETROSPECTIVE is an event not only for photography enthusiasts and connoisseurs. The artist’s photographs presented at the exhibition are a combination of wit, absurdity and elegance, a perspective characteristic of Erwitt’s creative work. Thus the retrospective’s curators draw attention to the bright side of human nature, highlighting the beauty of ordinary moments that tend to escape us under the burden of everyday life.
‘Elliott Erwitt was a versatile artist who recorded everyday life, important moments in history, ordinary people, show-business celebrities and political figures as well as… dogs in his pictures. His photography is a remarkable record of time and places. A unique, beautiful historical source, thought-provoking and pleasing at the same time,’ points out the exhibition’s co-curator Katarzyna Puchalska.
‘The impact of Erwitt’s works on the twentieth-century photography canon cannot be overestimated,’ adds the co-curator Beata Łyżwa-Sokół. ‘Elliott Erwitt was not afraid of the world, perhaps because – as can be seen in his photographs – he was delighted with it. He looked for beauty and truth in people and, being sincere towards them, he portrayed them somewhat seriously and humorously at the same time. Erwitt’s most famous photographs are quite serious, but somewhat not so, they allow one to look at oneself from a distance, they are an affirmation of life and bring smiles onto the viewers’ faces.’
Elliott Erwitt, born Elio Romano Ervitz (1928–2023)
American photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker. A leading member of the Magnum Photos agency, considered one of the most outstanding representatives of humanist photography. He began photographing in his early youth. Over the many decades of his professional career, he documented the political and social history of the 20th century, travelled as a photojournalist around the United States, Europe, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Japan and Pakistan, and photographed 20th-century celebrities. He was also involved in advertising and filmmaking.
He was born in Paris to a family of Russian immigrants but spent his childhood in Italy. After briefly returning to France (c. 1938), the family moved to the US just before the outbreak of World War II.
In the 1940s, he studied photography at Los Angeles City College and photography and film art at the New School for Social Research in New York, where he settled in 1948. While in school, he worked at a photo lab in Hollywood and earned extra money as a wedding photographer. At that time he used a medium-format Rolleiflex camera. Later he switched to a 35mm Leica.
In New York he met the photographers Edward Steichen and Robert Capa, as well as Roy Stryker (the former head of the Farm Security Administration, responsible for creating photographic documentation of America from 1935 to 1944), who initially hired Erwitt to work for the Standard Oil Company and subsequently commissioned him to carry out a project documenting the city of Pittsburgh.
From 1951 to 1953 he served in the US Army as a military photographer in France and Germany. He also took pictures for himself and won second prize in a Life magazine competition for his work Bed and Boredom. When Erwitt joined Magnum Photos in 1953 (at the invitation of Robert Capa), he had already worked as a freelancer for magazines such as Collier’s, Look, Life and Holiday. In the 1950s and 60s his photos were published in top American illustrated magazines. In the late 1960s, Erwitt served as Magnum’s president for three years.
Erwitt’s picture New York City, 1953, of his wife, newborn daughter Ellen and cat Brutus, was featured in the famous exhibition The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1955). It became an iconic photo from the exhibition.
In the 1950s Erwitt travelled to Moscow twice, for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution (1957) and for US Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to the USSR and Poland (1959). He returned to Poland in 1964, this time visiting many towns and cities, including Warsaw, Kraków and Gdańsk. He traveled around Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary on assignment for Time magazine, documenting everyday life in those socialist countries.
In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, he turned to producing film documentaries, including Beauty Knows No Pain (1971), Red, White and Bluegrass (1973), and the best-known The Glassmakers of Herat (1977). He also produced TV commercials and later comedies. In 1988 he prepared Personal Exposures, a retrospective of his works.
His recognizable style is characterized by sensitivity, extraordinary intuition, a perceptive eye, and a specific type of humor expressed in funny, strange and optimistic everyday life situations he captured with his camera. He once famously said, “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.”
He is valued as an insightful portraitist of 20th-century artists, politicians and personages. He took private, intimate photos (a series of Marilyn Monroe portraits in 1956) and photographed celebrities in public situations (Truman Capote’s famous Black and White Ball in 1966 in New York). Many of his photos have become iconic images, including a portrait of Marilyn Monroe in a white pleated dress from the film set of The Seven Year Itch (1955), Jacqueline Kennedy in a black veil during the funeral of US President John F. Kennedy (1963), and a frame of Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow (the “Kitchen Debate” in 1959).
Erwitt worked on numerous film sets, including On the Waterfront (1954) and The Misfits (1961), the last film completed by Marilyn Monroe. He also photographed John F. Kennedy in the White House, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba, as well as Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Kerouac, Arthur Miller and Andy Warhol.
In 2011 Erwitt received a lifetime achievement award from the International Center of Photography in New York, when he was described as “a witness to history and a dreamer with a camera.” In 2015 he was honored for Outstanding Contribution to Photography at the Sony World Photography Awards. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Czechia, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Australia. In 2005 he came to Poland to open his exhibition at Yours Gallery in Warsaw.
Erwitt published many photo albums, including Photographs and Anti-Photographs (1972), The Private Experience (1974), Recent Developments (1978), Personal Exposures (1988), Dog Dogs (1998), Museum Watching (1999), Snaps (2001), Personal Best (2006), Elliott Erwitt’s Dogs (2008), Elliott Erwitt’s New York (2008), Elliott Erwitt’s Paris (2010), Home Around the World (2016), Cuba (2017), Pittsburgh 1950 (2017), Scotland (2018), Found Not Lost (2021), and Last Laughs (2025).
MAGNUM PHOTOS is a cooperative of esteemed, independent photographers, brought together by unceasing commitment to documenting global events, people, places, everyday life and culture. In 1947, in the wake of World War II, four outstanding photographers founded what is viewed today as a legendary alliance. They created a pioneering joint enterprise, in which they combined their forces and a remarkable variety of individual styles. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and David Seymour founded the most important artistic cooperative in history.
Magnum represents many of the most esteemed photographers in the world while remaining true to its ideals and to the cohesive vision of its founder, a reporter, artist and narrator all in one. Our photographers are guided by common ideas on how to document events, stories, places and cultures thanks to a gripping narrative that rejects conventions, shatters the status quo, redefines history and changes human fates.
For 75 years, Magnum has created photographic content of the highest quality for the media, charities, publishing houses, brands and cultural institutions. Magnum’s archive is a living collection, regularly supplemented with new materials from across the world.
Since the 1930s, Magnum photographers have documented the most important events and portrayed famous figures, covering areas such as industry, social change and everyday life, politics, current developments, disasters and conflicts, reaching interesting locations. Briefly speaking – if you have some iconic photograph before your eyes but you do not know who took it or where to find it, it most probably comes from Magnum.
Magnum photographers are a small group selected by the agency members; it takes a minimum of four years to attain full membership, which is regarded as the highest distinction in a photographer’s career.
Magnum Photos reaches audiences across the world, enjoying the reputation of a leading brand based on original narrative photography. The agency is invariably guided by its original values: uncompromising perfection, truth, respect and independence.
