Elliott Erwitt: Fifth Avenue, New York (1947)

One of the greatest image makers of his generation, Elliott Erwitt (b.1928) describes himself as 'a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.' A member of Magnum since 1954, his camera has taken him all over the globe and his pictures have been the subject of many books and exhibitions worldwide. Artist and documenter, his work spans many traditions, subjects and approaches to photography.

'This tome shows that he hasn't lost any of the visual wit that makes one relish his pictures, while, at the same time, recognizing the melancholy that infuses any realization of the arbitrariness of existence.'
Time Out

'Rare among photographers, Erwitt can make you laugh out loud (just turn to pages 86-87), but his scope is Tolstoyan. This 550-page retrospective will absorb you for years.'
The Independent

'An essential career-spanning retrospective that reveals Erwitt's unassuming wit, brilliant framing and deep humanity.'
New York Post

'Haunting, absorbing, evocative and sometimes funny.'
OK!

'poignant and poetic'
The Herald

'saturated with an irrepressible sense of humour and love of humanity. What else would you expect from a man obsessed with dogs?'
Colin Jacobson, Traveller

'[Erwitt's] photos reveal a joy in the peculiar playgrounds of human activity … His eye, modest, charming, graceful and forever peeled for the dazzlingly unexpected, has led his oeuvre being labelled by one commentator as the 'indecisive moment'.'
World of Interiors

'Erwitt remains a mischievous presence: ...it is good to be reminded of his range and his keen eye for framing the everyday sublime. Snaps, despite its self-effacing title, is a record of six decades worth of acute observation, from the playful to the deeply serious. ...Erwitt's work [...] which tends more to the quietly observational style of Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson....a master of portraiture as well as observation... An ability to be in the right place at the right time is evident not just in his street photography but in his almost unbearably poignant portrait of a grief-stricken Jackie Kennedy ...Raw grief is also the subject of his starkly dramatic portrait of a woman bent double over her son's gravestone in May 1954, not long after his death in Vietnam. She is the mother of Robert Capa, Magnum's other co-founder and celebrated war photographer. It is an image that speaks volumes not just about death and loss, but about what it requires to take this kind of photograph. One of the most powerful images in the book, it almost single-handedly belies Erwitt's suggestion that he has not been as serious a photographer as his contemporaries. Only some of the time.'
The Observer