Elliot Erwitt Biography

France, 1928

One of the finest image makers of his generation, Elliott Erwitt describes himself as a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation. A member of the prestigious Magnum agency since 1954, his camera has taken him all over the globe since the late 1940s and his pictures have been the subject of several books and exhibitions worldwide (including a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

He sprung to fame through the kitchen debate photograph, taken in 1959 of Krushchev and Nixon arguing in front of a Westinghouse refrigerator and he has since become one of the best loved observers of life. With unmistakable style and wit, his work captures the famous and the ordinary, the strange and the mundane, over more than half a century.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS - Museum of Modern Art, New York - Chicago Art Institute - Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC - Museum of Modern Art, Paris - Kunsthaus, Zurich - Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid - Barbican, London