Archives – April 28 2023
A major retrospective of Elliott Erwitt’s work takes place at the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum in Abano Terme in northern Italy until June 11, 2023. 154 vintage photographs, spanning sixty years of Erwitt’s practice, will be on view.
Elliott Erwitt is known for his witticisms. They leap out of the page when reading his photobooks. Often dry, sometimes biting, his musings on daily life sparkle with a wicked irreverence.
A new collection of fine prints, posters, contact sheets and books by Erwitt, exploring a lifetime that the Magnum photographer has spent behind the lens, is available to browse on the Magnum Shop here.
“The maxim says ‘time flies when you are having fun,’” Erwitt writes of taking photos, “It surely has been fun and time has surely flown. But more than fun it has been and continues to be a way of life for me.”
Having joined Magnum Photos in 1953, Erwitt is one of the agency’s long-standing members. Over the course of his career, he has produced seminal works on barrack life in the Army Signal Corps, post-war Pittsburgh and iconic celebrity portraiture. However, it is his deeply humanist approach in photographing his subjects that has won him international acclaim. From his amusing commentary on beachside voyeurism to his teasing indifference to cats, Erwitt’s wry observations have continually fed into his photographs. As he says, “I found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” Here, we share a select few of his sideways takes on life, in his own words.
Elliott Erwitt : Vintage
until June 11, 2023
Museo Villa Bassi
Via Appia Monterosso, 52
35031 Abano Terme PD, Italy
https://www.museovillabassiabano.it/
