Through 220 black and white and color shots taken between 1949 and the 2000s, a major retrospective presents from Thursday at the Maillol Museum in Paris the offbeat and "full of respect" look of this figure of photography, inspired by the French Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau.

"A workaholic with a humanist humor that comes from his intelligence and his tenderness full of respect for living beings," said Mio Nakamura, his assistant and studio director for 15 years, who made the trip to Paris without Elliott Erwitt.

The exhibition opens with a huge black and white photo of booted female legs, framed by large dog paws and a small specimen of the canine sex hatted, held on a leash.

Commissioned from Erwitt for a shoe brand, "it revolutionizes the look since that of the photographer is at the level of that of the dog. An approach to the living being, on two or four legs, which places all this humanity on the same level," Isabelle Benoît, co-curator of the exhibition divided into eight themes, selected by the photographer, told AFP.

The dogs, the couple, the women, the beaches, the children, the cities, the abstraction, the museums... "He covered everything except the war, he is a photographer who has almost been described as +total+," says Ms. Benoît.

Child with revolver

Black and white is reserved for his personal, "intimate" work. He describes himself as a "photographer + amateur + in the Italian sense of the word: +who loves + photography", she says, in front of shots of couples, among which Californian nudists, invariably triggering hilarity but also admiration.

The photo of his first child, a newborn asleep next to his mother and a cat in a minimalist décor of great sweetness, next to two photos of children that convey all the singularity of the artist. The first looks at the photographer from behind the window of a car with a bullet impact in his right eye. The second is a black child who points a toy revolver at his temple while smiling.

A photo of Elliott Erwitt during the exhibition "Family" at the Mudec Museum in Milan on October 15, 2019 © Miguel MEDINA / AFP / Archives

"Violence without the reality of violence. He will make a gift of the first to his optician. The second is one of his favourites because it is full of very contradictory emotions", comments the Commissioner.

Born in 1928 in France to Russian émigré parents, Elliott Erwitt grew up in Italy before emigrating to the United States on the eve of World War II. He has resided in New York City for decades.

Returning to Magnum in 1953, he was a photojournalist for the major illustrated press magazines of the 50s and 60s.

A series of colour photographs, presented for the first time, testifies to a different look than that spread by the media of the time on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the midst of the Cold War: scenes of everyday life, including Poles confessing in the street.

Other color shots retrace Elliott Erwitt fashion photographer and commercial photographer in all fields: chemistry, insurance, companies, tourism...

"Remarkable portraitist of political personalities or artists of the 7th art", he photographed Marilyn Monroe in the famous dress that flies in "Seven years of reflection" by Billy Wilder or on the set of "Misfits", a cinema that he will tame before becoming a director himself.

If Doisneau is one of his sources of inspiration, "the revelation came from a photo of Cartier-Bresson station, with a form of humor more present in the decisive moment," according to Ms. Benoît.

A photo of Elliott Erwitt during the exhibition "Family" at the Mudec Museum in Milan on October 15, 2019 © Miguel MEDINA / AFP / Archives

Rarely staged, Elliott Erwitt's photos are those of a photographer "who is in this world, does not show the sympathetic side of things but a truth that says something other than the banality of reality that he transfigures," said Richard Kalvar, an American photographer of Magnum who lives in France, a great admirer of the work of his elder.

© 2023 AFP