De haut en bas Legendes ERWITT New York. USA. 1955 California. USA. 1955 North Carolina. USA. 1950 Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh. USA. 1950 Las Vegas. Nevada. USA. 1954 New York. USA. 1974

3 February - 4 April 2010 The Maison Européenne de la Photographie presents a retrospective of the work of Paris-born American photographer Elliott Erwitt. As its title suggests, the exhibition is based on Elliott Erwitt's own selection of favourite images. Featuring over 130 pictures including original prints that have seldom been seen before, it retraces Erwitt's sixty-year career. A photographer since 1948 and a member of Magnum Photos since 1953, he is a sharp, sometimes mischievous observer of everyday life; among his favourite subjects are children, dogs, beaches, politics and celebrities. A witness to the major events of the 20th century, this master of the instant is also a tireless wit, a subtle and poetic humorist whose work combines satire and melancholy. As he says, "Some people say my pictures are sad, some think they're funny. Funny and sad, aren't they really the same thing?" Elliott Erwitt has also made a number of documentary films, some of which can be seen at the MEP video library during the exhibition period. Elliott Erwitt was born in Paris in 1928 to Russian emigrés and grew up in Italy and France. His family emigrated to the USA in 1939, first settling in New York and then Los Angeles. Elliott Erwitt went to Hollywood High School, at the same time working in a commercial photo lab where he developed prints of film stars 'signed' for their fans. In 1949, he returned to Europe where he travelled and began his professional career. Conscripted into the US army in 1951, he continued to take photographs for several publications - completely removed from his work in the army - during postings to New Jersey, Germany and France. Purely by chance, when he went to look for work in New York before his military service, he met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker who liked his photographs and took him under their wing, becoming his mentors. In 1953, soon after his military service, Elliott Erwitt, sponsored by Robert Capa, joined Magnum Photos. He worked for Life magazine and took part in the famous exhibition The Family of Man at the MOMA in New York in 1955. For over 50 years his books, photojournalism, illustrations and publicity work have appeared in publications all over the world. In the 1970s he began making films in parallel with his photographic work, first documentaries and then, in the 1980s, satirical TV shows for HBO. From the 1990s to the present, he has continued to lead an astonishingly varied professional life. He has produced over twenty books of photographs, recently including The Art of André S. Solidor A.k.a. Elliott Erwitt, Rome, New York, and Dogs. Major exhibitions of his work have been held at the MOMA, the Chicago Art Institute, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (Palais de Tokyo), the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Barbican in London, the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, the New South Wales Museum of Art in Sydney, the Spazio Oberdan in Milan, numerous galleries in Asia, and very recently at the Museo di Roma in Rome, where he looked back on fifty years of Roman history. Exhibition organized in collaboration with Magnum Photos and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.