IN LOVE WITH …
WORKS BY ELLIOTT ERWITT AND MANY OTHERS
On February 14th, Valentine's Day, the OstLicht Gallery shines a spotlight on photographs that evoke the amorous euphoria through their deeply emotional essence: The sales exhibition IN LOVE WITH… brings together images embodying the spirit of spring, captured by photographers such as Mario Giacomelli, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Cora Pongracz, Franz Hubmann, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Luisa Hübner, centering around a tribute dedicated to the recently deceased Elliott Erwitt. At the heart of the presentation are both recent and older works by the Magnum legend, created during his recurring excursions through the City of Love from the 1940s onwards. Erwitt's black-and-white views of Paris span over seven decades and are among the most sensual contributions to reportage photography.
Up until the 2010s, Elliott Erwitt repeatedly returned to his birthplace, observing boulevards, street cafés, gardens, and cabarets through the eyes of a flâneur – always with the ability to discover the extraordinary in the mundane. Erwitt's works are marked by an elegant ease and a mischievous, warm-hearted humor that is unparalleled in the history of photography. His images seem to persistently wink at us. This distinctive viewpoint has shaped both Elliott Erwitt's commissioned work and his free photography, setting the tone for his photographs and lending an emotional complexity, especially to political reportages and everyday observations, that goes far beyond the perfectly captured moment.
The tribute to Elliott Erwitt is based on the exhibition PARIS, which was shown at the OstLicht Gallery in Vienna in 2021 following the presentation at the Chanel Nexus Hall in Tokyo.
Elliott Erwitt was born in Paris in 1928 to Russian immigrant parents and grew up in Milan. In 1939, the family fled National Socialism to the USA, briefly lived in New York, and moved to Los Angeles in 1941. In Hollywood, the 15-year-old Erwitt found his first job in a commercial photo studio, where he produced contact prints of famous personalities in the darkroom. In 1946, Erwitt moved back to the East Coast – New York remained his home from then on. There, he met Robert Capa, and Edward Steichen and Roy Stryker provided him with his first assignments. At the end of the 1940s, Erwitt traveled to France and Italy, the earliest photographs of the exhibition date from this time. In 1951, Erwitt was drafted into the United States Army. Instead of the feared deployment to Korea, he received a position as a darkroom assistant with a news unit stationed in Germany and France. After his discharge from military service, Robert Capa recruited the young photographer for the Magnum Agency, to which he belonged until his death in November 2023, and where he served as president for three years in the 1960s. Erwitt worked for the big names of the golden age of magazines, including Look, Life, Collier's, and Holiday. Journalistic assignments alternated with commercial photography, and there was always time for Erwitt's free work – his snapshots, as he called them. In the 1970s, Erwitt increasingly turned to film. Various documentaries were produced, and in the 1980s, a series of comedies for the American broadcaster HBO. Erwitt's photographs are represented in renowned collections worldwide, and solo exhibitions have been held in institutions such as the MoMA in New York, the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Kunsthaus Zurich.
All photographs in the exhibition are for sale. The prints by Elliott Erwitt are silver gelatin prints, signed by the artist on the front. Each of these prints is framed in a high-quality black wooden frame by Chanel.
OPENING
Wednesday, 14 February 2024, 6:30 pm
DURATION OF THE EXHIBITION
15 February to 30 March 2024
OPENING HOURS
Wed–Sat 12–6 pm
or by appointment
OstLicht. Gallery for Photography
Absberggasse 27, Staircase 3, 1100 Vienna
www.ostlicht.org
