Elliott Erwitt's New York

by Adam Gopnik

Elliott Erwitt's glimpses of New York City are sometimes gritty, sometimes elegant, yet always true to life. His monochromatic tribute to the Big Apple contains all the shadings of this vital metropolis. Capturing the true diversity that makes this city great, this selection of images spans Erwitt's career, including many previously unseen works from the '50s and '60s. It is a memorable tribute to a great city and a reflection of a great photographer's genius. Born in Paris in 1928, Elliott Erwitt arrived in the U.S. in the late 1930s. Establishing himself in the '40s and '50s as a leading magazine photographer, he joined the prestigious Magnum agency in 1953. In addition to his work in magazines, he achieved great success as an advertising photographer and filmmaker. He currently lives in New York City.

Genres: Photography, The United States Of America, New York

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Adam Gopnik is an American writer and essayist, renowned for his extensive contributions to The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1986. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Montreal, he earned a BA in art history from McGill University and pursued graduate work at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts. Gopnik began his career as the magazine’s art critic before becoming its Paris correspondent in 1995. His dispatches from France were later collected in Paris to the Moon (2000), a bestseller that marked his emergence as a major voice in literary nonfiction.
He is the author of numerous books exploring topics from parenting and urban life to liberalism and food culture, including Through the Children's Gate, The Table Comes First, Angels and Ages, A Thousand Small Sanities, and The Real Work. Gopnik’s children’s fiction includes The King in the Window and The Steps Across the Water. He also delivered the 50th Massey Lectures in 2011, which became the basis for Winter: Five Windows on the Season.
Since 2015, Gopnik has expanded into musical theatre, writing lyrics and libretti for works such as The Most Beautiful Room in New York and the oratorio Sentences. He is a frequent media commentator, with appearances on BBC Radio 4 and Charlie Rose, and has received several National Magazine Awards and a George Polk Award. Gopnik lives in New York with his wife and their two children. He remains an influential cultural commentator known for his wit, insight, and elegant prose.

Reviews

[jessica o. ❦]

My only wish is that a few of the pictures had captions to explain certain people or situations.

[Veselin Stefanov]

Overnight this became one of my most inspirational books about photography for the whole year. Erwitt's sense of contrast in the frame and genuine intuition/taste of moments is just unmatched. I'd recommend this book to everyone from the beginner to the expert level photographers. The images stand out and the whole book is quite approachable. I even took notes on the pictures! It's just that good.

[Aimee Nicole]

3.5

[Qinwei Li]

Read the Chinese version. Some parts a bit of a bore but the majorities are great

[Alex Gross]

I just love Elliott Erwitt simple as.

[David]

Erwitt is to New York was Cartier Bresson was to Paris ? An interesting proposal from the foreword. But the modernity of the NY landscape gives a feeling of anonymity to the faces we meet. Thank the god of photography for letting us discover the wide variety of masks downtown people wear, and the effects industrialization, city-life, modernism have in people's eyes and looks, all things that - in my eyes - did not appear in Cartier Bresson's more classical approach of a more "provincial" town. The 2 towns are so different it makes me wonder how much of the subject defines the photographer's style. And the other way around.
Other than that, the book is a beautiful gallery of A3 and A2 black and white portraits, street silhouettes, shadows, celebrities, and so on from the post-war NY. Worth a stop. Worth the money? That'd be more subjective.

[Seema Shariat]

If you, like so many others, heart New York...

AND the loveliness that is the work of Andre S. Solidor (aka Elliott Erwitt)


...then this book is a must-have.


Teeming with old-school photographs of the best city in the world, the nostalgia brought on by the pages of this book add a definite beauty to your living room.

Heck, it's sitting on my coffee table right now and I can't help but flip through.

My favorite photograph is on pg. 131: one of a couple seated on a train, feeding their baby a bottle of milk...so typical of a New York family...constantly moving on a train, but still taking the time to care for their little one ;)