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Freezing Night Fashion Photography Done Right

By in Photography

Freezing Night Fashion Photography Done Right

This is one of my most favourite test shoots I’ve done to this date, not only based on how we got the shot but also how they turned out. Here’s how we shot it, how it was lit, and everything that came together to make this shot happen.

The subject for this shoot was a very good friend of mine and super talented model Ash Kalyn. We’ve worked together quite a few times, and it’s always a blast. The photos you’re seeing were taken on a farm where there’s a ski hill in the background illuminating some of the snow. This also allowed for beautiful bokeh to be behind Ash’s head, creating more depth in the background.

I have to commend Ash for this, as it was -21 degrees Celsius at the time (-5.8 Fahrenheit for readers in the US). Suffice to say, it was cold. As I always come prepared, we had a warm-up vehicle off to the side so she could keep warm between setups and shots. It helped that she was able to have a thick parka on for the shots as well. Fortunately, I layered up to an insane degree, so I was mostly fine the entire time. Looking at this realistically, could I have shot this in the studio? Honestly, yeah. Sure, it would have taken more work in post to make it feel authentic, but it could be done. For example, I’d have had to put little lights in the background to throw out of focus or add them in post, as well as adding a hint of white in the background to give the idea that snow was on the ground. Lastly, I’d have had to add in the breath. It would be more work, but still doable. Even with that in mind, I actually wouldn’t have shot these differently because we were safe and prepared about it. Even though it was cold, everyone was being taken care of, and we’d warm up the moment anyone started feeling really cold. It ended up being a really great time and enjoyable for everyone.

Now, the lighting is really what helped to make this stand out, so let’s break it down. This was ultimately a three-light setup (minus the ski hill lights in the background). For my key, I was using a Godox AD600 into a 36” octabox placed pretty close to Ash. I like to build up my lighting setups personally, so I started with that, and I noticed her balaclava and coat faded into the background, and you couldn’t make out any detail. The ski hill lights were great for bokeh and illuminating a bit of the snow far off in the background but really didn’t serve to separate the subject from the background. To fix this, I put a second Godox AD600 with a 7” reflector on it on the camera right side behind Ash to give her a rim light, separating her left side from the background. But it still wasn’t quite enough to do what I needed. The all-black look was fantastic, but when you’re shooting at night, you need a lot of light to separate your subject from the background; otherwise, you just get a big black blob. To solve this, I raised a 2’ long Nanlite Pavotube set to daylight (matching the Godox) lengthwise over her head to act as a hair light, thus separating the balaclava from the background.

Now, if you read carefully, you realize I’m mixing two strobe lights with a constant light at night in a very dark environment. You would be correct, at least at first. The Godox lights are great because of how they can be quite powerful for a decent size. The issue occurs in that even at their lowest power setting, they are still way too bright to work for this shot. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, to have Ash properly exposed, I would have had to darken past the point of having any ambience from the environment or even the lights in the background (they would be barely visible). Secondly, I know what you’re thinking – yes, I could move them further back. But I wanted a really soft, flattering light on her face from the octabox, meaning moving the key farther back would make the light harsher and would no longer work for the shot. The other option would be to add ND gel or extra layers of diffusion, which in my much larger kit I do have, but unfortunately didn’t have in this particular circumstance.

Even with all that, I still did have a solution – a bit of an unconventional solution, but one nonetheless. The Godox have a three-increment modeling LED lamp inside them. Now, it’s not really bright enough for a majority of applications – I wouldn’t really use it as a video light unless you were in a pinch and needed an accent. That said, however, when you’re in an otherwise very dark setting, they can be quite bright. Enough to even compete with the tube light.

So, that’s exactly what I did. I had each strobe with the modeling lamp set to its highest setting, the Pavotube’s brightness level adjusted to match, and with a shallow aperture, these shots are the result. The other benefit is that the tube and rim lights acted as a backlight for Ash’s breath, so what you’re seeing is what was naturally captured in-camera.

This ultimately became a test of using your gear in slightly unconventional ways to get the result you want. Sometimes as photographers we have the right tool for the job, and sometimes we have to make it work. In this instance, I love the way we made it work because it came out better than how I had envisioned. I’ve always loved a challenge, and from the location to the weather to the light, there were challenges abound, but we pushed on, stayed positive, and came away with a solid set of images to boot. So, I would use this as a way to remind yourself that even in less than ideal circumstances, with a little creativity, you can still come out on top.

AGO says it will review policies amid criticism over Indigenous curator’s departure

By in Native

AGO says it will review policies amid criticism over Indigenous curator’s departure

TORONTO – The Art Gallery of Ontario says it will review some of its governance policies and work on “rebuilding of trust” as it faces intense criticism over the departure of its celebrated Indigenous curator Wanda Nanibush earlier this month.

The AGO’s response comes after dozens of people from Indigenous arts communities in Canada and other countries signed a letter this week calling on the gallery to publicly acknowledge and explain Nanibush’s quiet exit from a role she’s held for years.

Citing unnamed sources with connections to the AGO, The Globe and Mail has reported that Nanibush’s “vocal opinions” on various subjects – including her support of Palestinian causes – had caused friction among AGO staff, supporters of the institution and those who complained about Nanibush’s stance.

An open letter from AGO director and CEO Stephan Jost, posted Thursday on the gallery’s website, makes no mention of Nanibush or her departure but acknowledges “intense discussion in the cultural community about freedom of political thought, artistic expression and the importance of good governance.”

Jost said the AGO is aware of “several letters and social media posts in circulation speculating about internal conversations” at the gallery.

“I hear you. I am taking this seriously and I know there will need to be a rebuilding of trust,” Jost wrote in the statement, a copy of which was emailed to The Canadian Press in response to a request for comment on the controversy.

“The events of the last several weeks have shaken us individually and institutionally,” Jost wrote. “We are taking the time to deeply review and reflect on our commitments to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report so we can continue our efforts.”

He said the process “to better define the rights and limits of political and artistic expression” has started internally, “and, in addition, we will review some of our governance policies through a thoughtful and inclusive process.”

Earlier this week, Indigenous artists, curators, educators and advocates called for a “genuine response” from the AGO on the matter and a public acknowledgment of Nanibush’s contributions to the international art world and decolonization efforts.

Their letter said that while Nanibush’s appointment as the AGO’s first curator of Indigenous Art and co-lead of the gallery’s Indigenous and Canadian Art Department was highly publicized in 2017, her departure was “notably” silent.

“Many of us haphazardly learned of (it) only through a social media post,” the letter said.

Nanibush, an accomplished Anishinaabe-kwe curator, writer and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation in southern Ontario, has not publicly commented on her departure from the AGO.

She worked with various arts and community organizations before joining the AGO and won this year’s Toronto Book Award for “Moving the Museum,” a book she co-authored with AGO colleague Georgiana Uhlyarik.

The letter addressed to the AGO and arts institutions worldwide said that Nanibush’s case is just one example of Indigenous arts workers who have been “pushed out of institutions” in recent years.

It noted that Lucy Bell, a member of the Haida Nation who led the Indigenous collection and repatriation department at the Royal BC Museum, left the institution before a formal investigation concluded there was workplace racism and bullying at the museum; and that Kanyen’kehaka artist and curator Greg A. Hill was dismissed from the National Gallery of Canada “with little transparency” on the reason.

“The harms inflicted upon our community members working in these institutions MUST CEASE,” the letter said. “We are concerned about the safety and security of colonized people working in public institutions worldwide.”

Hill is one of the signatories of the letter, but he did not respond to an interview request. In a social media post last year, he said he was “fired” from the National Gallery of Canada because he disagreed with the way the gallery’s Department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization was being run.

The AGO’s chief executive said in his letter that the gallery “remains fundamentally and fully committed to showing, acquiring and programming Indigenous art, voices, and stories.

“Our support of Indigenous artists remains strong, and respectfully, we do not take this for granted. We understand that these relationships will take work to re-establish and can only go ahead collaboratively,” Jost’s letter said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 30, 2023.

How to spot the northern lights in Wisconsin

By in Photography

How to spot the northern lights in Wisconsin

MADISON, Wis. – Whenever the northern lights are visible in Wisconsin, people do their best to get a look. It’s not always easy, though.

What You Need To Know

  • The northern lights may be visible in Wisconsin on Thursday. 

  • Sam Warfel has been chasing the auroras for five years. 

  • He recommends low light in rural areas, wide views of the horizon, and looking through some sort of phone. 

Sam Warfel had always been interested in photography. A few years ago, he fell in love with the aurora borealis.

“I had never even thought you could see it from this far south, I thought that was an Alaska/Canada thing,” he said. “But you can!”

He’s now studying astronomy and the auroras at UW-Madison. His dream is to end up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where viewing is the best in America.

“It took me a year and a half before I saw it myself for the first time,” Warfel said. “It took a while, but I got there!”

It’s been a good year for seeing the auroras. He does it mostly from the Madison area.

“We had the two strongest storms we’ve had in a decade or more,” he said. “Bright aurora that I could see with the naked eye, almost right overhead.”

Warfel said it’s easier to see the lights through a camera lens than with the naked eye. He said even a smartphone will do.

“Modern smartphones have such good cameras that they can take pretty good pictures of the aurora,” he said. “Not quite as nice as professional cameras, but the best camera is the one you have!”

Finding a good spot is key. He recommends somewhere with a wide view of the horizon, and no light pollution. Being outside cities is a must. It can also take time for the eye to adjust to the pure darkness.

Even though Warfel has seen the lights quite a few times now, they never lose their magic.

“It changes, and dances, and moves,” he said. “You watch, and you go ‘oooh look at that!’ ‘Oooh look at that!’ It’s a show that keeps you staring at it.”

For more information on the storm and viewing information in Wisconsin, click here.

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Elliott Erwitt, acclaimed American photographer, dies at 95

By in Photography

Elliott Erwitt, acclaimed American photographer, dies at 95
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Elliott Erwitt, the photographer of American life, political history, starlets and humor, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan, his daughter Sasha confirmed to the New York Times. He was 95.

Over a remarkably varied, peripatetic career spanning more than 70 years, Erwitt captured numerous famous images, ranging from the somber (Jacqueline Kennedy clutching the flag from her husband’s coffin at his funeral) to the glamorous (Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich) to the absurd (a glowing Coca-Cola machine amid a display of missiles in Alabama). Originally a photojournalist, Erwitt published more than 20 books during his lifetime and starred in numerous solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Barbican in London.

He is also known for his many witty photographs of dogs, often from their perspective and distinct from their owners, in such books as Son of Bitch, To the Dogs and Woof.

Erwitt never specialized and worked as a freelancer throughout his life, taking on assignments in fashion, politics and celebrity (one of his most famous images is of the then vice-president Richard Nixon poking the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in the chest in 1959, during the so-called “Kitchen Debate” at a Moscow exhibition of American products). Some of his more recognizable work came from exploring New York, where he lived, on the Upper West Side, for 60 years. Erwitt photographed the city with a sense of adventure and spontaneity, living by his famous adage: “The best things happen when you just happen to be somewhere with a camera.”

Erwitt worked into his 90s, and was ever practical about his art. “Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures,” he told the Guardian in 2020, at the age of 92 and on the occasion of a new project to use one of his famous black-and-white photos, of a pair of plastic gloves hanging from a clothesline, in a campaign to raise awareness for protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Elio Romano Ervitz was born 26 July, 1928 in Paris, the son of Boris, a Russian Orthodox Jew and his wife Eugenia (Trepel) Erwitt, who both fled Russia for France after the 1917 Revolution. The family moved often – first to Italy, then back to France when Mussolini’s regime grew too intolerable, then to the United States in 1939, just days before the second world war began.

Boris became a salesman, and brought his son, then going by the Anglicized name Elliott Erwitt, along from New York to Los Angeles in 1941, selling wristwatches in small towns to pay their way. In LA, Erwitt began to develop his interest in photography, which he credited to his shyness. He began taking photos at 16 with an antique glass-plate camera, then upgraded to a Rolleiflex.

After graduating from Hollywood high school, he studied photography at Los Angeles City College and got a job in a commercial darkroom. He returned to New York in 1949 and began his professional career before the army drafted him in 1951 for the Korean war. While stationed with an Army Signal Corps unit in France, he took a picture of soldiers killing time in the barracks that, by his own account, changed his life. The photo won a Life Magazine contest, getting him published and netting a $2,500 check.

Erwitt was married and divorced four times, to Lucienne Van Kan (1953 to 1960), Diana Dann (1967 to 1974), Susan Ringo (1977 to 1984) and Pia Frankenberg (1998 to 2012). He is survived by his six children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Preview: An Unprecedented Spree of Brand Activations and Picture Buying…Just Like Every Year.

By in Art World News

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Preview: An Unprecedented Spree of Brand Activations and Picture Buying…Just Like Every Year.
Your guide to achieving synergistic nirvana when the annual art fair and marketing bonanza kicks off in South Florida next week.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Preview An Unprecedented Spree of Brand Activations and Picture Buying…Just Like Every Year.

Oehlen: Photo by Stefan Rohner/Courtesy Gagosian; Dumas: Courtesy Christie’s; Warhol: Courtesy Van de Weghe; All Others: Getty Images.

Close your eyes and imagine Art Basel Miami Beach. Do you see palm trees undulating in front of Ugo Rondinone’s Miami Mountain, which towers over the Bass Museum? Do you see the unending aisles of booths in the convention center? Diplo walking on the wet sand as a gallery dinner spills out of the Soho Beach House tent? Masterpieces by Anselm Kiefer and Cady Noland and Christopher Wool in the private museums in Key Biscayne and Wynwood and Allapattah? Lavish parties at Star Island mansions? What about a bank paying for Drake to play the hits for its top spenders as Drake says extremely Drake-ish things like, “Thanks for coming to see me. I know y’all got sculptures and paintings and shit to look at.” Is that what you imagine when you close your eyes?

There’s no right answer here. It’s been more than 20 years since Art Basel first opened an outpost in Miami—two decades of hype but also backlash; of hand-to-God great art but also crass branding exercises; of glorious sun-dappled escapes from the cold but also unceasing rain that floods Collins Avenue and reminds one that the island is sinking pretty fast. This year’s edition will be no different—it’s a head-spinning collision of cultural manna and conspicuous consumption. When the once-modest Swiss fair launched the Miami edition in 2002, it was an immediate cultural phenomenon, becoming a pilgrimage event for entire cultural sectors in New York and Los Angeles (even if many attendees don’t know how to pronounce the Rhineland city that gives the fair its name). And while newer fairs in hipper cities have come to eclipse Miami in terms of pure cachet—namely Frieze LA, which launched in 2019, and Art Basel’s Paris fair, which launched last year—Miami is still an essential stop. That’s due largely to the sheer amount of big-pocketed pan-Americans who come down for the spectacle and end up walking through the fair willing to buy.

“Miami is the best city for an art fair. It’s got lots of hotels and bars and fun, and shopping is a priority,” said Adam Lindemann, the collector and dealer whose gallery, Venus Over Manhattan, has shown at the fair for years. This year, he’s bringing a serious assortment of heavy-duty work, including new paintings by Peter Saul and series examples of Raymond Pettibon.

“In my view, for most art, it’s the best venue,” Lindemann continued. “Hong Kong is a doorway to Asia, Paris is magic, so there’s lots of museums and a city to gawk at. But Miami lives for the fair. And it’s grown beyond anyone’s predictions, and should continue to do so.”

To say the fair has grown is an understatement. The sheer number of events is, in a word, insane. Twenty-five years ago, Sam Keller, who got his start as the publicist manager of the Swiss fair, dreamed up the idea that Basel could exist in a second place—a place not just beyond the Rhineland, but one that had just recently emerged from its Miami Vice reputation of being a sunny spot for shady people. A few years later, the once-sleepy week in South Beach between holidays became a global destination not just for art dealers, but seemingly anyone with something remotely trendy to sell or market.

Which brings us to all the, um, interesting stuff one will be able to experience in the 2023 edition, which will launch next week. Perhaps we can check out the Range Rover activation at the Chase Sapphire Lounge at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel? Or if Chase is not your preferred bank, you can always hang out at the UBS collectors lounge at the fair, or attend one of the dinners The Cultivist is hosting with Capital One. What’s in your wallet—is it a card that can get you into a dinner cooked by three-Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn and designed by the artist Alex Israel in homage to the fro-yo stand his family owned when he was a kid? More banks on the beach: American Express recruited Tatiana chef Kwame Onwuachi for a series of cardholder dinners at the W South Beach, and Citi is sponsoring the Gary Simmons survey at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

It wouldn’t be Art Basel Miami Beach without the world’s fashion brands coming down to upstage the fairs with a series of activations—perhaps I can interest you in the LVMH Culture House at the Moore Building? Or the Cartier boutique in the Design District that promises an “immersive exhibition” into the history of the fancy watchmaker? Marni x Ssense at the Soho Beach House? Louis Vuitton x Frank Gehry capucine bags?

Or maybe the Cincoro x Hypebeast party is more your speed. Or the “VIP pre-opening of Ikea Open House Miami, the brand’s debut at Miami Design Week 2023.” Fingers crossed there’s Swedish meatballs. Or maybe it’s time for a leisurely evening at D’Ussé Cognac’s Art Basel Miami party featuring a performance by Offset.

What else? Art Basel x OnlyFans augmented reality activations. A Neude x The Webster x Steven Klein cocktail party. Barry’s Bootcamp x The Art of Wellness by NRVLD. Design Miami x Maestro Dobel Tequila Artpothecary—not a typo. Joe & the Juice x Miami Pickleball Club at SCOPE Art Show.

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And so on, forever.

There is, of course, a lot of very good art on view in Miami next week. On Monday night the Bass Museum will open a sprawling survey of work by local hero Hernan Bas, followed by a fête for the artist by his gallery, Lehmann Maupin, at Casa Tua, the beloved Miami members club that’s set to open in New York in 2024. Nina Johnson, who’s held down a year-round gallery for over a decade, will open shows of work by Katie Stout and Yasue Maetake at her Little Haiti space, and then have friends over for barbecue at her Architectural Digest–approved, Charlap Hyman & Herrero–designed Craftsman in nearby Shorecrest.

Let’s take the start of the calendar a day at time.

Tuesday. A full day before the main fair opens and things are already hitting peak art insanity. Tuesday will see openings at the De la Cruz family’s home on Key Biscayne and the De la Cruz family’s private museum in the Design District. NADA, the longtime satellite expo for more emerging galleries, opens two days earlier than usual, leapfrogging the main fair. There’s all the museum openings at the ICA Miami, which still looks spiffy after launching its new building six years ago. And Larry Gagosian will team up with Jeffrey Deitch for another big-tent group show bound together by a big-picture theme—this year it’s “Forms,” as in artists who do cool stuff with shapes. Think Tauba Auerbach, Carol Bove, John Chamberlain, Albert Oehlen. Scoff all you want, but the Larry x Jeffrey shows always rule.

And then, a neighborhood over in Allapattah, the Rubell Museum opens the shows of its most recent artists in residence, Basil Kincaid and Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, plus a show of LA artists in the collection. And then, after that, there’s—checks calendar—approximately one thousand dinners to attend, many of them on the beach, most featuring stone crabs and/or a surprise performer, all somehow absolutely essential to attend.

Wednesday. The mob scene at the convention center. Billionaires in sunglasses waiting in line next to their frantic art advisers. Where to first? Perhaps to David Zwirner’s booth to see a pair of Robert Ryman works, as well as The Schoolboys, a canon-level painting by Marlene Dumas—it was in the collection of the Museum Gouda in the Netherlands until it sold at Christie’s for about $1.6 million in 2011. Or to Hauser & Wirth, which has on offer new paintings by Uman, which the mega-gallery now represents equally with Nicola Vassell, who started showing Uman in 2020. Van de Weghe will bring the expected mélange of 20th-century masters, including Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign (1981), which last sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $7.2 million. It is “one of the best large-size dollar-sign paintings,” the gallery said. David Kordansky Gallery will inaugurate its representation of Sam McKinniss, a remarkable painter of modern life, with a few works at the booth ahead of a solo booth at Frieze LA in February 2024 and a solo show at the flagship gallery in 2025. I’m quite excited to see the presentation of work by Sedrick Chisom at Matthew Brown’s booth, ahead of his New York solo debut in May 2024 at Clearing.

But there are hundreds of booths across the various sectors of the fair, making it impossible to size up the entire fair in one go. And bear in mind, this is just the VIP opening—the fair doesn’t open to the public until Thursday. Which is why most of the hangers-on and brand activators show up not for the opening of the fair, but for the weekend, when most of the collectors are already back in Palm Beach or on Park Avenue. When one major airline announced it would be chartering its first-ever invite-only private flight, they set it to arrive not in time for the VIP opening, but for general admission on Thursday.

Spending millions on art and design can work up an appetite. Thankfully, Miami has a way of sustaining an ever-churning hype machine that makes its hot restaurants impenetrably packed. A few years back, the Major Food Group guys had the bright idea to do a pop-up version of their New York hit Carbone at the Edition Hotel…despite the fact that they already have a Carbone in Miami, on South Beach. Mario Carbone, Jeff Zalaznick, and Rich Torrisi’s next big Magic City move is their first foray into Mexican food with Chateau ZZ’s, which I’m told will open its Brickell doors soon. If you must eat at an enormous clubstaurant to really get the full Miami Basel experience, maybe go to David Grutman’s new coastal Italian emporium, Casadonna, where Drake had his birthday party earlier this year.

There’s a chance the art set sticks to what it knows—and what it knows is, quelle surprise, Estiatorio Milos, the seafood-heavy spot that flies in the fancy fish from exotic ports of call. Ordering from the cooler means we’re talking sea creatures that cost around $160 a pound—the stone crabs you ordered for the table could set you back two stacks, Chief. And it’s the same food, at the same prices, as the Milos in Dubai and the Milos in Hudson Yards and the Milos in London. Collectors spend all week asking for the Batphone to get a reservation like it’s the last place to break bread on earth.

But there’s a new arrival on the scene, conveniently located in the Loews, where nearly every art dealer with their name on the door of a gallery books a room each year. (As I said last year, the place is a reality show waiting to happen.) Owned and operated by collector and hotelier-about-town Alex Tisch, the posh Collins crash pad has a new in-house boîte: an edition of the hallowed Harlem red-sauce temple Rao’s, the place that has appealed to power brokers of all stripes with its extremely clubby policy of only seating those who “own” a table.

This Collins Avenue Rao’s facsimile—it’s referred to by regulars as “The Joint”— first seems like a relatively easy res to snag. For one, it’s way bigger. It’s got 160 seats, whereas the original has just four tables and six booths. And the “own a table” thing in Manhattan doesn’t apply here. The description on Resy notes that “the room is bigger than the Harlem original (and tables aren’t just for regulars and friends of the family).” So I plugged in my dates, desperate for anything, even just something at 10:30 p.m. in Siberia. But no tables appeared. I set a Notify.

And then I reached Frank Pellegrino Jr., co-owner of Rao’s, and he told me that it’s not just Basel week that The Joint is booked. The tables are spoken for until next summer.

“Presently, we are fully committed throughout Q1 and Q2, 2024,” he explained.

Might as well give Frank a call and book the table for next December.

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

Stagwell (STGW) to Present at J.P. Morgan, Seaport Investor Conferences in December 2023

By in Art World News

Stagwell (STGW) to Present at J.P. Morgan, Seaport Investor Conferences in December 2023

NEW YORK, Nov. 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, today announced management will present at two upcoming investor conferences in December 2023:

  • J.P. Morgan Advertising Holding Company Consecutive Executive Day: Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn will join a fireside chat on Dec. 11, 2023, at 10:00 AM ET in New York City.
  • Seaport Digital Media & Advertising Virtual Conference: Stagwell Chief Investment Officer Jason Reid will join a fireside chat on December 12 at 1:00 PM ET.

Visit this page to view upcoming investor events and programming from Stagwell. Reach out to [email protected] with questions.

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

Contact

Ben Allanson
[email protected]

SOURCE Stagwell Inc.

Elliott Erwitt, photographer who transformed mundane into art, dies at 95

By in Photography

Elliott Erwitt, photographer who transformed mundane into art, dies at 95

Elliott Erwitt, a renowned photojournalist and commercial photographer who captured mundane, sometimes fleeting scenes of life and transformed them into humorous, enthralling or disturbingly evocative moments for all time, died Nov. 29 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.

The death was announced by Magnum Photos, where Mr. Erwitt had a more than six-decade affiliation, including three years as the agency’s president in the 1960s.

In a body of work spanning seven decades, Mr. Erwitt proved a master of what his mentor Henri Cartier-Bresson called seizing the “decisive moment” — being trigger-quick to observe the extraordinary in the ordinary and turn it into compelling art.

Mr. Erwitt, who remained a proponent of black-and-white film well into the age of digital photography, had dual careers as a journalist and an artist. He began contributing in the 1950s to Magnum, the photojournalism agency founded by Cartier-Bresson and another mentor, Robert Capa, as well as to popular magazines of the day, such as Life, Newsweek, Collier’s and Look.

On his photo shoots, Mr. Erwitt carried two cameras, one for his assignment and one for his pleasure. He insisted that his paid professional work — which he termed “creative obedience” — was merely a means to support his avocation. Among his acquired photographic enthusiasms was a fascination with dogs, which he showed in comically improbable settings. One is in the driver’s seat of a Renault, on a Paris street, glancing insouciantly toward the photographer.

“Elliott has to my mind achieved a miracle,” Cartier-Bresson told the Guardian newspaper in 2003, “working on a chain gang of commercial campaigns and still offering a bouquet of stolen photos with a flavor, a smile from his deeper self.”

Mr. Erwitt embraced his personal photography with unremitting passion. He wandered the streets of capital cities and distressed communities around the world, pausing to snap a few images of any scene that caught his instinctive eye: a small French boy in a beret sitting on a bicycle, between his father and two baguettes, grinning at the photographer; a young woman, her back to the camera, gazing at the Empire State Building as it emerges from the fog; an African American child smiling and holding a toy gun to his head in 1950 Pittsburgh.

“What draws us in is that you can go back to an Elliott Erwitt picture again and again and always find another layer,” said Mark Lubell, executive director of the International Center of Photography in New York. “What makes us connect is the humanity in those pictures.”

His journalism and commercial work led to encounters with celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali and Simone de Beauvoir. Mr. Erwitt held out for the intimacy and immediacy he found in their less-guarded moments. A 1956 photo of Marilyn Monroe shows her not as a cartoonish sex goddess or doomed victim but as a thoughtful actress poring over a script with an enigmatic smile.

His 1964 portraits of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and fellow revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara swaggering through Havana’s streets highlighted their charisma.

“Fidel Castro was very photogenic, kind of a cowboy,” Mr. Erwitt later told the digital-media company 1854 Media. “An interesting person, obviously, and very chatty. It was extraordinary to get them in the same room. Che was at the time busy trying to get other countries to follow the Cuban example. They were quite willing to be photographed, it was quite easy. It’s a lot easier to photograph stars than not.”

Defining moments

Armed with his Rolleiflex 4×5 portrait camera, along with his versatile Leica Rangefinder, Mr. Erwitt bore witness to some of the mid- and late 20th century’s defining moments.

He took several notable pictures of pre-civil-rights-era America, including one of a young Black man, in North Carolina, drinking from a dingy water fountain next to a sparkling fountain for Whites.

In 1957, he was in the Soviet Union to photograph the launch of Sputnik and was the only Western photographer to capture the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in Moscow. He was an accredited photographer in President John F. Kennedy’s White House, and he took a stark portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband’s funeral in 1963, her face an image of grief.

A few years earlier, he had photographed Vice President Richard M. Nixon jabbing his finger into the burly chest of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a 1959 American industrial exhibition in Moscow. The encounter came to be known as the “Kitchen Debate,” and the next year — much to Mr. Erwitt’s chagrin — Nixon used the photo in his failed presidential campaign, to illustrate his tough stance on communism.

For all his travels, one of Mr. Erwitt’s most celebrated photos was taken at home: a grainy 1953 image, shot with little more than window light, of his wife, Lucienne, watching with adoration their sleeping 6-day-old baby, Ellen, on their bed.

The photo, which Mr. Erwitt saw as just “a family picture of my first child, my first wife and my cat,” was included in Edward Steichen’s best-selling “Family of Man” book in 1954 and the photography exhibition the next year at the Museum of Modern Art. Among Mr. Erwitt’s best-selling prints, it “put several of my kids through college,” he later told an interviewer. (He won the International Center of Photography’s lifetime achievement award, among other honors.)

Mr. Erwitt at times spoke critically about the pretension and artifice he observed in fashion and art photography. Known for his puckish sense of humor, he made his point by creating an alter ego, a self-important French photographer, André S. Solidor, whose initials make an intended pun. Under that name, he published a book with gratuitous nudity and pointless imagery (including a fish head smoking a cigar).

In his work, Mr. Erwitt often defied prevailing ideas in photography. He cared little about sharp focus, composition and the image-enhancing effects available in the darkroom. To the untrained eye, many of his photographs — flat, grainy, uncropped — may appear to be the products of hurried execution.

“There’s an incredible vitality to his pictures,” said Alison Nordstrom, a photography historian and curator. “Some of those flaws — being out of focus, chopping someone’s head off — really contribute to that sense of being alive and in the moment.”

Mr. Erwitt published his final book, “Found, Not Lost,” in 2021, at age 93.

Family flees Europe

Elio Romano Erwitz was born in Paris on July 26, 1928, to Russian-Jewish-immigrant parents. His father was an architect, and his mother came from a family of wealthy merchants in Moscow. They lived in Milan before fleeing Benito Mussolini’s antisemitic racial laws in 1938 and arrived in New York at the start of World War II. Elio was soon renamed Elliott Erwitt.

After his parents divorced in 1941, he moved to Los Angeles with his father, who by then was selling watches. Mr. Erwitt got his first camera while at Hollywood High School and wandered the neighborhood snapping photos during the war years.

When Elliot was 15, he later told the Financial Times, his father abandoned him. “I was on my own and had to fend for myself,” he said. But he professed not to harbor bitterness toward his father, whom he described as a “wonderful man” and who later ventured into photography. “He said he wanted ‘to follow in the footsteps of his son,’” Mr. Erwitt recalled.

While in high school, he earned money by photographing weddings. He studied photography formally at Los Angeles City College. In 1948, Mr. Erwitt moved back to New York and took photography and filmmaking classes at what is now the New School for Social Research. A polyglot who spoke four languages, he visited Europe in 1949 to hone his craft. When he returned to the United States, he was hired by photographer Roy Stryker for Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey to help document the revitalization of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Erwitt’s work in the Steel City spawned his first serious photo essay, but before he could finish the project, he was drafted into the Army Signal Corps during the Korean War and served in France and Germany as a photographer.

In 1953, he was recruited by Capa to Magnum Photos. That year, he married Lucienne Van Kan. That marriage and later marriages to Diana Nugent, Susan Ringo and Pia Frankenberg ended in divorce.

Mr. Erwitt had four children from his first marriage, Ellen, Misha, David and Jennifer, all surnamed Erwitt; two children from his third marriage, Sasha and Amelia; 10 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Four of his children were photographers or work in the photography business in some other capacity.

Mr. Erwitt’s affiliation with Magnum brought a steady flow of assignments, but he also ventured into more-lucrative advertising photography. As a commercial photographer, he often worked on movie sets. He was one of several photographers who captured Monroe’s subway grate updraft scene from “The Seven Year Itch” (1955).

Five years later, on the set of “The Misfits,” Mr. Erwitt shot Monroe as she struggled with depression and drug addiction while her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller unraveled.

Mr. Erwitt said he favored life’s comic moments over the darkly dramatic ones. He made a documentary film, “Beauty Knows No Pain” (1972), that takes a sardonic look at a majorette drill team in Texas. With a dry, ironic wit, he also compiled eight books of canine photos, with names such as “Son of Bitch” (1974, with an introduction by P.G. Wodehouse), “Dog Dogs” (1998) and “Woof” (2005).

Mr. Erwitt said he liked dogs because they were so expressive, like humans with more hair. In addition, he quipped, “they don’t ask for prints.”

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