Elliot Erwitt - Colorado USA 1955 (Review)

ELLIOTT ERWIT

Elliott Erwitt – Colorado USA 1955

Legendary Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt is one of the world’s greatest commercial and documentary photographers. He is well known for his often ironic black and white images of everyday life.  Elliott Erwitt is a photographer that shows what interesting means. When you see a photograph from Erwitt, it might make you think, make you laugh, make you sad, but you will always experience some sort of emotion and you want to come back and take another look. Erwitt has a lot of patience. He sees the potential for something and he’ll sit and wait for it to happen. He’ll rarely direct a photograph, although he has been known to occasionally bark at dogs or blow a bike horn to get the attention of a passerby. A lot of his personal work is almost comical and you wonder if they are staged or Photoshopped. They aren’t. He is simply a master at capturing perfect moments.

This picture is called Colorado USA 1955 by Elliot Erwitt. In "Colorado, 1955," a small boy inside a truck stares out the window, his right eye obscured by a smashed fracture in the glass. The violence of the crack gives the illusion that a bullet had just passed through to strike the boy, who hasn't had time to register his demise. This picture draws attention to viewer’s eyes because of the clever angle Erwitt put on this photo so the crack in the wind shield looks like it is the boy's eye. Erwitt seems to be in the right place at the right time but he must have done something to seek boy’s attention and then cleverly framed the shot.  The boy might be in his early teens and wears clothing not typical to 1950’s although we know it was shot in 1955 In Colorado, USA. It is difficult to say exactly what is going on in this image it is very powerful and evokes many connotations. Mine being violence, innocence, child abuse, loneliness, disconnection, a boy that wants to be heard, war, mental illness, blindness, shattered life/home etc.

Elliot Erwitt is famous for his frames; most of his pictures are framed through car’s window and mirrors. He likes to show reflections in his pictures as well as he composes the picture in such a way that subject looks really meaningful. Elliot Erwitt is a famous street photographer who catches a moment and when we talk about right timing of Elliot, it is just because he carries his camera all the time with him. His habit of carrying a camera every time he goes out results in extraordinary photographs. Most of the subjects in his pictures might be ordinary, but he cleverly turns ordinary into extra ordinary with his amazing composition. Elliot Erwitt captures a moment but his pictures have a lot to say about specific subject and that’s what makes his photographs unique.

-Kamran Yousaf

Garry Winogrand - Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1957 (Review)

GARRY WINOGRAND

 Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1957. PHOTO: The estate of Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand, a man who defined street photography as an attitude as well as style, was born in January 1928 in the Bronx. In 1948 he enrolled at Columbia University to study painting, before taking a photojournalism course, where his passion for photography began. He was obsessive and prolific. He worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s.Winogrand said ‘Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame.’ He loved to capture moments. Winogrand’s style is, in a way, the most difficult style, because the world he depicts is often so different that you yourself wouldn’t stop to look at it.

This image is called Albuquerque, New Mexico by Garry Winogrand. There is some kind of mystery behind this picture which is brilliantly captured by the photographer. This picture depicts a small child standing in a drive way of a house labeled 208. Inside a driveway there is an abandoned tricycle. Behind the house there are beautiful mountains of New Mexico, Sandia Mountains. There are heavy clouds casting a shadow on the mountains. Next to the building near the bottom of the photo is a small bush. In the photo you can only see the garage, but there are no neighbors in sight, only the small child in the driveway, lifting its arms. Garry Winogrand seems to be in the right place at the right time for this picture and it is not just a matter of luck as Winogrand’s eyes were fully trained to see things differently.

When we first look at the picture, our eyes see the highlights in the picture i.e. a small child with a mysterious pose in a drive way and then we see the mid tones i.e. mountains in a picture then we look back at the highlights and a mysterious surrounding which creates the tension in a picture. Because of its composition this photograph leaves a viewer with a sense of wonder, mystery and perhaps a feeling of darkness. Winogrand succeeded to capture a once in a life time moment in this photograph. This was a modern building in the middle of nowhere, but it is now in the middle of surrounding city and neighbors aged with time. Winogrand loved paintings and his pictures definitely depict his sense about paintings. This picture is a true photograph. We can’t paint this photograph because it is actually a wonderful and mysterious moment captured by Garry Winogrand. 

-Kamran Yousaf