Marilyn Monroe holding up her white dress. Richard Nixon jabbing his finger into Nikita Khrushchev’s chest. Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband’s funeral. Women’s elegant legs and dogs’ paws that steal the show. At the Warsaw exhibition ‘Elliott Erwitt: A Retrospective’, you can see 130 photographs that have changed the way we tell stories about people, cities and everyday life.
We recognise some of these photographs, even if we cannot recall the photographer’s name. Behind the lens stands one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, a master of observation, irony and the decisive moment. Elliott Erwitt’s work can be viewed in Warsaw at Poland’s first retrospective of this scale. It is no surprise that the exhibition has already been visited by over 26,000 people.
Following shows in Paris, Lyon and Brussels, the exhibition has moved to the DSH (House of Encounters with History). Rather than guiding visitors year by year through Erwitt’s biography, the curators have arranged the photographs into a thematic narrative. In it, high politics meets street life, film stars meet chance passers-by, and historical events meet gestures that might escape the notice of any less attentive observer.
– Almost all of us will recognise Erwitt’s photographs – even if we were previously unable to link them to a specific name. “I regularly hear surprised reactions from visitors: one person saw this shot in Paris, another remembers it from Italy,” said Katarzyna Puchalska, director of the DSH and co-curator of the exhibition.
Humour that only emerges in the photograph
Erwitt didn’t need spectacular events. A glance, a gesture, a chance resemblance, or a split second in which elements of reality fell into perfect composition were enough for him. – Sometimes the humour lies in the photograph itself, rather than in the scene being photographed. “You can take a photograph of the most wonderful situation, and yet it will be lifeless. You can also take a photograph of nothing—someone scratching their nose—and it turns out to be a brilliant photograph, ” he used to say.
His works first catch the eye with a playful juxtaposition, an unusual perspective or a composition that seems almost too perfect to have come about by chance. Yet humour is only the beginning. After a moment, we begin to notice the body language, the directions of their gazes, the tension between the subjects, and details that are easy to overlook on first viewing. The surviving contact sheets show that Erwitt would walk around his subjects, patiently searching for the best shot. The photography looks spontaneous, but behind it lies precision and consistency.
A photographer who saw things differently
He was born in Paris to a family of Jewish-Russian emigrants. He spent his childhood in Italy, later returned to France with his family, and just before the outbreak of the Second World War, he left for the United States. He began taking photographs as a teenager. “Although he received formal artistic training, his real education in seeing began much earlier. He was an exceptionally keen observer, and his camera was almost never out of his hand,” says co-curator Beata Łyżwa-Sokół.
As a photojournalist, Erwitt worked in the United States, Europe, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Japan and Pakistan. He also made films and undertook advertising commissions, whilst never compromising his own style. In 1953, Robert Capa invited him to join Magnum Photos. By then, Erwitt was already a freelancer publishing in leading American magazines. In the late 1960s, he served as the agency’s president for three years.
The influence of his work on the language of 20th-century photography cannot be overstated. He viewed Paris, New York and Saint-Tropez in such a way that his photographs began to help shape people’s perceptions of these places. He was also interested in people and their gestures, their quirks and the subtle cracks in their carefully constructed images.
Why do dogs see more?
It is hard to talk about his photography without mentioning dogs – bored, puzzled, patient or completely absorbed in their own affairs. Erwitt photographed them for several decades. It all began without any grand plan. However, whilst looking through his contact sheets, he noticed that dogs appeared in them with remarkable frequency.
One of his first major commissions involving dogs was a fashion shoot dedicated to women’s shoes for *The New York Times Sunday Magazine*. Erwitt decided that the best way to photograph the shoes was from pavement level. This marked the birth of his distinctive viewpoint, which would later recur frequently in his work.
– ‘Photographs of dogs work on two levels. Dogs are simply amusing when captured in certain situations. But they also have human traits. I hope these photographs speak to the human condition, ’ said the photographer. Erwitt’s dogs thus speak of the need for similarity, closeness, control, elegance and self-presentation. In one of the shots, the hairstyle of a small Chihuahua harmonises almost perfectly with that of the woman looking into the lens. In keeping with the artist’s passion, visitors are welcome to bring their four-legged friends to the exhibition.
Poland in Erwitt’s photographs
Not all of the photographer’s fans realise that he also worked in Warsaw, Kraków, Częstochowa and Gdańsk. The retrospective features three photographs taken during these trips. Among them is the famous scene by the confessional. At first glance, the frame seems calm, almost still. It is only after a moment that we begin to observe the posture of the people waiting. An ordinary situation transforms into a study of relationships. This is how many of Erwitt’s works function. On the surface, they seem to show nothing of great significance: a walk, a queue, a beach, a kiss reflected in a car mirror. Yet the photographer was able to capture the moment when the ordinary began to speak of something more.
‘The work that matters to me is extremely simple. I observe, I try to entertain, but above all I want the photographs to evoke emotions. There are few other things that interest me in photography,’ he said.
The exhibition is also a reminder that history is not made up solely of official events, names and dates. It is also shaped by private gestures, the way people look at things, their clothing, the behaviour of people on the street, or the relationship between a person and their dog. – Exploring the past can begin precisely with an image – with an attempt to piece together the facts, find the context and ask what happened outside the frame – emphasises Katarzyna Puchalska.
“Elliott Erwitt. Retrospective’ was organised to mark the 20th anniversary of DSH in collaboration with Magnum Photos. The exhibition is sponsored by Nikon. The exhibition can be viewed until 20 September 2026 at the gallery at 20 Karowa Street in Warsaw. Admission is free.
source: press materials
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