Elliott Erwitt Snaps is a comprehensive survey of Erwitt's work containing more than 500 pictures, many never published before. From famous images like Khrushchev and Nixon arguing in Moscow in 1959 and Marilyn Monroe with the cast of The Misfits, to more personal subjects, Erwitt's distinctively witty style captures the famous and the ordinary, the strange and the mundane over a period of more than half a century.
The book's nine chapters, entitled Look, Move, Play, Read, Rest, Touch, Tell, Point and Stand, act as a means of grouping and organizing – making broad connections while playing a game of pun and ambiguity in keeping with the visual games Erwitt plays with the camera.
'The hallmarks of an Erwitt classic: the ability to spot an absurd juxtaposition and to record it with childlike delight Ö This tome shows that he hasn't lost any of the visual wit that makes one relish his pictures, while, at the same time, recognizing the melancholy that infuses any realization of the arbitrariness of existence.' (Time Out)
'Rare among photographers, Erwitt can make you laugh out loud (just turn to pages 86-87), but his scope is Tolstoyan. This 550-page retrospective will absorb you for years.' (Independent)
'An essential career-spanning retrospective that reveals Erwitt's unassuming wit, brilliant framing and deep humanity.' (New York Post)