Why I Don't Much Like This Elliot Erwitt Photo February 2009 Let me start off by saying that Elliot Erwitt is one of my favorite photographers. I was first exposed to his work when I saw his film Beauty Knows No Pain, a short documentary about Texas drill team tryouts that is both hilarious and sad; and I love the big Snaps book, which I look at all the time for inspiration--both for photography and writing. But there's an insipid streak to Erwitt that I've never been wild about. I don't love his dog pictures, for instance, though a few of them--like the one of the guy with the bulldog on his lap--are terrific. And by and large, I don't like any of Erwitt's men-and-women pictures, especially the ones of children made to look like adults (the dance contest winners one, for instance); these pictures seem embarrasingly mawkish, especially from a guy who has given us such arresting takes on race and class. One of these latter photos has always particularly bugged me. Not a lot, mind you, just a little, but it stands for something I dislike in general about Erwitt, and about other photographers too, including Cartier-Bresson. Here it is: Now, if I had seen this moment, and had had a camera on me, I have to admit, I would have snapped it too. Who wouldn't? It's a good visual joke, nicely composed, wry and knowing. But here's what bothers me. First, the photo seems to have a message, or a moral. It seems to be saying, "Men like women, women like clothes." Not to make too big a deal of this, but does an artist of Erwitt's stature really have to recycle such a sentimental bit of status quo? Men and women are different, yes, and sometimes that difference results in some prime yuks. But there's something of the greeting card about this picture. That's a minor quibble, though--far be it from me to tell a guy how sentimental he can or can't be. No, the main thing is that this picture, broadly put, is a lie. At the moment Erwitt took it, the men were indeed looking at the nude, and the woman was indeed looking at the clothed model. But, doubtless, the men were in front of the other picture mere moments before, or after. I don't argue that the nude wouldn't have particular titillating interest for those who like looking at naked women--god knows I'd linger a bit longer in front of that one myself. But the photo attempts to posit an amusing universal truth that is not, in fact, true. And I doubt seriously that, given the wide accessibility of images of naked women, those guys would be terribly turned on by the painting. Everyone in a museum is generally there to look at art. The guy in the trenchcoat makes it worse--we're supposed to see this as a further symbol of the men's sexual excitement, and to find this funny. But realistically, it's just a guy in a trenchcoat. He probably doesn't have anything under there worth laughing at. Here's a quote from a short piece I found online about a book Erwitt put out in 1999: When talking about a small note at the front of the book stating that none of the photographs had been electronically altered, a hint of steel enters his gentle voice: "I put that in all my books. I'm almost violent about that stuff -- electronic manipulation of pictures. I think it's an abomination. I reject it all. I mean, it's OK for selling corn flakes or automobiles or for taking pimples out of Elizabeth Taylor's face, but it undermines the thing that photography is about, which is about observation and not about manipulation of images." OK, now, for the most part, I'm with Erwitt. If you're presenting your photographs as a kind of truth, then you shouldn't explicitly turn them into fiction with Photoshop. But really--does Erwitt truly think that there is such a thing as a non-manipulative image? Every picture ever taken is taken out of context, and in the photograph above, he is using a sliver of truth to put forth a benign, but undeniable, lie. And if I want to be a real dork about it, plenty of manipulation goes on even in the analog darkroom: cropping, dodging, burning, pushing and pulling. Hell--even choosing what to print from a contact sheet can be manipulative. Case in point: doubtless you've seen this one: I love that picture, I must admit. If you went to the big Arbus retrospective a few years back, you'll remember that the contact sheet with this picture on it was on display there. And in every other shot on the contact sheet, this kid looks like a normal, healthy, cute kid just fooling around in the park. Only here does he look like a budding violent lunatic with a muscular disorder. Take a look: I think the reason I like the photo, though, is its intent--I feel that Arbus loved the fleeting moments of madness in everyone, the ways in which all ordinary people are weird, and that's a philosophy I hold dear. Whereas with the Erwitt, what's being communicated, though no less of a lie, is a cliché. So I guess I'm arguing for a double standard, aren't I. A lie is all right if it communicates something that interests me, but it isn't if it communicates something that doesn't. Well--not quite. I think that Arbus, for all her flaws, was striving to tell us something about ourselves that is not immediately obvious, and that we don't necessarily want to know. You can throw Nan Goldin into this category, too. These are artists whose aim is to challenge, if not to explicitly shock, and I respect this goal, if not always its execution. Erwitt, on the other hand, at least here, is telling us something that we supposedly already know. He's offering us an insider's pleasure, an elbow to the ribs. And that feels a little cheap to me. So what Erwitt do I like? This one: That's from the "Unseen" book, and it's my favorite Erwitt mode, the one where he appreciates the strangeness of life. The nice thing about Erwitt, ultimately, is that he's a lot of photographers, any one of whom could have had a career all by himself. You don't have to like all the Erwitts, you can pick and choose. And I pick that guy. Text and photos c2009 by J. Robert Lennon.