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I wasn't imposing my presence on anyone, which is very important for a would- be journalist. I stayed back. Always let people be themselves.

Elliott Erwitt

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Elliott Erwitt
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: July 26
Film Director
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Paris
France
André S. Solidor
Elio Romano Ervitz
Andre S. Solidor
Elliot Erwitt
Always
Journalist
Would
Photographer
People
Presence
Photography
Wasn
Anyone
Back
Imposing
Important
Stayed

More quotes by Elliott Erwitt

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Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That's when magic comes in. And I don't know that there's any explanation for that.
Elliott Erwitt
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I am serious about not being serious.
Elliott Erwitt
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Do what the client wants, not what you want.
Elliott Erwitt
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It's about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organising them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.
Elliott Erwitt
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The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.
Elliott Erwitt
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I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They're extraordinarily good.
Elliott Erwitt
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I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it's all serious work - they're just a reaction to what I see. I don't leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself 'Today I'm going to be funny and tomorrow I'm going to be sad.'
Elliott Erwitt
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Most photographers work best alone, myself included.
Elliott Erwitt
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Covering a historic event is perfectly legitimate. It's not sneaking into somebody's boudoir... These people belong to history, and not to record that if you have the opportunity would be wrong.
Elliott Erwitt
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You don't study photography, you just do it.
Elliott Erwitt
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Working myself into a position of total versatility, so that I can do anything I want to do at the time I want to do it. Whether I do it or not is another question.
Elliott Erwitt
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I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.
Elliott Erwitt
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It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture.
Elliott Erwitt
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You must have a visual sense if you want to be a photographer. It is a very subtle thing, this visual business.
Elliott Erwitt
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Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.
Elliott Erwitt
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As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see - but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I've done, even if they don't understand how I've done it.
Elliott Erwitt
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In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.
Elliott Erwitt
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I don't like explosions. I don't mind progress. But digital photography has made every man, woman, child and chimpanzee a photographer of sorts and consequently has numbed down the general quality of photographs.
Elliott Erwitt
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Balance of light is the problem, not the amount. Balance between shadows and highlights determines where the emphasis goes in the picture...make sure the major light in a picture falls at right angles to the camera.
Elliott Erwitt
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If you've got no responsibility and don't have to generate a certain amount of cash each month, and can live on a shoestring, and are ambitious enough, then you might have a chance. You can be dedicated but that is no guarantee that you'll make it. I rely on a hunch, a little luck, and some cunning.
Elliott Erwitt