Interview with Elliott Erwitt by Peter Adams

Like the time during the war that he cut the hole in his gas mask so he could get his cigar through. Or the fact that he answers the phone by saying ‘Speaking!” long before the caller has had the chance to ask for anyone in particular. Even his front door mat is an anachronism, reading ‘GO AWAY’ instead of ‘WELCOME.

Sean Callagahan writes of arriving as a visitor at Elliott’s small foyer from the elevator :“The visitor takes a half step out and freezes. Good Christ! It’s a moose. Up there on the wall, crowding this tiny room and its visitor, is a huge stuffed head. The elevator leaves, sealing the visitor into the gloom, while he is left to fumble absent mindedly for the doorbell”.  

On another occasion, after a particularly tedious photography assignment in Elliott’s apartment, an advertising art director paused to notice the overbearing moose. “Yes, we call him Mickey,” said Elliott. The art director rolled his eyes upwards, as if to call for divine intervention. Just as the elevator door closed, Elliott squeezed in one more line “But you can call him by his nickname – Chocolate.” 

“Making people laugh” said Elliott, “is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry alternatively- as Chaplin does - now that’s the highest of all personal achievements. I don’t know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as a supreme goal.” 

Eugene Ostroff, one of the world’s foremost authorities on early photographic techniques, tells this story about Erwitt: “One time, Elliott was trying out a new whirlpool film washing technique of his own invention – he’d tie a roll of freshly developed film to a piece of string and drop it into the toilet bowl, and flush it every ten minutes – he only stopped when a roll of film got away from him.”

“There’s no great mystique to photography.” Said Elliott. “A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they’ve suffered and so forth. 

“Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures.”