Just point & shoot

On a balmy afternoon in Kuala Lumpur, Elliott Erwitt is propped against a pillar in a Hindu temple, silently observing a wedding ceremony. A Leica rangefinder is slung around his neck.

Suddenly, he deftly brings the camera to his eye and takes a single shot of the bride and groom. Then, just as unobtrusively, he hobbles away with a dignified gait, using a walking cane with a bicycle horn attached.

Unknown to the couple, they have just been photographed by one of the world's most influential living photographers.

Erwitt, 85, is considered by many to be one of the greatest living photographers. He is known as much for his powerful black-and-white photographs of key historical events - such as Richard Nixon poking Nikita Khrushchev in the chest at the height of the Cold War in 1959, and a veiled Jackie Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's funeral in 1963 - as for his whimsical snaps of street life and dogs. He has captured Marilyn Monroe on the sets of her movies, The Seven Year Itch and The Misfits, a smiling Che Guevara with cigar in hand, and anonymous lovers in dozens of poster-worthy passionate clinches.

The president of the prestigious Magnum photo agency in the late 1960s, he has more than 20 books to his name, countless exhibitions worldwide and numerous awards - including the Lifetime Achievement award given out by the International Center of Photography in New York City.

In a recent interview, the celebrated photographer is coy, almost dismissive, about his achievements. "I just want to be a photographer," the Manhattanite tells Life! in a Kuala Lumpur hotel conference room.

It is whisky that brings him to the Malaysian capital. Whisky label The Macallan had commissioned him to turn his lens on Scotland, producing 58 individual images. Each image is limited to editions of 35 signed prints.

Those signed prints were paired with one of 58 single-cask whiskies and packaged together with a limited-edition book of 158 pictures, titled Elliott Erwitt's Great Scottish Adventure - with a flask of the single malt concealed in its pages. Only 224 of these sets, priced at $1,850 each, are available in South-east Asia. Past editions of this collaborative Masters of Photography series, now in its fourth instalment, have been with England's Rankin, Scotland's Albert Watson and the United States' Annie Leibovitz.

Erwitt's series, all in black and white, are of the Scottish highlands and islands, the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and their people. In one whimsical snap, children and adults in kilts line up for fish and chips from a van marked Peedie Chippie.

The legendary photographer says the Macallan project was a dream assignment. "There was no brief. I was totally free to shoot whatever strikes and interests me," he explains.

Indeed, Mr Ken Grier, director of malts from The Erdington Group, which owns The Macallan photography series and is the man behind it, says: "When you've got a genius like Elliott, you cannot really tell him what to shoot."

A good photograph, says Erwitt, is one which evokes feelings.

"Emotions are the basis of everything," he says calmly yet assertively. "If it doesn't engage you, doesn't make you feel something or inform you in some way, then it's not a great picture."

He names as one of his "more popular photographs" a 1953 image of his first wife Lucienne Matthews and their firstborn Ellen. The mum gazes lovingly at the naked baby, then six days old, lying on the bed. A cat is sprawled nearby, as though watching over the infant, and soft light spills in from a window, infusing the scene with a tender drama reminiscent of a Rembrandt painting.

"You can say it paid my daughter's way through college," adds Erwitt of the royalties which poured in from licensing that photo. Ms Ellen Erwitt, now 60, told Smithsonian Magazine in 2002 that Mother And Child has been so popular that "it amazes me how many people 'know' me and my family". Elliott Erwitt and Matthews divorced in 1962.

While he refuses to say which is his favourite picture ("It's like asking someone who's his favourite child. I might have one, but I wouldn't tell you"), he speaks fondly of other pictures he took in his 60-year career. Such as photographs of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles taken in Moscow during the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Union - one of the world's first of the Red Army's missiles.

"That was a world scoop in 1957," he recalls. "A long time ago, but still very memorable."

The photograph had been taken at a parade closed to foreigners, he adds, but he had managed to slip past security checkpoints to photograph the gritty black-and-white pictures, which eventually made the front pages and covers of numerous publications worldwide.

"I would say I was more lucky than anything else. Luck has been a very important factor in my professional life and otherwise," he says.

He started taking photographs in high school. While serving as a photographer with the United States Army during the Korean War, he submitted his pictures of barrack life to a competition run by Life magazine and won second prize.

Soon, Erwitt, who says his favourite photographer is the late French photographer and Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, was shooting for magazines such as Life, Holiday and Collier's, and commercial clients such as Air France and KLM.

On why he has never been drawn to war photography, despite being brought into Magnum by famed war photographer Robert Capa, he says plainly: "You could get hurt." He adds that it is "glamorous enough just to be a photographer".

In the 1970s, he turned his attention from still to moving images. He helmed or worked as a director of photography on documentaries and feature films for clients such as HBO, including documentary shorts such as Beauty Knows No Pain (1972), about an American dancing drill team, and the awardwinning Glassmakers Of Herat (1977), about a family of glassmakers in western Afghanistan.

But clashes with the new HBO management led him to return to his first love of still photography in the 1990s.

Erwitt, who now lives opposite Central Park in Manhattan, has little patience for "pretentious" photography theories. He once said in an interview that the best way to learn photography is to read the instructions on the box and shoot.

In 2009, he published a book under the name Andre S. Solidor (with a set of rude initials) to satirise the excesses of contemporary photography. An exhibition of the photographs, consisting of fish heads with cigars in their mouths and nude mannequins in incongruous places, was held in 2011 at London's Paul Smith gallery.

True to his reputation for low tolerance of drawn-out interviews, the photographer starts showing signs of impatience midway through our hour-long interview. He fidgets in his seat, sips his coffee more frequently and glances surreptitiously at his watch.

"You must think that I think a lot," he says bluntly in response to my question about the role of photography in society. "These are things that don't particularly bother or interest me."

But he does not mince his words when talking about the current state of the photography industry. "The person who fired the photographers is an idiot," he says, referring to how the Chicago Sun-Times fired the newspaper's entire photo staff of 28 last year in favour of commissioning freelancers and letting reporters fill the paper with photographs shot on their mobile phones.

"There are photographers who just get an exposure. And there are those who go a little deeper. The ones who go a little deeper are in short supply. But to think someone with an iPhone can duplicate the work of a working photographer is stupid," he adds.

Married and divorced four times, he has four daughters and two sons from those unions.

"Photographers are not a good risk in marriage, judging from my colleagues and myself," he says, conceding that his dedication to the craft has cost him much in his personal life.

He has no plans to retire. He jokes that he has been postponing his midlife crisis for some time.

These days, he busies himself with exhibitions and book projects which, he explains, are ways of justifying his life. He is now putting together a book, titled Regarding Women, which will contain new portraits as well as previously unseen pictures he has shot of women.

In his words: "I have no plans of dropping dead any time soon."

ELLIOTT ERWITT

1928: Born Elio Romano Ervitz in Paris on July 26 to Russian immigrant parents

1939: Emigrates to New York City in the United States. Changes his name to Elliott Erwitt

1941: Moves to Hollywood, Los Angeles. Picks up photography while working in a darkroom processing prints of movie stars

1944: Studies photography at Los Angeles City College

1948: Moves back to New York. Attends film classes at the New School for Social Research

1951: Drafted into the US Army during the Korean war. Serves as a photographer with the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France

1953: Joins the prestigious Magnum photo agency at the invitation of famed war photographer Robert Capa.

In the same year, Erwitt takes the now widely recognised photograph of his first wife and newborn daughter

1968: Serves as president of Magnum Photos for three terms

1970s: Starts making films, including noted documentaries such as Beauty Knows No Pain (1972), and Red, White And Bluegrass (1973), about musicians performing in North Carolina

1980s: Produces 17 comedy films for HBO

1990s: Returns to doing still photography full time. Works on exhibitions and book projects

2011: Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography in New York

2013: Official launch of the Elliott Erwitt edition of The Macallan Masters of Photography series in Los Angeles

deslim@sph.com.sg

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