INTERVIEW: Elliott Erwitt comes into focus
Photo: Elliott Erwitt is the subject of the new documentary Elliott Erwitt, Silence Sounds Good. Here, Erwitt photographs a gentleman on a tobacco farm in Viñales, Cuba, July 2015. Photo courtesy of Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu / Provided by press rep with permission.
Photographer Elliott Erwitt is one of the most influential and respected photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries. For decades, he has documented life and culture in the United States and around the world, and the nonagenarian continues to impress with his keen eye for movement, color, perspective and energetic life.
Erwitt’s life, both personal and professional, is the subject of a new documentary from his longtime traveling assistant, Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu, a respected photographer in her own right who documented Puerto Rican women in Spanish Harlem for a project called Life on the Block. Her film, Elliott Erwitt, Silence Sounds Good, will premiere at DOC NYC Sunday, Nov. 10.
“What inspired me was honestly the time limits we have with a friend when you see that he is aging,” Sanfeliu said about the motivation behind the 60-minute film. “It was an interesting situation. The idea of making a film actually came from him. I proposed that he make a book about our travels together. We did a lot of traveling together when I was assisting on international projects, so my idea was initially to make a photographic book, kind of like a travel diary, but fun, quirky. Elliott was at a time where he had been proposed to go to Cuba, to return there after 50 years, and he was already feeling a little bit challenged by his age. And all of a sudden, when I asked him what he thought of the idea of making this book, his response was, ‘Why don’t you make a documentary before I croak?’”
The resulting film is a thoughtful testimony to the man’s career — a career that has included iconic images of presidents, popes and everyday people walking the streets of whatever country Erwitt may be photographing. Looking at his images, many of them classics that have appeared in magazines, is like looking at a history of the 20th century.
Erwitt was born in Paris in 1928 to Russian parents, according to press notes for the film. He grew up in Milan, Italy, before coming to the United States in 1939. His first exposure (pun intended) to American culture was in the hills of Hollywood, California, and the movie stars and unique settings of the celebrity-driven area, dripping in neon, fashion and personal style, provided him enough to motivation to keep clicking away on his camera.
Later on, he moved to New York City, served in the United States Army and got hired to document Standard Oil Company. The 1950s, a productive decade for the photographer, saw him join Magnum Photos as a freelancer for magazines.
For Sanfeliu, who worked as a photographer for the International Press for more than a decade, the decision to film the life of her friend was an easy one to make. “I didn’t think about it,” she confessed. “When you’re close to someone, and that someone is as big as he is in the visual world and he puts that kind of trust in you, you just have to embark on the journey.”
The documentary only runs one hour, so some of the more difficult and complex issues pertaining to the photographer’s life are left out. These “delicate questions,” as Sanfeliu put it, might come up in conversation between friends, but they proved too difficult and convoluted for a legacy film. Most of these issues centered on family, past marriages and children.
Sanfeliu’s friendship with Erwitt has been strong for years. The two had a chance meeting at a mutual friend’s birthday party, and they soon enough started working together.
“I was introduced to Elliott through a very good friend of ours in common, which is Mark Lubell,” she said. “He is the current director of the International Center of Photography, and at that time, he was the director of the New York Magnum office — Magnum Photos, the agency. So Mark invited me to his brother’s birthday party at a bar in downtown Manhattan and told me, ‘Elliott is coming. I want you to meet him. I know you guys are going to connect,’ and that’s exactly what happened. I went to the party. I was introduced to Elliott. We started chatting, and we ended up having cocktails at Jimmy’s Corner in Times Square. So that’s how it began, and then Elliott was invited to go to Japan. He didn’t feel like going by himself. He first asked Mark. Mark was not available, and then he said, ‘Oh, maybe Adriana wants to come.’ So it was an informal connection, and then we professionalized it. So I became his professional travel assistant and photo assistant, but it was initially just two people getting along.”
Sanfeliu, a native of Barcelona, was a fan of Erwitt’s work. In fact, before knowing him personally, she even attended a 2006 book signing by Erwitt in the south of France. She was so taken by his energy and longevity, and that admiration has only grown over the years.
“He’s 91 precisely, and he definitely has a lot of energy,” she said. “He doesn’t have a lot of physical energy at the moment, but he definitely has the energy in his mind. He’s a very lively person, very curious, doesn’t take things for granted. He always finds a way to make you smile, make you laugh and find a different way of looking at things. He’s always very awake, lively, even if he doesn’t appear sometimes physically or in his expressions … but inside he’s very lively, very curious, with an incredible imagination, sense of humor, very cultivated, very intelligent. He’s impressive, very driven and always curious and excited to embark on a new project.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@Hollywood Soapbox.com
Elliott Erwitt, Silence Sounds Good, directed by Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu, will premiere at DOC NYC Sunday, Nov. 10. Click here for more information and tickets.
