Elliott Erwitt American, b. France, 1928- Elliott Erwitt is known for the wry sense of humor and irreverent view of the world revealed through his personal work. Born in Paris, during the 1940s he studied photography at Los Angeles City College and film at the New School for Social Research in New York. He worked as a cameraman in France (1949-50), as a staff photographer for Roy Stryker for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Pittsburgh Photo Library (1950-52), and as a photographic assistant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps (1951-53). After settling in New York City in the 1950s, Erwitt joined the magnum photo cooperative and began work as a photojournalist and commercial photographer. He is best known, however, for his personal photographs: humorous images of people and/or dogs that record unexpected or incongruous juxtapositions of subject, setting, and situation. Erwitt's pictures have been featured in one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1964), the Art Institute of Chicago (1974), and the International Center of Photography, New York (1989), as well as in numerous group exhibitions. He has also made several documentary films, including Beauty Knows No Pain (1973), Arthur Penn (1970), Red, White, and Bluegrass (1973), and Beautiful, Baby, Beautiful (1980). M.M.