
Hannah Shapiro
Cataloguer & Sale Coordinator
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Cataloguer & Sale Coordinator

Specialist, Head of Sale

Head of Department
Provenance
The photographer to Richard Coplan, circa 2012
Literature
Elliott Erwitt, Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best (Kempen, 2009), p. 184
Elliott Erwitt, Elliott Erwitt's Paris (Kempen, 2010), cover; pp. 10-11
Exhibited
Elliott Erwitt: Photographs from the Collection of Richard Coplan and Martin R. Mallinger, Boca Raton Museum of Art, 9 November 2014 - 11 January 2015
The Art of Observation: The Best of Photographer Elliott Erwitt, D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts / Springfield Museums, 9 November 2019 - 12 January 2020; Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, 17 September - 31 December 2022
Note
This lyrical image was chosen for the cover of the book Elliott Erwitt's Paris. It can be interpreted as an homage to his mentor Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose 1932 image Behind the Gare St. Lazare set a high bar for future photographers. Both compositions are defined by their leaping figures and rain-slicked streets. Whereas Erwitt worked with a horizontal format, Cartier-Bresson's image is decidedly vertical in orientation. Both emblematic images capture the City of Light at a 'decisive moment'.