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Lot 85
Elliott Erwitt(1928-2023)'Washington, D.C., Inaugural Ball'
3 – 13 September 2024, 12:00 EDT
Online, New YorkSold for US$2,176 inc. premium
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Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023)
'Washington, D.C., Inaugural Ball', 2009
Pigment print; signed in ink in the margin, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the reverse, framed, a Boca Raton Museum of Art label on the reverse.
12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm.)
sheet 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm.)
Pigment print; signed in ink in the margin, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the reverse, framed, a Boca Raton Museum of Art label on the reverse.
12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm.)
sheet 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm.)
Footnotes
Provenance
The photographer to Richard Coplan, circa 2012
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
On 20 January 2009, Elliott Erwitt attended the Inaugural Ball of the 44th President of the United States, where he captured President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greeting a sea of people at the momentous event. For more than half a century, Erwitt photographed many American presidents. These images not only chronicle different administrations, but they also visualize shifts and ruptures in American politics and culture. Over the arc of his long career, Erwitt documented segregation in America as early as 1950 (see Lot 11) as well as the United States under the leadership of its first African American president nearly six decades later.
In 2011, Erwitt recalled President Obama's inauguration: "I got one picture that I like out of it. I thought that was unusual. It was very exciting. It's one of the great privileges of my profession to witness historical events and to go right into them and experience them. It's one of the great rewards of the profession."