1992 A Gallery for Fine Photography; New Orleans,
Louisiana
1995 Between the Sexes; Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles,
California
2000 Elliott Erwitt: Photographs from the Hofstra Museum
Collection; Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
2004 Elliott Erwitt’s Hand Work; The JCC in Manhattan,
New York, New York
Group Exhibitions
1955 The Family of Man; Museum of Modern Art, New
York, New York
2004 The New York Subway: A Centennial Celebration;
Lower Level Dining Concourse, East and West Pullman
Cars, New York, New York
2004 Magnum New Yorkers; The Museum of the City of
New York, New York, New York
Further Reading
Bunnell, Peter C.Degrees of Guidance: Essays on Twentieth-
Century American Photography. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Callahan, Sean.The Private Experience, Elliott Erwitt. Lon-
don: Thames + Hudson, 1974.
Danziger, James.Interviews with Master Photographers.
New York: Paddington Press, distributed by Grosset &
Dunlap, 1977.
Erwitt, Elliott.Photographs and Anti-Photographs. Essay by
Sam Holmes, introd. by John Szarkowski. Greenwich,
CT; New York Graphic Society, 1972.
———.Son of Bitch. Unleashed by P. G. Wodehouse. New
York: Grossman Publishers, 1974.
———.Recent Developments: Photographs. Introd. by Wil-
frid Sheed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
———.Personal Exposures. New York: W.W. Norton,
1988.
———.Elliott Erwitt. Milano: Idea Books, 1989.
———.Between the Sexes. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.
———.Dog / dogs. London: Phaidon, 1998.
———.Museum Watching / Elliott Erwitt. London: Phai-
don, 1999.
———.Elliott Erwitt Snaps. Text by Murray Sayle. Lon-
don and New York: Phaidon, 2001.ETHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Although a comprehensive examination of the ethics
of photography has yet to be written, there have
been sustained investigations into specific genres
within photography, including photojournalism,
portraiture, and—to a lesser extent—documentary
and street photography in which the question of
ethics naturally arises, given the specific intent of
the genre.
Photojournalism
The photojournalistic context is that in which the
photographer makes a photograph with the aim
of informing the public by publication of the
image in a newspaper, magazine, or other mass-
circulation medium. Famous examples include
Eddie Adams’s image of the summary execution
of a Viet Cong prisoner, and Robert Capa’s im-
ages made during the Spanish Civil War, particu-
larly that known as ‘‘Falling Soldier’’ (Loyalist
Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Mur-
iano, September 5, 1936) and the D-Day invasion
at Normandy.
A central ethical consideration in photojournal-
ism is connected with questions about the kind of
understanding that such images can engender. At
least since Plato’s canonical discussion in Book X
of theRepublic, it has been argued that images are
incapable of fostering the kind of understanding
that is required for knowledge. The contrast is
with words, which can provide the sort of narra-
tive that is required for ethical evaluation, or for
what Susan Sontag in her essay ‘‘In Plato’s Cave’’
calls ‘‘ethical or political knowledge.’’
Consider the example of Adams’s photograph of
the summary execution. The image itself enables the
viewer to know at most that an individual was killed
in a deliberate way by means of a pistol shot to the
head. But such limited knowledge falls far short of
what the viewer needs to know in order to ethically
evaluate the act. For such evaluation further knowl-
edge is required concerning such things as the events
leading up to the killing and the mental states of theERWITT, ELLIOTT