A veteran photojournalist raids a lifetime's trove of powerful
images to illustrate the ticklish subject of how men and women
relate to each other - or don't. Erwitt (To the Dogs, not reviewed)
explains in an amiably rambling introduction that the impetus for
this book came from a chance assignment to do "photos of couples"
for a Japanese magazine. Looking back over his oeuvre, he found the
theme a constant and powerful one. All the pictures, sumptuously
reproduced here in black and white, are technically accomplished.
Most are pointed, emotionally loaded, and charged with a dry sense
of narrative wit. Graphically striking, the book uses left- and
right-page image counterposings to ironic effect. Logically, Erwitt
opens with shots of children, then moves on to adult lovers, and
closes with elderly pairs. A grainy and light-infused 1972 shot
from Rio de Janeiro shows a young boy and girl meeting
conspiratorially under a tree: He sits atop a tricycle brandishing
a toy pistol as she eyes him with gravity - a miniature Bonnie and
Clyde. A 1952 photo from Valencia, Spain, shows a young couple seen
through a kitchen doorway in a dance-step embrace, their faces
obscured, she with her apron on. In Krakow, Poland, in 1972, Erwitt
captured a middle-aged woman in a garish striped frock offering her
hand to be kissed by a drab-looking businessman. Towards the end,
aged couples argue in Saint-Tropez, fill a car with gas in Iowa,
dance on a Manhattan rooftop. Erwitt presents himself as a voyeur
with a purpose, a lensman dedicated to capturing glimpses of our
shared, international human condition. From stagy set-up to candid
ditty, this selection shows off Erwitt's skills as a master of the
modern photographic idiom, one with a clear idea of what he wants
his work to say. (Kirkus Reviews)
From an early age on I perceived a striking difference between men
and women. As I grow older, that perception deepens. So writes
Elliott Erwitt, tongue slightly in cheek, in this wonderful new
collection of his photographs from around the world. Children
perceive the difference between the sexes at an early age and we
see them here discovering it for the first time. Older people have
known the difference for years and we see them savoring it. In
between, Between the Sexes is a sometimes poignant, sometimes
outrageous record of males and females trying (and sometimes not
trying) to get along, with wildly varying results.
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