Elliott Erwitt was born Elio Romano Ervitz to Russian-Jewish parents in Paris in 1928. He spent his childhood in Milan, and emigrated to the US in 1939 when fascism drove his family out of Italy. Erwitt was living with his father in Los Angeles when he began to take portraits of local people to make money. Working in a commercial darkroom, the teenage photographer spent time printing images of actors before further experimentations with photography at Los Angeles City College. In 1948, Erwitt moved to New York, the city that would go on to provide material for the work of much of his career, and where his life and family would be centered. After a time working as a janitor, he took up film classes at the New School for Social Research.
Erwitt traveled to France and Italy in 1949 with the Rolleiflex camera that he favored during those years. In 1951, he was drafted for military service and undertook various photographic duties while serving in a unit of the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France.
While in New York, Erwitt met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker, the former head of the Farm Security Administration. Stryker had contributed to the careers of Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks and more. He initially hired Erwitt for a job in New Jersey, for the Standard Oil Company, where Stryker was compiling a photographic library. Following this, Stryker commissioned Erwitt to undertake a…