Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023); 'North Carolina, USA' (Water Fountains);

Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023) 'North Carolina, USA' (Water Fountains), 1950 Gelatin silver print, printed later; 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. 14 1/2 x 21 7/8 in. (36.8 x 55.6 cm.) sheet 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.) Footnotes: Provenance The photographer to Richard Coplan, circa 2012 Literature Sam Holmes, Elliott Erwitt: Photographs and Anti-Photographs (Greenwich, 1972), p. 36 Elliott Erwitt, Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best (Kempen, 2009), p. 16 Quentin Bajac et al., eds., Photography at MoMA: 1920 to 1960 (New York, 2016), pl. 415 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 During a 1950 visit to the American South, Elliott Erwitt used his newly purchased Leica camera, which allowed him to work with a more rectangular format, in contrast to the squarish format he achieved with his Rolleiflex camera in the 1940s (see Lots 2-4). During this particular trip, he often documented visible examples of racism, which he found abhorrent. Through his images, he aimed to depict the universality of human dignity. In this photograph, an African American man bends to drink from a rudimentary water fountain labeled 'Colored'. To the left stands a refrigerated fountain marked 'White.' For the next seventy years, Erwitt continued to document the human condition. Note This image was included in the 1965 exhibition Elliott Erwitt: Improbable Photographs, curated by John Szarkowski at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing