Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023); 'Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania' (Boy with Toy Gun);

Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023) 'Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania' (Boy with Toy Gun), 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 5/8 x 21 1/2 in. (37.1 x 54.6 cm.) sheet 20 x 23 7/8 in. (50.8 x 60.6 cm.) Footnotes: Provenance The photographer to Richard Coplan, circa 2012 Literature Sam Holmes, Elliott Erwitt: Photographs and Anti-Photographs (Greenwich, 1972), p. 37 Sean Callahan, Masters of Contemporary Photography, Elliott Erwitt, The Private Experience: Personal Insights of a Professional Photographer (Los Angeles, 1974), p. 34 Elliott Erwitt, Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best (Kempen, 2009), p. 36 Elliott Erwitt, Pittsburgh 1950 (London, 2017), p. 68 Exhibited Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best, Personal Choice, Chanel Nexus Hall, Toyko, 6 April - May 6 2007 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 In autumn 1950, Erwitt accompanied Roy Stryker - the head of the Farm Security Administration photographic project for the U.S. government in the 1930s - to Pittsburgh to document the Steel City for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The young photographer took this disconcerting image of a young boy pointing a toy gun at his own head when he happened upon a group of kids playing cowboys in the Hill District, a vibrant African American neighborhood. Erwitt recounted his time in Pittsburgh: 'That was the best kind of shooting because it was just anything at all, just going out and walking all day long and snapping away.' (quoted in Elliott Erwitt: Photographs and Anti-Photographs, p. 124.) Historian Vaughn Wallace further elaborated on this period of work: 'Many of Erwitt's days were spent photographing the children of Pittsburgh. Young photographers often gravitate towards children as subjects - kids are, by their nature, spontaneous, energetic, charismatic before a lens - but Erwitt's images of children offer what amounts to a remarkably nuanced look not only at childhood, but race relations in the Steel City of the early 1950s.' (Pittsburgh 1950: Elliott Erwitt, p. 139) For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing