Last Laughs, 2025

When great black and white photography and tongue-in-cheek humour come together, as they did with Elliott Erwitt, the result is a unique coffee table book like “Last Laughs”. No one was better than the New York photography legend at observing everyday scenes around the world with heart and humour through the lens of his camera. Shortly before his death in 2023, he curated this wonderful selection of amusing, tongue-in-cheek snapshots for his last major photo book, which are also tinged with a touch of wistful nostalgia from today’s perspective.

Elliott Erwitt mastered the art of capturing special moments in seemingly casual everyday scenes with his camera. Whether stars or unknown faces in the streets, whether people or dogs, when the photography legend Erwitt observed the world through the lens of his camera, his sense of humour was always his companion. It is the unmistakable signature of his photography in black and white that turned these tongue-in-cheek glances at the lives of others into impressive documents of contemporary history: a wonderful, sometimes melancholy book of hand-picked photographic moments full of nostalgia and humour.

Elliott Erwitt was the grand seigneur of magazine photography, a long-standing member of the famous Magnum Photos agency and also served as its vice-president. The widely travelled photojournalist knew how to document contemporary history and snapshots of life like no other. Whether celebrities such as Marylin Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, ordinary people on the streets of New York or his favourite animal subject, dogs, he was able to capture the humour in everyday scenes in an incomparable way. Erwitt passed away in 2023, but the legacy of the photography legend lives on – with a wink in black and white and this, his last self-curated photo book “Last Laughs”.

Exhibition Elliott Erwitt, Last Laughs on view at Atlas Gallery:  21 November 2025 – 7 March 2026.