“Elliott Erwitt’s Kolor,” a weighty and lavish collection of the photographer’s color work dating back to the 1950s, mostly on Kodachrome but also some Ektachrome, is being published by teNeues this month in Germany and next month in the United States.

Born in 1928 and known for capturing the absurd with wryness, Mr. Erwitt‘s book is made up mostly of his professional photographs, which still reflect, despite their commercial requirements, an essence that speaks so assertively of the black-and-white work for which he is known. As Sean Callahan writes in the foreword: “Although color is the currency of commercial photography, Erwitt will deny that his choice of black and white for his fine art work had anything to do with market considerations. ‘Color’ he says, ‘is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.'”

His son, Misha Erwitt, a well-established photographer in his own right, interviewed the elder Mr. Erwitt on color, and other topics. Their conversation has been edited.

Q.

Is “Kolor” a departure for you?

A.

Departure? No, because this color dates back 50 or 60 years up to the era of digital pictures in the collection.

Q.

Yes, I noticed you didn’t include the picture you liked from Obama’s inauguration.

A.

I only included pictures taken before the advent of digital photographs.

Q.

So it’s a film thing?

A.

Yeah, it’s all film, a lot of the film had to be remastered, you might say, because they were quite old. Kodachrome lasted very well and was in very good condition and Ektachrome needed a lot of help because much of it had faded. Amazingly, with the techniques of today, a lot of the pictures that might have been lost have been remastered.

Q.

Is a lot of this work commissioned work? Is that the reason for color?

A.

There’s some commissioned work that is in color and there are pictures that I just thought might be nice in color because I usually have more than one camera around, especially when I’m working for a client. If it seems worthy of color, then I’d shoot color as well. Many of these pictures here are sort of similar to the black-and-white pictures I’ve taken in the past.

What was the question?

Q.

I just thought that you cared more about your black-and-white pictures.

A.

Well, I care about pictures whether they’re brown, blue or green or black-and-white or color. The picture is what counts. Black and white is what I’ve mostly done for my own pleasure, for my own interest and color is mostly what I’ve done for other people — for commercial work, for journalistic work. And the collection for this book, which is 450 pages and dates from about 60 years ago, is a combination of all these things.

Q.

I’ve noticed that there are some similar pictures to some already well known in black-and-white. Is that a function of having another camera with color and making some additional frames?

A.

Well, sometimes you even run out of film in your black-and-white camera and you pick up the other one that still has film in it and take some more pictures. There’s no rule. Black and white is something I’ve been able to manage because of darkroom work and developing. It’s more personal, you might say, and color is something you give out to other people to process and make prints and so on. I’ve never been able — or never have been particularly interested in printing color or doing anything other than getting it done by other people and editing it. Anyway black and white is much more labor-intensive.

Q.

For you.

A.

Well, for anybody.

Q.

There are photographers that are known for their black and white that don’t process or print their own work.

A.

If you want to manage your work, do it. I managed up until about 25 years ago. I printed my own pictures as well. I don’t do it anymore because of time and also because of lack of interest, but I supervise everything that is printed in my darkroom. All black-and-white work goes out of my darkroom whereas color does not. I’ve had a darkroom since the age of 16. I’ve never been without one, wherever I’ve lived.

Here we’re discussing my color pictures. That’s another thing; it’s still photography, it’s still a matter of seeing what makes sense visually, thematically, emotionally. It’s different and at the same time it’s the same with regard to choosing, framing and producing.

Q.

It’s been said that a good black-and-white picture is more difficult to attain than a color one because color somehow fills in the blanks for people.

A.

Black and white is a reduction of things. Color is an illustration of things simply put.

Q.

You did say there were some pictures that are similar to some of your already well known black-and-white photos. One that caught my eye was the outdoor confessional (Slide 2, and below) somewhere in Eastern Europe you did for a Time-Life book.

A.

Actually, the situation is the same, but the pictures are totally different. In the black-and-white picture, there’s what you might call a double confession: there’s somebody having a confession in the booth and somebody about to get to the booth having a confession with a friend. So that’s the point of that picture — the color picture is the same line of people but it’s just a picture of the same situation without that particular twist, they’re both good pictures. Similar, but quite different, of the same situation. I don’t know if I ran out of black-and-white film at the time and picked up the color camera, but I do remember the book that I was working on in Eastern Europe was to be both black and white and color.

Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Q.

Another well-known one in black and white that appears in color in the book is the one of the couple and the best man at a wedding in Siberia that you have sent out a few times as a wedding present to your friends.

A.

Again, that’s the same situation but very different. Here we have an almost kind of joke picture, the best man seems to know something the couple does not, and in the color picture, it’s just a pretty picture of a wedding in Siberia, which is where the picture was taken.

Q.

I know you’ve complained about all interviewers asking you questions about Marilyn Monroe — so here’s mine. How did you get on the set of “The Seven Year Itch” to take those photos of her skirt being blown up as she stood on a subway grating?

A.

The filming was available to a lot of people — I mean, I was in a crowd of photographers. I don’t know what happened to other people’s pictures, but mine seemed to have survived. It was really done for the press. It was a scene in the picture, but the press was invited and Marilyn Monroe’s very popular, so people took a lot of pictures and mine survived. I’ve been on other sets with her and I’ve had private sessions with her a few times and I can report she’s a very photogenic person. I can also report that taking pictures of very famous people is not a bad thing because those are the ones that usually get used.

Q.

That holds true here, since the cover of the book is a cast picture from the set of “The Misfits.”

A.

The director and producer are there and so is Clark Gable and so on — yeah it’s a group picture and the thing about it is almost every one of these people, except one, died soon after so that sort of adds to the — dying is a great career move. It certainly was for Marilyn.

Q.

You’ve gone from shooting a lot of ads to being the subject of some. How’s that working out?

A.

Being old and still perpendicular, when a company called Cole Haan was looking for people born in 1928, which was the year that the company started, I guess they ran out of photographers.

Q.

You got to share a page with Maya Angelou.

A.

Yeah, and an astronaut and a famous supermodel — China Machado.

Misha Erwitt

Q.

You’ve managed to include a few of us in the book this time again.

A.

There’s a few people in the family that appear here and there in all of my books, not so much as a bunch. There’s a number of family members that appear in my books. The reason for that is that they happen to be around, not specifically because I went out to take pictures of them — although I certainly have pictures of them. You know, if they’re there and people are interesting and doing interesting things, take their picture whether they’re your family or perfect strangers.

Q.

My sister, Ellen, and I are at the back of the book, next to some lens and color charts. I guess you were testing an emulsion for an upcoming job or something.

A.

Yes, it’s possible that I would sometimes use wife or kids as guinea pigs for my cameras and lenses. I admit it.

Q.

The back cover is a well-known picture of the man and child on a bike with a baguette (Slide 12 and below).

A.

The picture taken in Provence, of someone on a bicycle with his grandson with a baguette, was a commercial picture for French tourism. It was done in 1955 and it’s still being used as an illustration. It was taken in color and black and white, it has a life as a collector’s print. It appears in a number of my books, including the “Kolor” book, for the first time in color. Apart from the time, it appeared in an ad.

Also in the back of the book there’s a picture of waiters of the Ritz in Paris — that was also a setup picture, an ad for French tourism. There’s a few ads, but these ads are not really ads in the normal sense. They’re more or less believable ads you might say, except perhaps the one of a hotel room with a horse in it — there’s that. It was very difficult to get the horse in the hotel room. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, but it became a successful ad. Another ad with horses, which is in the book, I was asked to illustrate a car with a 100-horse power engine, so I called up someone at the ranch, a ranch in Texas, and I asked if they could provide me with 100 horses and I would have them tool around the car. They said, “Sure, no problem,” so that’s one of the pictures in the book.

Q.

Sounds like there were a few people on the set as well as horses.

A.

No, this was early times. This must have been the early ’50s as well; things were simpler then. There was not the use of focus groups.

Q.

Any good outtakes of getting the horse in the hotel room?

A.

No, I don’t have any.

Q.

What number book is this for you?

A.

Well, in my old age I’ve been doing a number of books, at least one a year, sometimes two. What number book? Maybe about 30, 35.

Q.

I thought the last time I asked it was in the mid-40s, and there have been a few since then.

A.

I may have been counting catalogs. I’ve done many catalogs for books, shows, museums. I don’t know. I didn’t count them. Anyway, there have been maybe three major ones, the rest are subject books, and books I like. Last year, I also did two books: one on children and one very big book weighing 26 pounds in its case.

Q.

It was quite a large undertaking getting this one done, how did you do it?

A.

The pictures were in storage, in boxes in the basement. Some were distribution sets that Magnum, my agency, distributed. Some were rejects from editorial assignments. Very often rejects are very similar to first choices, sometimes they’re even better than first choices. Anyway, we went through about a half a million slides to come down to about 500 pictures, 600 pictures, and out of those we cut it down to about, I don’t know, 300, 350. I haven’t counted them — that went into the book. And then we laid them out, edited some out, edited some in; it was a large task and from that, we got the book.

Q.

Well this one’s like a time capsule, a large chunk of history served up in one big book.

A.

It’s very heavy. I wouldn’t drop it on your foot.

Q.

By the way, did you notice the word “Kolor” was misspelled?

A.

The color is spelled with a “K” as a tribute to Kodak, which why the cover is yellow — also a tribute to Kodak. Kodak, our good old friend, rest in peace.

Q.

That sounds like the end to me. Thanks, Pop.

Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

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