How Elliott Erwitt Found His Signature Sense of Humor and Joy

The camera that he used to create his early pictures, a square-format twin-lens Rolleiflex, was adapted to his disposition at the time. He had to look down into the lens at waist level to see and photograph what was in front of him, and this enabled him to approach people unobtrusively. As the contact sheet with his famous picture of a chihuahua at a woman’s feet shows, the camera could also be set on the ground to capture a worm’s-eye view