Sight unseen

The book, Found Not Lost, features more than 150 previously unseen images by the noted photographer Elliott Erwitt, a longstanding member of the well-known Magnum agency.

Spanning more than six decades, the photographs were often taken during lulls or breaks between assignments, and have been selected, edited and sequenced by Erwitt himself.

Now in his 90s, Erwitt has been working as a photographer since his early 20s. After emigrating to the US in 1939 he developed an interest in photography while a student living in Hollywood. In 1951 he was drafted for military service where he undertook various photographic duties while serving in a unit of the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France.

Joining Magnum in 1953, he worked freelance for magazines such as LIFE, Holiday, Look and Collier’s at a time when photographic magazines were in their heyday. In the late 1960s, he served as Magnum’s president for three years.

Erwitt began revisiting his archives in 2018. Reviewing every photograph in his studio was – as you can imagine - an exhaustive task with more than 600,000 images from contact sheets and negatives being examined.