Recently I went to see a show at the Los Angeles Design Center. One of the featured artists had taken pictures of the photographic masters of the last century with their work. We are all familiar with these images.

There I came across an old friend and his work. Twenty-something years ago I worked on occasion for Elliott Erwitt, a master and a genuine fantastic human being. What I remember most are not his images that capture human history, but how he treated me, how kind he was to me when I was a young man. I would paint a room or build a rack in his studio. Afterwards he would treat me to my first tastes of lobster or exquisite old malt whiskey, as if i were a member of his own family. These same gestures come through in his amazing body of work. He treats everything the way he treated me--with the utmost lightness of being. His work still puts a smile on my face.

www.elliotterwitt.com