One of the great questions photographers bring to portfolio reviews is: How to get ahead in photography. A number of answers can be found by studying the career of Elliott Erwitt alongside the exceptional photographs he has made over the past sixty years, in a retrospective exhibition that opens today at the International Center of Photography.

Left: ICP’s Chief Curator Brian Wallis at yesterday’s media preview; photo: Peggy Roalf. Right: Elliott Erwitt, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington, Virginia, November 25, 1963. © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos.

While Erwitt’s witty pictures of human and canine interaction are engraved in collective memory, his multifaceted practice also includes photojournalism, industrial photography, portraiture, and advertising work—as well as his wonderful photographs of ordinary moments, in all kinds of settings—that seem as effortless as snapshots. In fact, one of his most often-published human/canine photos was done as an ad for high-end line of women’s footwear. It was also a recreation by Erwitt of a photograph he had made in Paris roughly 20 years before.

Born Elio Romano Erwitz to Russian Jewish émigrés in Paris in 1928, Erwitt spent his childhood in Italy, returned to France in 1938, and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1939. After moving to Los Angeles in 1941, Erwitt attended Hollywood High School and began working in a commercial darkroom processing photographs of movie stars. He studied filmmaking at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1949 to 1950, and worked as a documentary photographer on the Standard Oil Company project directed by Roy Stryker.

Being in the right place at the right time and having a native talent for making great connections served Erwitt well from the start. After military service, he returned to New York, where he met Edward Steichen and Robert Capa, who became strong influences in his life. In 1953, he was invited by Capa to join Magnum Photos, and in 1955 he was included in Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition.

Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best, as this show is titled, is comprised of more than 100 images chosen by the photographer as his favorites, along with a group of documentary films, and a large selection from the more than 20 books he produced. Among his most memorable photographs is Nikita Krushchev and Richard Nixon, Moscow, 1959, in which the finger-jabbing V.P. gives the Russian leader a piece of his mind. ICP's Chief Curator Brian Wallis provided the back story for this shot in the walkthrough yesterday. Erwitt was on assignment for GE, shooting kitchen installations at the Moscow trade fair; because he still spoke fluent Russian he was able to get behind the scenes to capture, at point blank range, this indelible image from the Cold War era.

Other photographs from Erwitt’s journalistic career, which spanned the 1950s into the 70s, include portraits of Che Guevera and Fidel Castro; Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband’s funeral in 1963; and a phalanx of Russian soldiers, in parade formation in Red Square in the 1950s, looking directly, and quite pleadingly, into the photographer's eyes.

Among the great delights of the show are many less familiar photographs from Erwitt’s early career. From Paris, Budapest, and Serbia in the 1950s, there are images of circus, nightclub acts, and social dancing that evoke the end of an era in Europe. From Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado, there are images that mark the apogee of the post-war American century as seen through the experience of ordinary people in everyday situations.

A photograph of Grace Kelly, made at the Waldorf Astoria when her engagement to Prince Rainier of Monaco was announced, has a highly journalistic style that is wonderfully at odds with the regal style and dress of its subject. In a photograph of a wedding party in Bratsk, Siberia, the expressions of the bride, the groom, and the (best?) man to his right offer good reason for both the wedding haven taken place and a strong likelihood that it could never last.

“To me, photography is an art of observation,” said Erwitt. “It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” This seemingly simple observation plays out again and again in Erwitt’s photographs and couldn’t be better advice for photographers who attend portfolio reviews in hopes of getting a foothold on the next rung of the ladder.

Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best runs through August 26^th at the International Center for Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43^rd Street, NY, NY. Elliot Erwitt was recently honored as the Lifetime Achievement recipient at the 2011 ICP Infinity Awards.

Another DART pick:
Sarah Small’s Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions: A performance, party, experiment and wedding. Skylight One Hanson, One Hanson Place, Brooklyn, NY. Tickets: $24-$125.

And a correction:
Funny Bones: Anatomy of a Celebrity Caricature by John Kascht. National Portrait Gallery, Gallery 360.