In 1964, Life World, which publishes volumes on foreign countries, commissioned Elliott Erwitt to write a feature on Eastern Europe. The aim was to introduce Americans to this unknown world. The criteria were clear: a photographic portrait of daily life in the satellite states of the USSR, to present « an image of these countries, their beauty, their traditions, a measured and realistic vision ».

On a simple tourist visa, to keep a low profile, Elliott Erwitt left London in a hire car and travelled over 5,000 km in three months through Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.He described how the weight of the past resurfaces and how politics was present even if people pretend to ignore it. 

EE : “And that was interesting because at the time it was a time to be in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and all those places. And consequently I got some nice pictures because I was really working for myself or for my perceptions rather than for some editor’s preconceptions”. 

The success of this assignment was that, while respecting the instructions, it circumvented certain political limitations by masking them under the anonymity of everyday life. He would later say that this mission beyond the Iron Curtain was the most exciting of his career. 

Of the 21 photographs selected, the publisher didn’t take the most interesting ones. For example, this series of photographs taken in Poland shows a priest giving confession to the faithful in the middle of the street. The magazine wouldn’t publish the framing you see here, which is the most balanced: Eliott Erwitt shows us the whole confession process in three stages, from the large queue of people chatting, to the confession itself and finally to the penance. A different framing was chosen, showing only the queue on the right and leaving the scene incomplete.

His interest in this part of Europe did not wane. In 1968, he met Josef Koudelka, who became his colleague and friend at Magnum, and helped him to obtain the famous photographs of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia.

Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1964

Poland, 1964