“Two drinking fountains. One refrigerated, one not.
I shot two exposures. One of them with a black person drinking from the colored fountain and the other just the installation itself.
Traveling in the South, one was not stocked to see these supposedly separate but equal situations. They should have been called unequal. Of course segregation without signs was pretty much in effect throughout the country. Keep in mind it was 1950, a terrible time”
~ Elliott Erwitt (1928 - 2023)
I miss talking seriously with Elliott about so many important issues. We shared the immigrant experience and the complexity that evoked one of the great humanist photographers in the medium. I can imagine the first word he first deeply understood was “empathy".
