A pillar of the venerated Magnum agency, US photographer Elliott Erwitt who has died aged 95 became world renowned for catching the humorous details of daily life, in black and white.

Two lovers embracing in a rearview mirror in "California Kiss", and Marilyn Monroe's white dress blowing up over a New York subway grate, are among his most famous images.

Politicians, film stars, couples, children, and hundreds of dogs — Erwitt immortalized them all over a seven-decade career.

"The kind of photography I like to do, capturing the moment, is very much like that break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful picture seems to come out of nowhere," he wrote in 1996 in his book, "Between the Sexes".

Pillar of Magnum agency

Born on July 26, 1928, in Paris to Russian parents, Erwitt grew up in Milan before emigrating in 1939 to the US with his family just before World War II broke out.

After 10 years in New York, he moved to Los Angeles, where he started to learn photography. He was taken on as a printer in a laboratory specializing in portraits of stars.

Erwitt was conscripted to the army in 1951 as an assistant photographer and continued working for several publications while stationed in New Jersey, Germany, and France.

After his military service in 1953 one of his mentors, renowned photojournalist Robert Capa, recruited him to Magnum.

Erwitt would combine the abilities of its two founders — French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his "decisive moment", and Capa's sense of history.

"Erwitt became known for benevolent irony, and for a humanistic sensibility traditional to the spirit of Magnum," the agency said on its website.

He toured the world several times. It was the golden age of illustrated magazines and he contributed to Collier's, Look, LIFE, and Holiday.