6 February – 22 March 2025
OPENING: Thursday, 6 February, 4 – 7 PM
Zander Galerie is delighted to announce its next exhibition in Paris showcasing the work of New York artist Helen Levitt. From February 6 to March 22, 2025, the gallery will present an exceptional selection of photographs from the 1970s, drawn from the iconic Subway series.
Helen Levitt (1913-2009) began photographing street scenes in her native city of New York in the late 1930s and became one of the most significant figures in American street photography. She captured her era with a sensitive and poetic eye, focusing on the scenes of everyday life played out on the streets of New York. Beginning in the 1930s, equipped with her 35 mm Leica camera, she roamed the city, documenting children at play, sidewalk conversations, and vibrant street scenes. Strolling through working-class neighborhoods, she cast a tender and joyful gaze on the life unfolding there, while never interfering and maintaining a respectful distance. Helen Levitt captured the soul of the city with a masterful sense of composition and a humanistic approach. Alongside Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, both of whom she considered as close companions, Helen Levitt is regarded as one of the most important American photographers of her time.
For Levitt, the New York City subway became a creative playground as early as the late 1930s. At the time, photographing subway passengers was prohibited. In 1938, Walker Evans invited Helen Levitt to join him in capturing images of this urban space, believing he would draw less attention with company. This was the beginning of the Subway series. Forty years later, Helen Levitt returned to the subway, where she observed reflections of the profound social changes that had shaped American society. Racial segregation had intensified, graffiti covered the train cars, and passengers’ behavior had grown less formal. Within this confined space, where people from all walks of life crossed paths, her lens revealed a microcosm of New York society. According to author David Campany, while most of Helen Levitt’s work was created outdoors, the underground corridors of the subway might have represented an extension of the public space, offering opportunities to shoot even during the winter months. Balancing tension, spontaneity, and introspection, the photographs from the Subway series provide an intimate and compelling glimpse into the lives of New Yorkers.
Helen Levitt’s work is part of the collections of numerous museums and institutions worldwide. She was the recipient of three Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Master of Photography Award from the International Center of Photography in New York, the Spectrum International Photography Award from the Stiftung Niedersachsen, and an Academy Award nomination as co-author of the screenplay for the 1948 film The Quiet One. Her work has been exhibited internationally since the 1940s and has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at prestigious venues, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, the Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Albertina in Vienna, the Photographer’s Gallery in London, and the Fondation A Stichting in Brussels, Belgium.
Zander Galerie
Schönhauser Straße 8
50968 Cologne
Germany
Zander Galerie
6 Rue Jacob
75006 Paris
France