Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt (1913–2009) began photographing the streets of New York, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing mainly on poor neighborhoods such as Hispanic Harlem and the Lower East Side, where the street clearly takes center stage as the setting for everyday life. Her camera was directed mainly at children and their games in the streets. These scenes of children occupy a central place in a body of work that, as a whole, captivates us with its ability to transform everyday scenes into images that convey all the emotion, mystery, and humor that life can contain, and with which the viewer establishes an immediate connection even though they lack an explicit narrative. Her work soon gained the recognition it deserved, and in 1943 the MOMA in New York organized her first solo exhibition. In this extensive survey of her entire body of work as well as archival material is shown, underlining Levitt’s impact as one of the first professional female photographers. 

Curated by Joshua Chuang