Helen Levitt: 1913-2009
Untitled (broken mirror), Helen Levitt, New York, c.1940/all photos: Laurence Miller Gallery
Helen Levitt was one of the pivotal figures of American street photography. Though she often photographed kids at play, it was without sentimentality. If anything she had a way of making you feel like they were signposts of the secret life of the city, doing their mysterious thing while the adult world bustled by unawares. Likewise her many pictures of graffiti, unusual at the time, which look like messages from the collective unconscious.
Untitled (5 cent head), New York, c. 1938
I thought of her again just a few weeks ago when I posted about the neglected photos of Homer Page. It was obvious that Levitt was somebody whose work he'd been looking at when he set out to make his own essays on New York street life. (Something I should have mentioned at the time.) But of course it would be. Any smart photographer in the 1940s who was trying to get a feel for the city would have turned to her as a model. And I'll bet you they always will.
Untitled (girl/green car), New York, 1980
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Levitt's color is a touchstone for me. In the picture above, the energy between the colors has a life of its own. It changes the context of the little girl's sprawling, spiderlike, faceless pose, adding an element of sensuality that would not be there in black&white.
We find her under the mantislike green, which as lurid as if the insect was pole dancing on 42nd St. In the background the placid sky-blue bug, the four-wheeled variety, is just a passing cloud of loveliness, though smudgy in its coat of city soot.
She is of the swooping green, removed from the soothing blue, which hovers like a thought balloon (is it ok to mix metaphors in a blog post?). Yet in color she is closer to the gritty street, an extension of its drabness, scuttling deeper into the darkness, looking for something hidden under the extravagant carapace of the green car.
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[...] Helen Levitt, R.I.P. More here and here. [...]
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I've been to this page many times and really enjoy Levitt's use of color.
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Matt Bamberg, http://101quickandeasysecrets.wordpress.com/
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[...] nu apartine niciunei categorii. Helen Levitt was one of the pivotal figures of American street photography. Though she often photographed kids at play, it was without sentimentality. If [...]
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