Helen Levitt

press release: Featuring the honest, humorous and inventive works of prolific documentary photographer Helen Levitt, this exhibition features 30 photographs, a slide installation and Levitt’s iconic film, “In the Street.” One of the best-known street photographers of the 20th century, Levitt documented the everyday dramas of New York City. Working from the 1930s through the 1990s, Levitt roamed the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem and other urban neighborhoods, capturing fresh and unstudied views of everyday city life. Her photographs portray mothers hovering as their children play, pedestrians making their way along busy sidewalks, and neighbors visiting on stoops, among other scenes. Rarely do any of the figures in Levitt’s work, child or adult, engage directly with the photographer or strike a premeditated pose; much more frequently they seem to be occupied completely in their own worlds. Her photographs, first in black and white and later in color, observe people of every age, race and class without attempting to impose social commentary.