• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} In the Street Chalk Drawings and Messages New York City 1938-1948 by Helen Levitt Helen Levitt. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Helen Levitt , (born August 31, 1913, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died March 29, 2009, New York), American street photographer and filmmaker whose work captures the bustle, squalor, and beauty of everyday life in New York City. Levitt began her career in photography at age 18 working in a portrait studio in the Bronx. After seeing the works of French photographer Henri- Cartier Bresson, she was inspired to purchase a 35-mm Leica camera and began to scour the poor neighbourhoods of her native New York for subject matter. About 1938 she took her portfolio to photographer Walker Evans’s studio, where she also met novelist and film critic James Agee, who had collaborated with Evans on the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). She struck up friendships with the two men, occasionally accompanying the former on his photo shoots in the city. During this period Levitt often chose children, especially the underprivileged, as her subject matter. Her first show, “Photographs of Children,” was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1943 and featured the humanity that infuses much of her work. Included in this show were photographs from her visit in 1941 to Mexico City, where she photographed the city’s street life. Agee wrote the introduction to Levitt’s book of photographs entitled A Way of Seeing: Photographs of New York , which she compiled in the late 1940s. (The book was not published until 1965, 10 years after Agee’s death.) In it, he praised Levitt’s photographs, finding them “as beautiful, perceptive, satisfying and enduring as any lyrical work that I know.” In the mid-1940s Levitt collaborated with Agee, filmmaker Sidney Meyers, and painter Janice Loeb on The Quiet One , a prizewinning documentary about a young African American boy, and with Agee and Loeb on the film In the Street , which captures everyday life in East Harlem. For the next decade she concentrated on film editing and directing. In 1959 and 1960 she received Guggenheim Fellowships to investigate techniques using colour photography. The slides that resulted from the project, shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1963, were stolen from her apartment before they could be duplicated. Levitt focused for the rest of the 1960s on film work and resumed photography in the 1970s, with a major Museum of Modern Art show in 1974. There are several books of Levitt’s photography, including In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City, 1938–1948 (1987), Mexico City (1997), Crosstown (2001), Slide Show (2005), and Helen Levitt (2008). This article was most recently revised and updated by Naomi Blumberg, Assistant Editor. In the Street. Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City 1938-1948. Photographs by Helen Levitt, text by Dr. Robert Coles. Edited by Alex Harris and Marvin Hoshino Published by Duke University Press, 1987. “All over the city on streets and walks and walls the children… have established ancient, essential and ephemeral forms of art, have set forth in chalk and crayon the names and images of their pride, love, preying, scorn, and desire…The Lady in this House is Nuts…Lois I have gone up the street. Don’t forget to bring your skates…Ruby loves Max but Max hates Ruby…And drawings, all over of …ships, homes…western heroes… and monsters….which each strong shower effaces.” So wrote James Agee in 1939. he shared his fascination with children’s street drawings and messages with his friend, Helen Levitt. Here now are over one hundred of her photographs of these drawings – and of the children who made them – taken in the years between 1938 and 1948. Most of these pictures have never before been published. Colorful Life of New York in the 1970s Through Helen Levitt’s Lens. Born 1913 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, American photographer Helen Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children’s street culture of the time while teaching art classes to children in the mid-1930s. She purchased a Leica camera (with a right-angle viewfinder) and began to photograph these chalk drawings, as well as the children who made them. The resulting photographs were ultimately published in 1987 as In The Street: Chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938–1948 . New York in the 1970s taken by Helen Levitt. Levitt continued taking more street photographs mainly in East Harlem but also in the Garment District and on the Lower East Side, all in Manhattan. Her work was first published in the Fortune magazine’s July 1939 issue. In 1965, Levitt published her first major collection, A Way of Seeing. Much of her work in color from 1959 to 1960 was stolen in a 1970 burglary of her East 12th Street apartment. The remaining photos, and others taken in the following years, can be seen in the 2005 book Slide Show: The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt . However, she felt equally comfortable working with black and white, as she did both in the 1980s. Levitt lived in New York City and remained active as a photographer for nearly 70 years. She has been called “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.” She never married, living alone with her yellow tabby Blinky until, at the age of 95, she died in her sleep in 2009. These fascinating color photos are part of her work that Helen Levitt captured street scenes of New York in the 1970s. HELEN LEVITT: THE PIONEER OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY. Exploring the uncanny elements inherent to everyday life by capturing the fleeting moments of spontaneity and intimacy on the streets of New York, the American photographer, Helen Levitt, is celebrated as one of the most important street photographers of the 20 th century. The most celebrated and least known photographer of her time, Levitt was born on August 31, 1913, in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family. She dropped out of high school, and worked for J. Florian Mitchell, a portrait photographer. But commercial photography didn’t interest her and she turned to street photography to capture the mystery and drama of ordinary life. In 1935, Levitt met and befriended Henri Cartier-Bresson. Inspired by him and his work, she bought a small 35mm Leica in 1936 and started to take early street photographs. In 1937, she visited Walker Evans, and started to grow a friendship with him, James Agee and their friend, the art critic Janice Loeb. Levitt received her first grant in 1946 from the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959 and 1960, she received two subsequent Guggenheim Fellowships and started to work in color. 40 of her color street photos were shown as a slide show at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1974, it was for the first-time photographs were formally displayed this way in a museum. Retrospectives of Levitt's works have been held at several museums including San Francisco Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center for Photography and the Centre National la Photographie in Paris. She was also an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker. The main books she published during her lifetime include: “A Way of Seeing” (1965), “In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City, 1938-1948” (1987), “Crosstown” (2001), “Here and There” (2004), “Slide Show” (2005), and “Helen Levitt” (2008). Known as New York’s “visual poet laureate”, Levitt was very introvert and lived a quiet life. At 95, she died in her sleep on March 29, 2009. In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages New York City 1938-1948 by Helen Levitt. Levitt, Helen American, 1913-2009. Helen Levitt was an American documentary photographer. Levitt grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Dropping out of school, she taught herself photography while working for a commercial photographer. While teaching some classes in art to children in 1937, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children's street culture of the time. She purchased a Leica camera and began to photograph these works as well as the children who made them. The resulting photographs appeared, to great acclaim, in 1987 as In The Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938�1948. Named as one of the "100 best photo-books", first-editions are now highly collectable. She studied with Walker Evans during 1938 and 1939. In 1943 Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art curated her first solo exhibition, after which she began to find press work as a documentary photographer. In the early 1950s she briefly became a film director, working with James Agee. In 1959 and 1960, she received two Guggenheim Foundation grants to take colour photographs on the streets of New York but much of this work was stolen in a burglary. The remaining photos, and others taken in the following years, can be seen in the book Slide Show: The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt (May 2005). Her first major book was A Way of Seeing (1965). In 1976 she was a Photography Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. She has remained active as a photographer for nearly 70 years and still lives in New York City. New York's "visual poet laureate" is notoriously private and publicity shy..

Load more

  3

Copy Link