thumb|250px|Cover art for Levitt's book Crosstown (2002)

thumb|250px|Cover art for Levitt's book Slide Show (2005)

Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009) was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."

Early life and education

Levitt was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of May (Kane), and Sam Levitt. She went to New Utrecht High School but dropped out in 1931.

Work in photography

She began photography when she was eighteen and began working for J. Florian Mitchell, a commercial portrait photographer in the Bronx, where she learned how to develop photos in the darkroom. She also attended many classes and events hosted by the Manhattan Film and Photography League, who she was able to meet through the league.

In 1936, she purchased a 35 mm rangefinder camera. While teaching art classes to children in 1937 for New York City's Federal Art Project, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children's street culture of the time.

She continued taking street photographs in Manhattan, mainly in Spanish Harlem but also in the Garment District and on the Lower East Side. During the 1930s to 1940s, the lack of air conditioning meant people were outside more, which invested her in street photography. Her work was first published in Fortune magazine's July 1939 issue. The new photography section of the Museum of Modern Art, New York included Levitt's work in its inaugural exhibition in July 1939. In 1941, she visited Mexico City with Alma Mailman, then wife of author James Agee, and took photos in the streets of Tacubaya, a working-class suburb.

In 1959 and 1960, she received two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation for her pioneering work in color photography. 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. A second solo exhibit, Projects: Helen Levitt in Color, was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974. Her next major shows were in the 1960s; Amanda Hopkinson suggests that this second wave of recognition was related to the feminist rediscovery of women's creative achievements.

Levitt lived in New York City and remained active as a photographer for nearly 70 years. However, she expressed lament at the change of New York City scenery: "I go where there's a lot of activity. Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something."

In the late 1940s, Levitt made two documentary films with Janice Loeb and James Agee: In the Street (1948) and The Quiet One (1948). Levitt, along with Loeb and Sidney Meyers, received an Academy Award nomination for The Quiet One.

Another Light (1952) is dramatized documentary about a small town and its new hospital, focusing on the reactions of an elderly farmer, a housewife, and a businessman. The film explains how town citizens in Ridgewood, NJ, raised construction funds, and how the hospital supports and serves the community. Presented by the Federal Security Agency's Public Health Service, the film was produced by William Levitt, written by William B. Mahoney, camera by Richard Leacock, co-edited by Levitt and Loeb, and directed by Levitt.

Made by Film Documents Productions.Levitt was active in film making for nearly 25 years; her final film credit is as an editor for John Cohen's documentary The End of an Old Song (1972). Levitt's other film credits include the cinematography on The Savage Eye (1960), which was produced by Ben Maddow, Meyers, and Joseph Strick, and also as an assistant director for Strick and Maddow's film version of Genet's play The Balcony (1963). In her 1991 biographical essay, Maria Hambourg wrote that Levitt "has all but disinherited this part of her work."

Style and themes

Helen Levitt was most well known and celebrated for her work taking pictures of children playing in the streets. She also focused her work in areas of Harlem and the Lower East side with minority populations. There is a constant motif of children playing games in her work.

Her choice to display children playing in the street and explore street photography, fights against what was going on at the time. Legislation being passed in New York at the time was limiting many of the working classes access to these public spaces. Laws were passed that directly targeted these communities in an attempt to control them. New bans on noise targeted working class and minority communities. She was born with Ménière's syndrome, an inner-ear disorder that caused her to "[feel] wobbly all [her] life." She also had a near-fatal case of pneumonia in the 1950s.

  • 2008: Francis J. Greenburger Award for excellence in the arts
  • 2008: , accompanied by an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover
  • 2022: International Photography Hall of Fame

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 1943: Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children, Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Nancy Newhall (alongside a solo show by Eliot Porter: Birds in Color)
  • 1949: Photo League, New York, with John Candilario
  • 1952: Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, with Frederick Sommer
  • 1963: Three Photographers in Color, MoMA, New York, with Roman Vishniac and William Garnett
  • 1974: Projects: Helen Levitt in Color, Museum of Modern Art, New York, continuous projection of 40 color slides, curated by John Szarkowski
  • 1983: Street Portrait: The Photographs of Helen Levitt Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • 1985: Moderna Museet, Stockholm
  • 1987: International Center of Photography, New York
  • 1987: Laurence Miller Gallery, New York (1989–92 annually, 1996 [...?])
  • 1988: The Photographers' Gallery, London
  • 1991: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, first major retrospective in US, toured North America until 1994 (catalogue)
  • 1993: Seattle Art Museum, with Mary Ellen Mark
  • 1994: (Palacio de los Condes de Gabia), Spain, toured (catalogue)
  • 1997: International Center of Photography, New York
  • 1998/99: Frankfurter Kunstverein, Rupertinum, Salzburg, Festspielgalerie Berlin, and Villa Stuck, Munich (catalogue)
  • 2001: Centre national de la photographie, Paris
  • 2007: Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris
  • 2008: Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
  • 2008: Sprengel Museum, Hanover, accompanied her award for the (catalogue)
  • 2010: PHotoEspaña, Madrid, 2010 and toured (catalogue)
  • 2018/19: Albertina Museum, Vienna (catalogue)
  • 2021/22: In the Street, The Photographers' Gallery, London, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam (catalogue)
  • 2023: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt - Mexico, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
  • 2024: “Helen Levitt: New York Street Photographer, 1930s–1940s”, Margulies Collection, Miami, (October 18,2023- April 27,2024), Included her Graffiti, Mexico City, and Subway series.
  • 2025: “Manhattan Transit”, Zander Galerie, Paris, (February 6 – March 22, 2025), Levitt’s Subway series from the 1970s
  • 2025: “Helen Levitt: Complete Works”, Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona (September 24, 2025 – February 1, 2026) and Madrid (February 9, 2026 - May 17.2026), First-ever exhibition covering her entire oeuvre, including newly released archives.

Group exhibitions

  • 1939: Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • The End of an Old Song (1972): editor

Publications

References

Further reading

  • Radio program featuring an interview with Levitt.
  • Critical study on ten of Levitt's photographs. Dikant also discusses the influences on Levitt, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ben Shahn, and Walker Evans.
  • Review of One, Two, Three, More.
  • Helen Levitt: New York Streets 1938 to 1990s at LensCulture
  • . Note that there is occasionally confusion of Levitt's film credits with those of Helen Slote Levitt.