The masters of street photography #4 : Helen Levitt

In  Masters of street photography  on June 1, 2014  has No Comment

This is already week four of this new column and definitely time to introduce the work of a woman street photographer, that is Helen Levitt. Though a lot of her early pictures were shot in Black & White, Iet's have a look at her New York City color work.

Abonnez-vous au tableau Helen Levitt de Yanidel sur Pinterest.

Quick facts/observations about Helen Levitt
 
– American born (1909-2009), she took pictures for nearly 70 years, mostly in New York City.
– kids and working class neighbourhoods were among her favorite subjects, documenting their life conditions.
– she mounted a right-angled viewfinder on her Leica to remain unnoticed in the streets.
– she worked with Walker Evans early on, another master of street photography.
– in 1943, she already had a solo exhibition at the MOMA in New York.
– after a successful career in Black and White, she switched to color dye-transfer in the 60's.
– the slides of most of her 1960's color work were stolen from her house. She had to start all over again.
– she returned to B&W at the very end of her career, using a lighter Contax to relieve her back pain.
– Talking about nowadays, she said : “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.”**
 
If I could ask her a question ….
– what do you think of cloud storage ?
 
To discover more about Helen Levitt
– Book : Helen Levitt
– **Link: New York Times article published after her death in 2009. Full of great information about her career.
 
If you missed it last week, have a look at the work of Fred Herzog.


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