Helen Levitt

HELEN LEVITT (New York, 1913-2009).
"NYC. Masked children on stop", New York, 1940.
Gelatin silver, later print.
Signed, dated and inscribed "N.Y.C." in pencil (on reverse).
Provenance: From the private collection of Schroeder New Jersey.
Measurements: 19.4 x 27.7 cm (image); 28 x 34.8 cm (paper).

Helen Levitt is considered one of the most relevant photographers of the 20th century and one of the forerunners of today's independent cinema. She belongs to the so-called New York school, which defended a direct and aseptic street photography. She was a student of Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, Ben Shanhn and the circle of the Photo League of New York, from whom she learned that search for the instant. Her way of capturing gestures, bodies in movement, the language of the street, have turned her work almost into an anthropological study. In 1939 Helen Levitt's photos were already published in magazines such as Fortune, US Camera, Minicam and PM. Her best known work is in black and white and in the documentary genre, putting her lens on the streets and the inhabitants of the city, especially the children. Proof of this is the exhibition "Helen Lewitt: Photographs of Children" that MoMA in New York dedicated to her in 1943. During her trip to Mexico in 1941 she also portrayed street children. In the 1970s, Levitt photographed the streets of New York with color slides and implemented it into her own language as another resource. It should be noted that he always had a vocation for filmmaking: it was in the 1940s when he made his first documentary film projects, under the orders of the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel, who was exiled in the United States because of the Spanish Civil War. In 1948 he directed the film "In the Street" and "The Quiet One".