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MoMA One on One Series
Helen Levitt: New York
A close reading of Helen Levitt's famous photograph of three children at play on a New York stoop
Helen Levitt’s (1913-2009) photographs from the 1930s and 1940s of the communities of New York City’s Harlem are startling achievements of street photography. They catch the evanescent configurations of gesture, movement, pose and expression that make visible the street as surreal theater, and everyday life as art and mystery. The unguarded life of children at play became, understandably, Levitt’s particular preoccupation.
Levitt resisted political readings of her work, and distanced herself from the progressive impulses of social documentary photography. But class, race and gender are everywhere at work in Levitt’s images. The diffidence and deceptive artlessness of the images also hide her devotion to both popular and avant-garde cinema, attention to the work of other photographers and frequenting of New York’s museums and galleries. Here, Shamoon Zamir, Professor of Literature and Art History at New York University Abu Dhabi, examines the different registers and contexts of Levitt’s work through a reading of New York, one of Levitt’s iconic images.
Helen Levitt’s (1913-2009) photographs from the 1930s and 1940s of the communities of New York City’s Harlem are startling achievements of street photography. They catch the evanescent configurations of gesture, movement, pose and expression that make visible the street as surreal theater, and everyday life as art and mystery. The unguarded life of children at play became, understandably, Levitt’s particular preoccupation.
Levitt resisted political readings of her work, and distanced herself from the progressive impulses of social documentary photography. But class, race and gender are everywhere at work in Levitt’s images. The diffidence and deceptive artlessness of the images also hide her devotion to both popular and avant-garde cinema, attention to the work of other photographers and frequenting of New York’s museums and galleries. Here, Shamoon Zamir, Professor of Literature and Art History at New York University Abu Dhabi, examines the different registers and contexts of Levitt’s work through a reading of New York, one of Levitt’s iconic images.
- GenresPhotographyNonfiction
48 pages, Paperback
Published February 23, 2021
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 8, 2023
This is an extended essay examining one photograph representative of Helen Levitt’s oeuvre during the 1930s and 1940s against the backdrop of her career, and the social, political and artistic movements that influenced her work. Although the initial discussion of her photograph, “New York” is interesting, the remainder of the essay is not because it feels disorganized and muddled.
Once the author completes his discussion of “New York”, he jumps to another topic without clearly linking the two. He continues this process throughout the remainder of the essay. In some instances, the discussion is so short, that the author’s reason for including the item or its linkage to the main subject is unclear despite the inclusion of copious examples of the work of Helen Levitt and others to whom he makes reference.
Once the author completes his discussion of “New York”, he jumps to another topic without clearly linking the two. He continues this process throughout the remainder of the essay. In some instances, the discussion is so short, that the author’s reason for including the item or its linkage to the main subject is unclear despite the inclusion of copious examples of the work of Helen Levitt and others to whom he makes reference.
Displaying 1 of 1 review