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Crosstown
Since the mid-1930s, Helen Levitt has photographed life on the streets of New York, capturing the pulse of the city at moments when sidewalk life becomes an urban portrait. Crosstown is the most comprehensive monograph devoted to this master photographer. In pioneering pictures of 1930s and 1940s Harlem, an innovative color series completed in 1960, and black-and-white images from the 1980s and 1990s, the book reveals the changes in New York street culture as well as the evolution of Levitt’s photographic eye.
From Francine Prose’s introduction to Photographs by Helen Levitt :
Look at a Helen Levitt photo, and the city streets, subways, and rooftops become pure Helen Levitt. Encountering Levitt’s pictures, taken mostly between 1936 and the present, mostly around Manhattan, is like taking off your sunglasses, or cleaning your spectacles, or just blinking, which is only appropriate, since so many of them seem to have been taken in a blink, and to picture something that will be gone, that was gone, a blink after it was taken. These photographs radically readjust our visual fine-tuning to remind us of how rapidly everything changes, of how large a fraction of what we see won’t exist in its present form only a heartbeat from now. It’s impossible not to notice that the beautiful gypsy kid, caught in mid-motion in the doorway of his apartment, was disappearing even as his portrait was being taken….
The photographs in Crosstown make the difficult look easy. They seem so effortlessly right that it’s only when you think for two seconds, or recall all the bad documentary photography that you’ve seen, or pause to marvel at the high wire act they’re performing even as they focus steadfastly on the ground, that you realize how frighteningly simple it would be to get all of this terribly wrong, to make the children cute and the old ladies darling. Helen Levitt’s work is never sentimental, it never estheticizes or objectifies, never turns its subjects into art objects, never distorts them into noble heroes of poverty and desolation; it is never falsely, preemptively elegiac or nostalgic. You never feel the artist calling attention to herself or to the breadth and compassion of her vision. Everything is happening too quickly — and too interestingly — for anything remotely resembling self-conscious artiness, or narcissism.
From Francine Prose’s introduction to Photographs by Helen Levitt :
Look at a Helen Levitt photo, and the city streets, subways, and rooftops become pure Helen Levitt. Encountering Levitt’s pictures, taken mostly between 1936 and the present, mostly around Manhattan, is like taking off your sunglasses, or cleaning your spectacles, or just blinking, which is only appropriate, since so many of them seem to have been taken in a blink, and to picture something that will be gone, that was gone, a blink after it was taken. These photographs radically readjust our visual fine-tuning to remind us of how rapidly everything changes, of how large a fraction of what we see won’t exist in its present form only a heartbeat from now. It’s impossible not to notice that the beautiful gypsy kid, caught in mid-motion in the doorway of his apartment, was disappearing even as his portrait was being taken….
The photographs in Crosstown make the difficult look easy. They seem so effortlessly right that it’s only when you think for two seconds, or recall all the bad documentary photography that you’ve seen, or pause to marvel at the high wire act they’re performing even as they focus steadfastly on the ground, that you realize how frighteningly simple it would be to get all of this terribly wrong, to make the children cute and the old ladies darling. Helen Levitt’s work is never sentimental, it never estheticizes or objectifies, never turns its subjects into art objects, never distorts them into noble heroes of poverty and desolation; it is never falsely, preemptively elegiac or nostalgic. You never feel the artist calling attention to herself or to the breadth and compassion of her vision. Everything is happening too quickly — and too interestingly — for anything remotely resembling self-conscious artiness, or narcissism.
- GenresPhotographyHistoryArt
192 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2001
53 people want to read
About the author
Helen Levitt
30 books6 followersHelen Levitt 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."
A retrospective exhibition of Levitt's work, In the Street, was shown at The Photographers' Gallery in London from October 2021 to February 2022.
A retrospective exhibition of Levitt's work, In the Street, was shown at The Photographers' Gallery in London from October 2021 to February 2022.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 30, 2017
Amazing collection--Helen Levitt's black & white work around Manhattan from 1936-48 and color photos from 1959 and later. My favorite street photographer--so much to love and learn from this book.
April 12, 2019
Captivating street scenes of NYC from the 30s through the 80s. Levitt has an eye for capturing people in moments. Even if they're just waiting, you can feel that it's for something or someone and that will lead to a story all its own.
July 12, 2014
Wow. This is my first exposure to the work of New York street photographer Helen Levitt (1913–2009), and I am enthralled.
Crosstown is an extensive monograph, stretching across more than half a century, but it feels tightly focused and intimate. Levitt's images tend to feature children, teenagers, or seniors—mostly from Harlem or other poor sections of New York City—and they are full of motion: fleeting moments of storytelling set against crumbling tenements, torn posters, and rude chalk graffiti.
Whether showing us unguarded emotion or unintentional humor, raucous play or quiet pathos, Levitt's pictures suggest the continuum of time. Nothing here is posed or prepared; these are ongoing scenes from which we are granted only the tiniest of glimpses. And so they raise questions: How did this happen? What happens next? Who drew the mustache on the baby? How did those children get on top of that ledge? Will they fall? An elderly black gentleman smiles over the infant is his arms, and a white friend, standing very close, smiles too—are these men related now? How many of those kids holding toy guns on the front stoop will graduate to the real thing in a few years?
I prefer Levitt's black and white photos to her color pictures, but all of it carries that same sense of precariousness, poised between gritty realism and the tiny yet unfathomable mysteries of everyday urban life. It's a marvelous body of work. And I think I'll flip through it frequently: Crosstown is a collection that demands—and deserves—a second (or third) look.
Crosstown is an extensive monograph, stretching across more than half a century, but it feels tightly focused and intimate. Levitt's images tend to feature children, teenagers, or seniors—mostly from Harlem or other poor sections of New York City—and they are full of motion: fleeting moments of storytelling set against crumbling tenements, torn posters, and rude chalk graffiti.
Whether showing us unguarded emotion or unintentional humor, raucous play or quiet pathos, Levitt's pictures suggest the continuum of time. Nothing here is posed or prepared; these are ongoing scenes from which we are granted only the tiniest of glimpses. And so they raise questions: How did this happen? What happens next? Who drew the mustache on the baby? How did those children get on top of that ledge? Will they fall? An elderly black gentleman smiles over the infant is his arms, and a white friend, standing very close, smiles too—are these men related now? How many of those kids holding toy guns on the front stoop will graduate to the real thing in a few years?
I prefer Levitt's black and white photos to her color pictures, but all of it carries that same sense of precariousness, poised between gritty realism and the tiny yet unfathomable mysteries of everyday urban life. It's a marvelous body of work. And I think I'll flip through it frequently: Crosstown is a collection that demands—and deserves—a second (or third) look.
January 3, 2015
A "fine" book, suitable for investment.
June 21, 2007
street photography that captures the beauty of the everyday life of ordinary people.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews