|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Helen Levitt: Poet of the Streets
| Article
# : |
19951 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1992 |
1,581 Words |
| Author
: |
Darwin Marable
Darwin Marable is a photo historian, writer, lecturer, and
independent curator based in the San Francisco Bay area. |
Helen Levitt's first major retrospective exhibition consists of eighty-five black-and-white photographs from the 1930s, '40s, and '80s and color photographs from the late 1950s to the present taken mainly in ethnic and working-class neighborhoods in her native New York City. The exhibition also includes some of her rarely seen photographs of Mexico in 1941. While most of the major photographers of the 1930s--Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and the Farm Security Administration photographers--directed their attention to America's social and economic concerns, Levitt took to the streets of Manhattan's East Side, not far from home, where as a voyeur, she created photographic poems of life in the street.
Born in 1913 into an immigrant Russian Jewish family, Levitt grew up in economically prosperous circumstances, however, and easily assimilated into American culture. While there was ample time for music, dance lessons, and reading, she had no exposure to the visual arts. Her fondest memories were of playing in the street near her home, an activity that would profoundly influence her vision. After dropping out of high school in 1930, one semester before graduation, she took a job as a sales clerk at Gimbel's department store, where she worked for one year.
At the age of eighteen, Levitt began working as an apprentice to a portrait photographer, from whom she learned the basic techniques of photography. She first purchased a Voigtlander camera to photograph her family and friends and thought of becoming a commercial portraitist. But she changed her mind when she discovered the Film and Photo League, a group of socially conscious photographers and filmmakers, and the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with whom she soon became acquainted. Her true vocation in life was apparent to her.
Although not formally educated beyond high school, Levitt sought out whatever she needed to know. In 1935 she met Cartier-Bresson, who was photographing in New York, and from him gained an appreciation of the aesthetics of Surrealism. She haunted the major museums and galleries and closely studied the works of van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Matisse. Also, she was fascinated by French and Russian cinema, especially poetic films like Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet (1932) and Aleksandr Dovzhenko's oneiric film Aerograd (1935), which she saw at least six times. All of these experiences contributed to the development of her unique vision. In 1936 Levitt bought a used Leica and took to the streets.
The Right
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
