Helen Levitt
New York City (striped socks)
c. 1990

Name: New York City (striped socks)
Brand: Helen Levitt
Price: 3500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

12 x 8 inch type-c print, signed on verso. Helen Levitt was a true master of the street, one whose poetic vision, humor, and inventiveness transformed the gritty world of New York City’s poorer neighborhoods into captivating, lyrical compositions. For over 60 years, she produced images that have inspired and amazed generations of photographers, students, collectors, curators, and lovers of art in general. The Museum of Modern Art (New York) hosted the first major museum exhibition of Levitt’s work in 1943; a second solo show of her color work followed in 1974. Major retrospectives followed at many other museums: joint exhibitions in 1991 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; in 1997 at the International Center for Photography in New York; in 2001 at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris; in 2007 at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris; in 2008 at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, where she was awarded the Spectrum International Photography Prize; and a major retrospective at the FOAM Museum (Amsterdam) in 2008. Most recently, Levitt’s work was on exhibit at the Telfair Museum in Savannah (2014) and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (2015). In the Fall of 2018, the Albertina Museum in Vienna hosted a solo exhibition of Levitt’s work, in a 130-print retrospective.

Creator:

Helen Levitt (1913-2009, American)

Creation Year:

c. 1990

Dimensions:

Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)

Medium:

C Print

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

1990-1999

Condition:

This work is offered here unframed. If framing is desired, please contact the gallery for available options (at an additional cost).

Gallery Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU30221119553

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Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt often commented that the reason she expressed herself through photography was that she was inarticulate with the spoken word. One of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century among her peers but least known by the public, from a young age she wanted to create art but knew her talents with a paintbrush or a charcoal pencil were limited. She discovered a way to artistically express herself — through the lens of a camera.

Levitt was born in Brooklyn, New York. At 18, she dropped out of high school to work in a portrait photographer’s darkroom — eventually trying her hand at photography. She trained herself to take better compositions by studying paintings in museums around New York and then using her mother’s friends as practice subjects. In 1936, after discovering the works of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson she purchased her first camera and began to take pictures of neighborhood children making sidewalk chalk drawings.

Levitt took her portfolio to the studio of Walker Evans — another photographer which she admired. Struck by her thoughtful compositions and natural talent, he hired her as his assistant. She began photographing ordinary street life in the lower-class neighborhoods of East Harlem, the Lower East Side and the Garment District in New York City.

In 1939, Levitt’s photographs were published in Fortune magazine. Later that same year, she received a grant from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim Foundation. Seeing a similarity in film noir to what she was trying to capture in black and white photography, she became a film editor. She worked on several films including The Quiet One, an Academy Award nominee.

In 1959 Levitt began to photograph in color but eventually returned to black and white photography in the 1990s. A collection of her photographs of children and their chalk drawings were eventually published, in 1987, in a book called In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages. Some of her color photographs were published in Slide Show in 2005.

On 1stDibs find original Helen Levitt black and white photography, portrait photography, color photography and more.