Helen Levitt

American, 1913-2009

BiographyBorn: 1913
Died: March 30, 2009

Born and raised in New York, Helen Levitt is celebrated for her depiction of everyday life in New York City's close-knit neighborhoods. Her interest in photography began in 1931, when upon quitting high school, she found work as a portrait photographer assistant. She was especially inspired by the photographs of Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, both of whom became friends. Following Cartier-Bresson's lead, Levitt bought a 35-millimeter camera and settled on the subject matter she would pursue for the next forty years--community street life, especially the activities of women, children, and animals. In 1939, her images began appearing in magazines such as Fortune, U.S. Camera, Minicam, and PM. Beaumont and Nancy Newhall mounted her first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943. Shortly after, she began experimenting with documentary film and in 1947 her treatment on racial injustice, The Quiet One was nominated for an Oscar. Her work found devoted advocates in Walker Evans and James Agee, the latter of whom wrote the text for A Way of Seeing (produced in the 1940s, but not published until 1965), a monograph containing many of her best-known images.

Levitt's expansive career switched from black and white photography to film and then back to photography when she was awarded two Guggenheim Foundation grants in 1959 and 1960 to explore color photography. Her color prints were published in Harper's Bazaar, Time, Fortune and she received her second major solo museum show for her color photography in 1974 at the Museum of Modern Art. Subsequent major retrospectives of her work have been held at several museums: first in 1991, jointly 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; and in 2001 at the Centre National la Photographie in Paris.

She has also received much international attention with major exhibitions that include: 2007 "Helen Levitt: Un Art de l'accident poetique" at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris; in 2008, the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany chose Ms. Levitt as the recipient for the Spectrum International Photography Prize which was accompanied by a major retrospective; and FOAM Museum Amsterdam, mounted another major retrospective in October, 2008. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Francis Greenburger award for excellence in the arts.

There are several books of Levitt’s photography, including In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City, 1938–1948 (1987), Mexico City (1997), Crosstown (2001), Slide Show (2005), and Helen Levitt (2008).

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