Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was an American street photographer renowned for her quietly poetic images of everyday life in New York City. Born in Brooklyn, she studied drawing and design at the Art Students League, where she met art director Alexey Brodovitch, whose mentorship encouraged her early use of a 35 mm camera.

Beginning in the late 1930s, Levitt roamed Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side, photographing children at play, storefront churches, and neighborhood streets with a keen eye for spontaneous gesture. Working initially in black and white, she later became one of the first to explore color street photography—using Kodachrome film to capture the vibrant textures and light of urban life. Her photographs were published in Harper’s Bazaar and featured in the Film in the Street series with John H. White and Jonas Mekas, blending still and motion imagery.

Levitt’s first monograph, A Way of Seeing (1965), brought her work to a wider audience, and In the Street (1998) further solidified her reputation. A 1960 Guggenheim Fellowship supported her continuing exploration of candid street scenes. Her work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Throughout her career, Levitt remained committed to photographing the unnoticed beauty of ordinary moments, leaving behind a body of work that continues to inspire generations of documentary photographers.