Photography Research: Helen Levitt

Last summer I was on London Soho Photogallery, where I spend few hours and I was fascinated by beautiful authors and them photo works. Finally before leave this place I got book about women revolutionaries photographers of the 20th century.

From the book I get know about Helen Levitt, I really love street style photography, so her pictures for me are incredibly interesting and beautiful! 

"She  was captured everyday life in the working-class districts of Spanish Harlem and the LowerEast Side. Her work is packed with images of children documenting  their games and graffiti." (Bouveresse, 2022)

In that period of time between 1938-1960 black and white photography was dominated, especially in street style. To express the feelings from works and style of Helen Levitt I really want to show her short documental film "In the street" 1952

There was interesting to me observe real moment of simple life from after war period of time where little children are playing on the streets of New York at the same time of violence on the next street. Also so strange for current time, but normal for fifties sexualisation of women and racial discrimination, which can be seen in the way people talk or look at each other.

The main point in her work for me, that I can feel it, I want to get know people from her pictures and there is feels so simple but at the same time so deeply.

Women with taxi 1982 , Helen Levitt

I choose this photo because there is representations of my feelings about photography. One short moment with would never happen again, or perhaps would happen but with difference people in different time. But you could always come back to this moment just when your eyes looking to this shoots, and now this moment exists only for person who looked at it, only for you. 

New York (1940), Helen Levitt

In film "In the street" Helen shows lots of moment with children, they are so carefree and sincere, running on the streets of New York and playing strange games for a modern person, but it is funny and interesting to watch. " Pictures of children playing – is representative of what Levitt is famous for, with odd and off-kilter pictures favoured above more straightforward street scenes. With no adults in sight, boys and girls crowd confidently into the frame, contort their bodies into sculptural forms, poke heads out of rundown houses. There is always a compelling detail hinting at darkness or undercutting it." (Uddin, 2021)

In my own work, I want to capture a moment that will never happen again, because time is running out. Most of the children in Helen's photographs are no longer alive. The time of their childhood, playing and running down the street was almost a century ago. Now there might be a supermarket or a new road with cars on it. But we can see those children through this remaining photo or through the film, and this gives me conflicting feelings.

It gives a certain sense of beauty, because for me these photos are about beauty, about life. Perhaps I also want to convey a sense of beauty in a moment that will never happen again.


References:

Bouveresse, C. (2022). Women Photographers Revolutionaries 1937-1970. Actes Sud ed. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, p.13.

thephotographersgallery.org.uk. (2022). Helen Levitt: in the Street | the Photographers Gallery. [online] Available at: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/helen-levitt-retrospective [Accessed 29 Jan. 2024].

Uddin, Z. (2021). Helen Levitt’s Street Cred. [online] Apollo Magazine. Available at: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/helen-levitt-street-photography-new-york/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2024].