New York Streets 1938 - 1990's

Helen Levitt was an American Photographer, well known for her street photography of New York neighborhoods, where she grew up in Brooklyn. Helen dropped out of high school and self taught herself photography while working for a commercial photographer. Her work began in the 1930’s and 1940’s of urban kids playing, or ordinary people doing everyday activities on the streets. Levitt used interesting techniques that are no longer in use today. In the 1960’s and 1980’s she began using vintage dye-transfers for her color photography. This would super-saturate her colors, creating a very unique and interesting appeal to her photographs. However, many of these photographs were unable to ever been shown due to a burglary at Levitt’s apartment, where all her work of two years were stolen. Ironically, nothing else was taken except her work. She went out again, and began taking more photographs, this time more successful. her work began being displayed in famous museums like the New York Museum of Modern Art. This was one of the first exhibitions in the world where color photography was taken seriously, rather than being only for commercial use. Levitt continued on with her work in creating a series of different books. She continued to use her interesting techniques with dye transfers, and creating bodies of work over seventy years. Unfortunately this great and found breaking artists has passed away this past year, March 29th 2009. Even so, her work continues to inspire many artist with her unmistakeable street photography.