Helen Levitt

(American, 1913–2009)

Helen Levitt was an American photographer best known for her iconic New York street photography. Born on August 31, 1913 in Brooklyn, NY to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, she left high school to work for a commercial photographer, where she learned how to process film. Inspired by earlier masters such as Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, she took her 35-milimeter camera to the streets, intimately capturing the daily activities of women, children, and minority communities. Levitt’s talent for the medium proved to be extraordinary: The New York Times described her images as “fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery, and quiet drama.” In 1939, her works were included in the inaugural exhibition of The Museum of Modern Art’s photography department, where her 1939 image of children trick-or-treating received especially high praise. Levitt went on to receive two consecutive Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1960, and today, her work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. Levitt died on March 29, 2009 in New York, NY at the age of 95.