Recently, I stumbled across a first edition copy of Helen Levitt's beautiful and now, highly collected, photography book In The Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938–1948. The book documents children's chalk drawings in New York City. The series of images were shot with a Leica camera.
Finding this gem was an amazingly rare discovery; It is often described as one of the best photography books of our time.
Helen Levitt (born August 31, 1913) has achieved the highest acclaim in the arts community as a leader in documentary photography. Never formally trained, she dropped out of high school and taught herself how to shoot her own pictures. Incredible! Later, she studied with such greats as Edward Steichen and Walker Evans. Levitt is best known for her documentary photographs of working class neighborhoods in New York City.
Helen Levitt has been shooting pictures for over 70 years and resides in New York City's Greenwich Village.
Below (and the above) are images from her retrospective show at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris.
No comments:
Post a Comment