The Streets of New York

October 11, 2018

From 12 October 2018 to 27 January 2019, the Albertina Museum in Vienna dedicates a major retrospective to Leica photographer Helen Levitt.
From 12 October 2018 to 27 January 2019, the Albertina Museum in Vienna dedicates a major retrospective to Leica photographer Helen Levitt.

Leica photographer Helen Levitt (1913–2009) ranks among the most important representatives of street photography. From the 1930s onwards, she captured the inhabitants of New York’s working class neighbourhoods, such as Lower East Side, Harlem and the Bronx – turning fleeting moments of everyday life into dynamic compositions: children at play, conversing couples, passers-by going about their daily lives. Characterised by the photographer’s unsentimental approach and keen eye for surreal details, Levitt’s images are humorous visual spectacles that transcend social-documentary clichés.

Vienna’s Albertina Museum now presents some 130 of the artist’s iconic works in a comprehensive retrospective exhibition. The selection ranges from Levitt’s early, surrealism-inspired images of chalk drawings, to photographs shot in Mexico in 1941, all the way to her surreptitious portraits of New York subway passengers – a project Walker Evans suggested to her in 1938.

A comprehensive portfolio of Helen Levitt’s work can be found in the Leica Classics section of LFI 2/2018.

For further information visit Albertina
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The Streets of New York