HELEN LEVITT (born 1913)

In Looking at Photographs, John Szarkowski observes, "Her photographs were not intended to tell a story or document a social thesis: she worked in poor neighborhoods because there were people there, and a street life that was richly sociable and visually interesting. Levitt's pictures report no unusual happenings: most of them show the games of the children, the errands and conversations of the middle-aged, and the observant waiting of the old. What is remarkable about the photographs is that these immemorially routine acts of life, practiced everywhere and always, are revealed as being full of grace, drama, humor, pathos, and surprise, and also that they are filled with the qualities of art, as though the street were a stage, and its people were all actors and actresses, mimes, orators, and dancers." (op. cit., p. 138.)