A visit to London was the occasion to check out a magnificent retrospective of the work of Helen Levitt at the no-less magnificent Photographers Gallery located in the heart of Soho. Helen Levitt was an avid street photographer. From the 1930s through the 1990s, she spent decades documenting local communities in her native New York (and one single small step out to Mexico), capturing everyday city life on the street, in neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side, Bronx, and Spanish Harlem. She left behind a massive body of work, inspired at times by works from Henri Cartier-Bresson whom she met and got inspiration from. I could find among the numerous photographs exposed on two floors, some winks to HCB but Helen Levitt definitely developed her own style, made of surrealist pictures of people making weird poses in the street and candidly going about their business. Summarizing her oeuvre in a few words is impossible but the exhibit presented spans over various moments of her life as an artist: from the streets of Spanish Harlem in black and white to the portraits in the metro to the lovely colour photographs of the 1970s. Helen Levitt also turned to filming the same streets and it was fun to recognise the subjects she also photographed. I give here a few examples only of her masterpieces. All in all, a beautiful moment, almost levitating in awe in front of the pictures of this grande dame.
