Intimate Engagement: Helen Levitt and the Human Condition

New York (Dress up), c. 1945, Helen Levitt, 1945, Gelatin Silver Print, Privately Owned.

During one of my first trips to the Museum of Modern Art, I wandered into a smaller gallery devoted to street photography. As I was not very familiar with this subject, I started perusing the photographs with great interest. One of the artists I discovered was Helen Levitt. I was immediately enamored by her artworks.

If you aren’t familiar with Helen Levitt, she is most well known for her street photography depicting humans in New York City from as early as the mid-1930s. She is also probably even more famously known for her work with Walker Evans as one of his artistic editors. Like so many other female artists, she is plagued by history rewriting her narrative as if she was not the protagonist in her story by being remembered for her work with more famous male counterparts due to her lack of formal education. However, don’t let this fool you, in many ways she is the most engaging street photographer of her time and in many ways was the first artist to depict this subject with the medium of photography.

Having grown up in Brooklyn, NY, Helen was very familiar with the street culture in New York City. When she purchased her first camera, she initially captured images of her mother and her mother’s friends. This introduced her to humans as subjects. She is particularly revered for her portrayal of New York City children in their different states of activity.

Over the course of her life, Helen has street series from each of the decades in which she captured images; up until the 1990s. Street culture in New York City was prominent for many decades, especially during Helen’s artistic career. It was common for New York natives to sit outside or on the stoops of their apartments when they had free time just to give themselves something to do. Stoop culture became commonplace in New York due to the communal aspect, one could interact with others as they walked past your stoop or open window.

I have noticed that something that I become beguiled by in art is when an artist makes me feel nostalgic for a time period that I have never been too. I was initially struck with this feeling when I viewed Levitt’s photographs in the gallery that day. I had the impression that I was on the street with those children on the day the image was produced. 

In New York (Dress up), c. 1945, Levitt captures a charming moment of three preteen girls playing dress-up in one can only assume their mothers’ clothing. They are posing for Levitt; leaning against a fence in front of apartment buildings while a man is relaxing to the far right of them on stairs. This man is not the principal character of this but Levitt keeps him in frame of the photograph to add depth to the narrative of the image. Levitt captures this moment of jest with such precision by taking the photograph while one of the girls has a mischievous grin on her face, another is chatting to the camera, and the other is posing as if she was a true model. As the viewer, we can see the girl’s age appropriate clothes beneath their dress-up apparel. 

Although many of us may not have grown up in this era, we are familiar with the excited, special feelings that these young girls exude when we were in similar moments of pretend ourselves at their age. In this image, the audience has the opportunity to view the amusement of these young girls, but as we can see through the girl to the far left who is talking directly to the camera, we are only able to see this moment due to the person behind the camera. Levitt creates these moments of intimacy through her engagement with her chosen subjects. We are able to see who these girls really are because of Levitt’s interaction with them and her capturing of these moments.

New York (Dress up), c. 1945 presents a moment of joy of the human experience like many of her images with children as the subjects. However, one can see through her other photographs of the New York City streets, a true representation of what city life was like. Some of the images are not as painless to view as the one that I have chosen to display in this piece. New York City had its moments of jubilance, but it was also gritty. There were some aspects of the human experience in this city that were hard to swallow. Levitt does not shy away from this fact with her photography. 

I think her diverse, authentic portrayal of what New York City was like during these times is representative of the human condition. It is never just one-note. Humans don’t feel only one emotion their entire existence. New York (Dress up), c. 1945 presents a charming moment between three young girls, but there is also a man in the background that shows the viewer a different element of New York. He is having a cigarette and potentially finding a few moments of relaxation before continuing with his busy day. As his gaze is away from Levitt, it appears that his attention is elsewhere. The duality of perspectives that Levitt is able to capture so poignantly is in order for the viewer to be able to understand the true human experience of the time and place, which is a varied experience. 

It appears through her countless street photographs throughout the decades of her life that this depiction of intimate moments between humans is effortless for her. Levitt captures these interactions between humans in such a way that the viewer is able to see how palpable the human condition shines through.

Levitt unfortunately stopped producing street photographs in the 1990s. She says this is due to the fact that New Yorkers spent less of their time sitting on their stoops and relaxing outdoors. This is likely because there were more activities that one could do inside their apartments like watching television. Levitt just had less inspiration.

I am grateful for Levitt and her street imagery because they allow me to feel like I took a trip into a time that I was not around for. Without her engagement with her subjects, this would not have been possible. Although her subjects were a part of a different world and had a different life experience than I have had, Levitt’s street photographs allow me to recognize that our lives aren’t all that different from the ones depicted in these moments.