Helen Levitt

Kunsthal Rotterdam
Exhibition

View a major retrospective of the work of Helen Levitt (1913–2009), one of the most important street photographers of the twentieth century, at the Kunsthal. With over 220 photographs, a film, and color slides, compiled for the first time from her complete archive, City at Play showcases more than fifty years of work. Throughout her career, Levitt photographed life on the streets of New York: children under the water of a fire hydrant, women whispering to each other in a doorway, a couple in love on the subway. Never posed or sensational, but with subtle humor, tenderness, and an eye for the ordinary.

Levitt is one of the most influential photographers of her generation. Early in her career, she was given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, at a time when photography was barely recognized as an independent art form. Yet she herself remained in the background. She said little about her work: "Just what you see. If it were easy to put into words, I would have become a writer."

The streets of New York

The exhibition opens with Levitt’s early 1930s: intimate images of daily life in Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Hell’s Kitchen. During that same period, Levitt moved in the company of two of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century: Henri Cartier-Bresson inspired her working method, and Walker Evans introduced her to his network.

Chalk tracks

From 1937, Levitt taught children in East Harlem through the Federal Art Project. On her way to school, she photographed children's chalk drawings on walls and sidewalks, sometimes with the creators themselves in the frame. You also see the Roma and Sinti families she captured in Spanish Harlem and Yorkville, with children always at the center, surrounded by their family's belongings.