Top 5: New York City

A love poem to New York City

Rooftop Films screenings in the summer time. Underground films outdoors

Chess in Washington Square Park

Basketball In The Heights

Pizza in Brooklyn

Any place with live music, of any genre. My favorite is “Barbès” in Brooklyn

Fancy Friends

It all begins with a knock on a door. Helen Levitt, in 1937, found herself admiring the work of photographer Walker Evans.

The beauty of Helen Levitt’s story includes her friendships, some of which lasted a lifetime.

In her early 20’s, Levitt met three towering creative figures who each left a lasting impact on her character and career. First, from American photographer Walker Evans, she learned the trick of the Leica right-angle viewfinder which allows the photographer to shoot sideways without subjects realizing they are being photographed. Second, from French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, she gained the inspiration to pursue her own intuitive style. She also learned that the Leica was Cartier-Bresson’s preferred camera. Armed with a right-angle viewer (“winkelsucher”) and a portable Leica, she explored dance gesture in the streets, and evoked a theatre-like setting from an ordinary neighborhood. Levitt’s third major influence was American author James Agee, who mesmerized her as well as most people he met. His charisma charmed everyone he met, including the children of Harlem. When Agee accompanied Levitt through Harlem’s streets, children were eager to come straight to the camera.

Though Levitt learned from Cartier-Bresson and Evans, her style is distinct from that of her photographic friends and peers. Levitt took the lyrical photojournalism and artistry of CartierBresson and combined it with the seemingly ordinary everyday scenes captured by photographer Walker Evans. She focused her lens and her imagination on the vibrant street life of ordinary citizens in Harlem. This aesthetic choice was no small act in post-Depression America. At the time, there was one debate as to whether or not photography was even an art form, since it seemed to be a mechanical reproduction of the world in front of the lens. Towering figures in American photography suggested that photography should create a pictorial look, in order to prove its artistry. Within photography circles, there were other voices calling for the medium to serve a photojournalistic purpose only. In the Depression era, the dominant look of documentary photography was influenced by social concerns for the underclass, and photographs were supposed to contain an overt social message. In that context, Dorothea Lange produced her iconic “Migrant Mother” in 1936. But in 1935, Helen Levitt went against that grain, asserting that a photograph could stand on its own, without overt social meaning. Resisting convention to portray only the poverty of Harlem, Levitt went further.