The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Opens Exhibition of American Photographer Helen Levitt in September
Helen Levitt, New York, 1939, gelatin silver print, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert O. Levitt. © Film Documents LLC
Helen Levitt, New York, 1939–40, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Polaroid Foundation. © Film Documents LLC
“Helen Levitt: In the Street” presents candid views of life in New York City
Houston, Texas—August 22, 2016—Next month, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, opens Helen Levitt: In the Street, an exhibition featuring more than 40 works by the renowned photographer Helen Levitt. Recording the theater of New York City streets, the exhibition features black-and-white and color photographs spanning the artist’s career from the late 1930s to the mid-1980s as well as a short film by Levitt from the 1940s. Helen Levitt: In the Street will be on view from September 13, 2016, to January 2, 2017.
A lifelong New Yorker, Levitt frequented the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, and other working-class neighborhoods of the city where life played out on the stoops and sidewalks. Using a handheld Leica camera outfitted with a right-angle viewfinder that allowed her to look in one direction but snap photographs in another, Levitt often passed unnoticed by her subjects, capturing unguarded instants of joyful play and meditative melancholy that constitute the mystery and poetry of everyday lives.
“Long admired for her ability to capture subjects unaware, without direction or interference, Helen Levitt is one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “We’re excited to bring her photographs to Houston this fall.”
The exhibition is supplemented with nine images from the Museum’s collection, including three captivating photographs that record the fears and fantasies of children as expressed in their exuberant chalk drawings on the city’s pavement and walls. Also on view is Levitt’s 1948 short film In the Street, her directorial debut. The 16-minute black-and-white film, shot in Spanish Harlem, is a cinematic version of her earlier photographs of children.
“Throughout her long career, Levitt wielded the camera not as a tool of social reform or photojournalism tethered to a historical moment or political movement, but rather as a crystal ball through which to peer into the enduring nature of the human spirit,” commented Malcolm Daniel, Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH. “The same unassuming modesty that allowed Levitt to portray her subjects so authentically also kept her from receiving the widespread recognition that she deserves. For many Museum visitors, this may be a first introduction to one of photography’s great artists.”
About the Artist
Born in Brooklyn, Helen Levitt (1913–2009) learned the fundamentals of camera and darkroom practice at a young age, leaving high school a semester before graduation to work for a commercial portrait studio in the Bronx. It wasn’t until a meeting with the young French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1935, though, that she was introduced to the 35mm Leica camera and shown a new model of what it might mean to be an artist in photography. She nurtured her vision over the next few years in New York’s museums and cinemas, and through the friendship of Walker Evans, with whom she shared a darkroom. By 1940, Levitt’s seemingly artless photographs merited inclusion in the inaugural exhibition of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by the first of three solo shows there three years later.
Levitt left still photography behind by the late 1940s, working instead as a full-time film editor. Her own film In the Street (shot in 1945–46 and first released in 1948) brought her subjects of a few years earlier to life. Then, beginning 1959 with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a new medium—color photography—Levitt once more rediscovered the enchanting cast of characters that inhabited the sidewalks of the city.
Exhibition Schedule
Helen Levitt: In the Street is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from September 13, 2016, to January 2, 2017, and will travel to the Milwaukee Art Museum following its Houston presentation.
Organization and Funding
Helen Levitt: In the Street is organized by Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia.
In Houston, generous support is provided by Mrs. Robert O. Levitt.
Media Contact
Laine Lieberman, publicist
713.639.7516 / llieberman@mfah.org