Helen Levitt, the photographer who captured the theater of the everyday

"In the monograph titled Crosstown (2001), Francine Prose writes that looking at a photograph by Helen Levitt (1913-2009) is like taking off your sunglasses, or cleaning your spectacles, or just blinking. The images, indeed, seem to be captured in the blink of an eye; in an instant destined to disappear in a few seconds, making us aware of how quickly everything changes. Rarely simple and natural, they endure through their serene and unadorned honesty, poised between documentary and visual poetry."

"Such is the case with the photograph titled New York [113th Street], taken circa 1938: it features an urban Halloween scene in a gloomy, neglected courtyard, where a masked child climbs a tree trunk, while another leans on its pronounced curve. Rooted in realism, Levitt seems to consciously construct a fictional version of the world that she photographs, transforming everyday life into a composition laden with meaning."

Helen Levitt produced many of her most famous street photographs in the late 1930s and early 1940s, concentrating on immigrant neighborhoods where life unfolded outdoors. Her images capture doorsteps and sidewalks in Spanish Harlem, the Lower East Side, Hell's Kitchen, the East Bronx, and Brooklyn, portraying streets as a theater of the everyday. The photographs freeze gestures and movements, revealing an invisible, elusive urban flow while conveying strength, dignity, and grace in adversity. Levitt's work balances realism and a consciously constructed fictional composition, offering enigmatic scenes that carry meaning without explicit narrative. A Halloween image from circa 1938 exemplifies her approach and appears in a Barcelona retrospective at the Mapfre Foundation.

Read at english.elpais.com