"I never had a ‘project.’ I would go out and shoot, follow my eyes—what they noticed, I tried to capture with my camera, for others to see." —Helen Levitt
Brooklyn born photographer, Helen Levitt’s extensive oeuvre spanning 70 years began in the 1930s when she studied with Walker Evans and became immersed in the New York art scene. Her interest in street culture, especially of children in tenement buildings whose playgrounds were the stoops and sidewalks of the neighborhood gave a poetic and playful focus to her work. The image on offer here, Boy spinning ribbon, taken in the 1940s is an early, mounted print of this quintessential image. Levitt held her first major museum exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1943 and more recent retrospectives have taken place at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the International Center for Photography; and the Centre National la Photographie in Paris.