Helen Levitt - Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation Part II New York Wednesday, October 9, 2024 | Phillips
  • In the 1930s, as the young Helen Levitt was developing her photographic practice, she reached out to Walker Evans whose work she admired. The two became friends and began photographing together, and when Evans started photographing in the New York City subways, Levitt frequently accompanied him. After a few such outings, Levitt began making her own images of passengers, such as the photograph offered here. While her subway photographs are less well-known than Evans’s, they are just as much a collective portrait of New York and inhabit an important place within Helen Levitt’s empathetic and perceptive documentation of the city and its people. In the 1970s, Levitt returned to the subways with her camera, making a significant body of work later published in the book, Manhattan Transit: The Subway Photographs of Helen Levitt (2017).

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, 2000

92

Subway Portrait (man with hat)

1938-1941
Gelatin silver print.
5 x 8 in. (12.7 x 20.3 cm)
Signed in pencil on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$6,000 - 8,000 

Place Advance Bid
Contact Specialist

Caroline Deck
Senior Specialist, Photographs
cdeck@phillips.com

 

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com
 

Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation Part II

New York Auction 9 October 2024