For the very first time Henri Cartier-Bresson and Helen Levitt, both internationally recognized twentieth century masters of street photography, will be exhibited side by side. 

Helen Levitt, at 95 years old, is considered by many the greatest living  photographer within the tradition of the street photograph, of which her friend Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) is perhaps the acknowledged master.  Despite his being French and she being a New Yorker, they shared a sensibility rich in the poetic drama of the street and sophisticated in the formal nuances of the frame. Each photographer quickly received significant recognition within only a few years of their first making photographs.

Many wonderful juxtapositions of photographs by each will be shown: Cartier-Bresson’s children playing among the ruins in Seville share the energy and formal complexity found in Levitt’s boys playing with branches in a vacant lot in Spanish Harlem. A near perfect pairing juxtaposes Cartier-Bresson’s boy carrying a wine bottle (Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954) along side Helen Levitt’s woman holding milk bottles (New York City, c. 1945). It is interesting to note that the Levitt was taken about a decade before the Cartier-Bresson.

Less formally connected, but perhaps more emotionally tied, are Cartier-Bresson’s picture of a man jumping over a puddle (Behind the Gare St. Lazare) and Levitt’s child sticking her face out of a baby carriage ( New York City ). Two perfect moments of joy.

Though Cartier-Bresson took pictures around the globe while Helen Levitt stayed close to home, it was in Mexico and New York City where their metaphorical paths crossed. This connection is one of the rare times when they both photographed in the same place and the juxtaposition of the images each made shows them at their closest.