Photo of the Week #227

January 9, 2023
Helen Levitt’s color photography delighted in portraying New York City as a kind of collage, a place where disparate elements rubbed elbows, and came together in surprising, and ever-shifting ways. This photo is like a poem, in the way it finds a visual rhyme between the woman's funky clothing combination and the patchwork of urban elements that surround her. A common feature of Levitt’s photography is its ability to at once convey humor and affection, all while offering an unvarnished look at some of New York City’s least tidy corners. 

Levitt’s early embrace of color is often overshadowed by her (rightfully beloved) black and white photography—in part because of the prohibitive cost of printing in color at the time. She began seriously working in color in 1959 after receiving the first of two consecutive Guggenheim grants. Most of those early color works, predominantly slides, were lost forever when her home was burglarized in 1970, but she continued to shoot in color throughout the following decades. Levitt's color photography has its own unique character, closely connected, yet distinct from her black and white work. In these photographs, the splashes of color offered by clothing, signage, and other elements become their own personalities amongst the lyrical interplay of her human subjects.

In 1974 Helen Levitt was honored with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, their first devoted entirely to photographs in color. John Szarkowski, MoMA’s preeminent curator of photography, selected 40 of Levitt's color slides made between 1971 and 1974. They were projected as a slideshow, creating a sequence of images where each was as ephemeral as the momentary city scenes they captured. This groundbreaking exhibition paved the way for other image makers shooting color to be featured at MOMA over the following decades, from William Eggleston to Cindy Sherman.