New York City, 1971
Dye transfer print
Sheet size 21 ¼ × 16 in.
April 14, 2025
Beginning in the late 1930s, Helen Levitt's ability to capture expressive gesture established her reputation as a master of lyrical photography. This photograph beautifully illustrates how her later work in color further deepened her capacity for lyricism. While the body language in this picture is delightful, it's the color that really leads our eye through the photograph. The fruit in the shop window and the patterned tropical flowers on the girl's dress sets up a visual rhyme that pays off with joyful chromatic pop of the of the bubble gum machine in the center of the image. Taken as a whole, the resulting composition dances jovially in front of the eyes, in a way that speaks to the amiable attitudes of her young subjects.
In 1974, this photograph was exhibited in Helen Levitt in Color at the Museum of Modern Art, the first exhibition at the museum devoted entirely to color photography. Writing for the press release John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography, noted that "[Levitt's] object was to use color neither in a decorative nor in a purely formal way, but as a descriptive and expressive aspect of the subject, as inherent to it as gesture, shape, space, and texture."
