New Hampshire, 1985
Gelatin silver print
Image size 6 ¾ × 10 ⅜ in.
Sheet size 11 × 14 in.
Signed, titled, and dated on verso
August 18, 2025
This whimsical barnyard parade might surprise some admirers of Helen Levitt's work, who are accustomed to seeing her beloved images of children at play in Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side. Still, it doesn’t take long to see that her keen eye and lyrical sensibility translated effortlessly to rural New Hampshire. The shift from city sidewalks to country roads feels less like a departure than a natural extension of her vision—a testament to the consistency of her clear photographic voice.
Former New York Times photography critic Margarett Loke found this image so revealing of Levitt’s viewpoint that she chose to highlight it in her 2009 obituary, written when Levitt died at age 95:
"Despite her many pictures of children, she had always been 'an animal nut,' Ms. Levitt said. Driving in New Hampshire in summer 1985, she recalled, she asked a man near a barn if he had any animals. They’re coming in now to feed, she was told. Sure enough, an enchanting trio traipsed single file down the country road: a thoughtful-looking Shetland pony, a sedate sheep and a frisky mountain goat. She took the picture.
'It was luck,' she said. 'Luck, as James Agee said in an essay, is very important in this kind of stuff.'”
