The streets of Helen Levitt or when children roamed free before the screens

Helen Levitt
Periodista i crítica de televisió
2 min

There are photographs of a small detail or a gesture capable of explaining an entire world, the life of a specific moment. Images that preserve the emotional atmosphere beyond a single instant. This is the case with the work of Helen Levitt (1913-2009), the American photographer who dedicated part of her career to portraying everyday life on the streets of New York with ease and a very fine sense of humor. Levitt was born in the Bronx and discovered photography while working in a photo-printing shop. Inspired by the work of Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, with whom she became friends, she brought a very spontaneous outlook and a nuanced capacity for observation. Now, at the KBr Fundació Mapfre, you can visit an extensive exhibition based on her entire body of work, well worth a visit.

Levitt's most popular photographic period is that of scenes of children playing in the streets of Spanish Harlem, where she worked at a public school. On his way to work, he noticed the way the children interacted with each other. He was struck by the chalk drawings they made on the ground and walls. These were very poor neighborhoods where children would take advantage of anything they could find to amuse themselves, climbing facades, sitting on doorsteps, or running in costumes amidst the activity of shops. A leaking water pipe, abandoned ramps on a corner, or cardboard boxes stimulated the imagination of creatures that roamed free, more or less watched by the distracted gaze of neighbors who were basking in the fresh air at their windows or chatting next to a shop window. From a current perspective, it's inevitable to read implicit dangers or ask questions about some of the messages the creatures left on the facades. The children invented imaginary doors or wrote signs next to windows that are now a complete enigma.

The exhibition also features a short documentary. In the street, which Levitt directed with Janice Loeb and James Agee in 1948. It was a film forgotten for decades that MoMA and the Library of Congress recovered and restored in the 1980s. It is a foundational piece of American independent documentary cinema. The film, only sixteen minutes long, is an extension of the author's photographic gaze, as if she felt the need to record the rhythm and energy of that urban life. Loeb was Levitt's friend and sister-in-law, also a photographer, and the owner of the camera used to film him. James Agee was a novelist and screenwriter of films such as The African Queen either The Night of the HunterThe three of them also worked together on the documentary The quiet one, nominated for an Oscar, about the integration process of an emotionally troubled child at a school in Wiltwyck.

In the street It's a marvel because, with its absolute simplicity, it shows the dignity of neighborhoods where there was so much misery. The children give identity and joy to the streets. When you're in the large theater at the KBr, if you discreetly observe the people watching the film, you'll see that they all have a permanent smile throughout the short film. And the same thing will happen if you sit on the small bench and enter that Spanish Harlem. It's the essence of childhood. The way children relate to each other is a universal language in which we all recognize each other. And it's inevitable to wonder if that free and shared way of playing now seems like an act of resistance, before screens and fears made children's worlds a little smaller.

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