Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A historical group show, containing 211 works from 106 photographers, spanning the period from 1850 to the present. The exhibit is roughly organized in chronological order, filling all six rooms in the Steichen galleries on the third floor of the museum. All of the works on display were made by women and come from the museum's permanent collection. The exhibit was curated by Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Meister, and Eva Respini.

The following photographers have been included in the show, with the number of works on view in parentheses:

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Room 1

Frances Benjamin Johnston (8)
Gertrude Käsebier (8, including works in a glass case)
Julia Margaret Cameron (3)
Anne Brigman (2)
Anna Atkins (1)
Clementina, Lady Hawarden (1)
Laura Gilpin (1)
Margarethe Mather (1)
Eva Watson-Schütze (1)

Room 2

Tina Modotti (5)
Imogen Cunningham (3)
Germaine Krull (3)
Margaret Bourke-White (2)
Lucia Moholy (2)
Leni Riefenstahl (2)
Berenice Abbott (1)
Gertrude Arndt (1)
Ilse Bing (1)
Marianne Breslauer (1)
Gertrude Leroy Brown (1)
Claude Cahun (1)
Maya Deren (1)
Florence Henri (1)
Hannah Höch (1)
Lotte Jacobi (1)
Helen Levitt (1)
Dora Maar (1)
Lee Miller (1)
Toshiko Okanoue (1)
Kate Stenitz (1)
Grete Stern (1)

Room 3

Dorothea Lange (17)
Helen Levitt (14)
Berenice Abbott (3)
Louise Dahl-Wolfe (2)
Lisette Model (2)
Rogi André (1)
Emmy Andriesse (1)
Claudia Andujar (1)
Esther Bubley (1)
Trude Fleischmann (1)
Barbara Morgan (1)
Marion Post Wolcott (1)

Room 4

Diane Arbus (8)
Melissa Shook (8)
Bernd & Hilla Becher (1 group of 9)
Lois Conner (2)
Jan Groover (2)
Deborah Fleming Caffery (1)
Judy Dater (1)
Jay Defeo (1)
Mary Beth Edeleson (1)
VALIE EXPORT (1 group of 6)
Martine Frank (1)
Nancy Hellebrand (1)
Miyako Ishiuchi (1)
Yayoi Kusama (1)
Marketa Luskacova (1)
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (1)
Gabriele & Helmut Nothhelfer (1)
Adrian Piper (1 group of 6)
Sylvia Plachy (1)
Lucia Radochonska (1)
Martha Rosler (1)
Zofia Rydet (1)
Carolee Schneeman (1)
Ming Smith (1)

Room 5

Nan Goldin (10)
Barbara Kruger (1, plus 3 in glass case)
Rosalind Solomon (4)
Mary Frey (2)
Tina Barney (1)
Lynda Benglis (1, in glass case)
Gay Block (1)
Gran Fury (1, in glass case)
Guerilla Girls (1, in glass case)
Rachel Harrison (1)
Louise Lawler (1)
Sherrie Levine (1)
Sally Mann (1)
Margaret Moulton (1)
Anne Noggle (1)
Howardena Pindell (1)
Sheron Rupp (1)
Gundula Schulze-Eldowy (1)
Cindy Sherman (1)
Laurie Simmons (1)
Sage Sohier (1)
Anne Turyn (1)
Bertien Van Manen (1)
JoAnn Verburg (1)
Hannah Wilke (1 in glass case)

Room 6

Judith Joy Ross (10)
Valérie Belin (1)
Tanyth Berkeley (1)
Elinor Carucci (1)
Rineke Dijkstra (1 group of 11)
Katy Grannan (1)
Roni Horn (1 group of 4)
An-My Le (1)
Annette Messager (1 group installation)
Karin Appollonia Müller (1)
Barbara Probst (1 diptych)
Collier Schorr (1)
Berni Searle (1)
Cindy Sherman (1)
Lorna Simpson (1 group installation)
Kiki Smith (1)
Carrie Mae Weems (1 group of 14)
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Comments/Context: One way to think about the history of photography is to imagine it is a massive, monolithic database of imagery that can be searched and sorted using a variety of keywords. Exhibitions can be drawn from the database using slices of like works, often grouped by geography, time period, photographic process, subject matter, or movement, or some combination thereof (1920s German portraiture or 1970s American color etc.). While the ideas may be abstract, we have all come to accept these characteristics as valid identifiers, in terms of using them to understand trends in the evolution of the medium.

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What we really have here is a new twist on the annual refreshing of the permanent collection display. Starting from the unfocused list of all photographs ever made, this show uses three filters to generate its contents: photographs in the museum's permanent collection, photographs made by women, and then, for the most part, photographs made of women (primarily female portraits). In general, the other subject matter types (landscapes, nudes, still lifes, city scenes, abstracts, process exercises etc) have been stripped out.

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I must admit up front that when I heard about this show, my first reaction was that it was a pretty thin and unimaginative premise for a show that would be on display at the MoMA for over 10 months. In all of our years of collecting, we have never once selected a work based on the gender of its maker, nor have we paid any attention to religious beliefs, race, sexual orientation, or other social modifiers when evaluating the merits of the work at hand - these characteristics just don't seem to have any bearing on or relevance to our choices. We have plenty of images by women photographers from all periods in our collection, but they are there not first and foremost because they were made by women, but because the pictures moved us in some meaningful way. So let's just say that I came into this exhibit with a healthy dose of skepticism that such a thematic construct could be particularly enlightening. I'm happy to report that the show delivers more than I expected in terms of ideas, and that there are some unusual conclusions to be drawn from this somewhat obvious intellectual exercise.

The show is organized chronologically, and the first room contains images representative of the entire 19th century and Pictorialism, beginning with an Anna Atkins fern cyanotype and anchored by portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and images of motherhood by Gertrude Käsebier. (Julia Margaret Cameron, Untitled, 1867, at right above, second from top.) All of these works are rooted in the traditional and allegorical roles of women, with family and soft-focus femininity the main subjects.

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The second room is devoted to between the wars Modernism and the avant-garde. Many of the images on display are head shot portraits, but with a much more modern or Surreal aesthetic - short hair, challenging looks, and distortions. Works by Tina Modotti are the cornerstone of this section, a potent reminder of the political awakening that was taking place at that time. There are plenty of great abstracted images on view: Bourke-White's blast furnaces, Henri's windmills, and Krull's rail tracks and city scenes. (Margaret Bourke-White, Blast Furnaces, Ford Motor Company, c1930, and Florence Henri, Windmill Composition, No. 76, 1929, at right above, fourth and third from the top respectively.) While there are many unknown names here as well, I think a strong case has been made for the important influence of women photographers during this period. I only wish the Cunninghams that were chosen had been more memorable.

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The next room, which ostensibly traces the period between roughly 1940 and 1965, is shockingly weak. Aside from the tremendous works by Dorothea Lange, it is as though this entire period is empty of standout women photographers - beyond the addition of Lisette Model, the two-decade hole is so large that you could drive a truck through it. (Dorothea Lange, Child and Her Mother, Wapato, Yakima Valley, Washington, 1939, at right above, fifth from the top). The Lange works on display are all of women, which seems a bit misleading to me, in that I'm not sure we can defend a particular focus on women in her work - there are just as many great works of men and children as there are of women, Migrant Mother notwithstanding. One whole wall in this room is devoted to the work of Helen Levitt, which is altogether appropriate; what is surprising is that it is her 1970s/1980s color work rather than her earlier and better known black and white images. The only logic I can come up with for why these works have been placed here is that stylistically, they flow better with this time period, even though they were made decades later, or perhaps the early works didn't have enough women in them. In any case, the color works are to be savored for their warmth and humor; I particularly enjoyed the snowcone seller, the telephone pole and the tilted phone booth all in one chaotic frame. (Helen Levitt, New York, 1977/2005, at right above, sixth from the top.)

The dead zone in this show continues all the way until Diane Arbus and Hilla Becher in the later 1960s, found in room 4. In this room, we start to see the real flowering of feminism, of women artists taking on subjects that are important to women with candor and directness, as well as a stronger overlay of conceptual artistic thinking. It is clear that the 1970s was the time when a distinct female point of view become readily apparent in photography. I particularly enjoyed the Carolee Schneeman grid of fragmented faces as well as the more subtle Jan Groovers hidden on the back of a dividing wall. (Jan Groover, Untitled, 1981, and Carolee Schneeman, Portrait Partials, 1970, at right above, eighth and seventh from the top respectively.) While there is a well known color Cindy Sherman from the early 1980s in this room, I was left dumbfounded as to why a classic black and white late 1970s Sherman film still was not included; it seems like such an obvious choice, given the tremendous influence of this series in the history of photography.

In the fifth room, which covers the last two decades of the 20th century, the women photographers really start to gain momentum, taking leadership positions in the forefront of the medium and in contemporary art more broadly. The bench is much deeper here, with Sherman, Kruger, Simmons, Levine, Lawler, and many others all in top form. The focus on women's issues is tighter and the collective voice is much more challenging and sarcastic. A group of images by Nan Goldin covers an entire wall and fills the room with harsh emotional intensity. The subtly scathing works of Mary Frey were a discovery for me; I particularly enjoyed a staged bedroom scene with the caption "Her routine was predictable. Somehow he found this reassuring." (Mary Frey, Untitled from Real Life Dreams, 1984-1987, at right above, ninth from the top.) Again, there are lots of portraits of women, examining women's lives with more caustic skepticism.

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The last room of the show covers some of the same ground, while bringing us up to the present. The divided gallery is dominated by large pieces and multi-image series. In many ways, the current works seem like a further extrapolation on many of the same ideas, identities and types, just on a larger and riskier scale; the overall direction is however more diffuse and less obvious. I think the toughness and sheer strength of Carrie Mae Weems' installation blows everything else away in this room. (Carrie Mae Weems, Selection from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995, at right.) That said, Rineke Dijkstra's series of portraits of the same girl over time (echoing at least in concept Nicholas Nixon's The Brown Sisters) is a surprisingly evocative coming of age story, complete with a baby at the end. I also found Valérie Belin's humongous, too-perfect head shot portrait of a mannequin delightfully disturbing. (Valérie Belin, Untitiled 03010905, 2003, at right below.) My only remaining questions were: where are Catherine Opie and Shirin Neshat? How could they have been omitted from this narrative? (I could probably make a case for Candida Höfer as well, although her lack of "women-focused" subject matter likely pushed her to the cutting room floor.) Overall, I found the last gallery much less coherent that I might have hoped; I think MoMA missed a chance to designate with some force who has been important in women's photography in the past 10 years.

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Underneath it all, this is a routine rehanging of the permanent collection of photography. And yet, this exhibit seems less like an alternate history of photography, and more of a history of women's ideas about themselves, as embodied by changes in photographic output. If the distribution of the sexes in the galleries is any signpost as to who will find this show of particular interest, then women are undeniably drawn to this story; in nearly every room I was in, the ratio of women visitors to men visitors ran between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1.

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This show is full of choices and challenges, barriers and emotions, with much more narrative than I ever would have expected. What I found most memorable about this show was the perhaps obvious idea that in the early 1970s we saw an explosion of innovation by women photographers, a flowering of self-examination that is still occurring and reverberating decades later. I also came away with the tentative conclusion that Diane Arbus was even more of a historical linchpin than I had given her credit for; given what I saw in this show, she emerges out of a long dry spell to create groundbreaking and iconic pictures. It appears there really was no other woman of her stature at that time until Cindy Sherman arrives on the scene several years later.

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Make no mistake, this is an uneven show, with great works hung next to more forgettable pictures, and a spotty distribution of master photographers across time. But overall, the exhibit does uncover intriguing trends in the history of photography that can only be found when seen though the filter of gender. As such, I think its scholarly merits lie not so much in the specific works on view, but in the overarching waves of ideas that the chronological groupings expose.

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Collector's POV: This kind of a broad museum survey isn't a great place for a discussion of gallery/auction prices or market dynamics. So we've highlighted a few favorites, but dispensed with the usual discussion of pricing trends.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), FT (here)
• Book: Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art (here)

Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography

Through March 21, 2011

The Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53rd Street

New York, NY 10019

2010 AIPAD Review, Part 3 of 4

Parts 1 and 2 of this multi-part AIPAD post can be found here and here.
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Laurence Miller Gallery (here): Helen Levitt (22), Stephane Couturier (2), Barbara Blondeau (3), Ray Metzker (11), Jan Dziackowski (3), Bruce Wrighton (3), Denis Darzacq (1), Burk Uzzle (3), Fred Herzog (2), plus 2 bins. I never tire of Metzker composites, and this one of nude silhouettes was spectacular; his recent abstracted reflections in car windows and hoods aptly named "Autowackies" were also worth a closer look. (Ray Metzker, Nude Composite, 1966/1982, at $125000.)

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Paulette Tavormina (3), Henri Cartier-Bresson (5 plus a glass case of books), Helen Levitt (2), Mario Giacomelli (3), Mark Cohen (8), Diane Arbus (1), Harry Callahan (2), Francesca Woodman (2), Ilse Bing (1), Edward Weston (3), Robert Steinberg (3), Victor Schrager (1), Arno Minkkinen (1), Jeff Brouws (9), Sebastiao Salgado (2), Lewis Hine (4). This booth was a broad mix of vintage and contemporary material. The Levitt phone booth below, with the child wearing striped sport socks squished against the expanse of patterned dress, is likely my favorite of her color images. (Helen Levitt, Untitled, New York, 1988, at $15000.)

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here): Susanna Majuri (2), Bruce Davidson (3), Pertti Kekarainen (3), Hannu Karjalainen (6), Kalle Kataila (2), Ola Kolehmainen (1), Jim Campbell (1 lightbox), Shirley Shor (1 lightbox), Niko Luoma (2). This booth had echoes of the gallery's Armory show booth and its current Helsinki school exhibit, but I was most intrigued by the works by Jim Campbell and Shirley Shor - two more examples of the bleeding edge of contemporary photography. Campbell's crosswalk image looks static, but soon shadows of cars and pedestrians stream across and disappear, adding an elements of time and movement to a single frame. Shor's work shows the continuous assembly and disassembly of a portrait, with millions of pixels changing frenetically.

Monroe Gallery (here): Eddie Adams (1 triptych, 5 others), Bill Eppridge (3), Steve Schapiro (4), Irving Haberman (3), Mark Shaw (2), John Filo (1), Charles Moore (1), Jurgen Schadeberg (1), Stanley Forman (1), Carl Iwasaki (1), Bob Gomel (1), Vivian Cherry (1), Ida Wyman (1), Stephen Wilkes (5), plus 2 bins. This booth was filled with top quality photojournalism, and the image below from the aftermath of the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy shows how a photograph can be tranformed into an amazing artifact - the only remaining original master print of this poignant moment has been ravaged by fire. (Bill Eppridge, Burned Master Shot of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Ambassador Hotel Kitchen, Los Angeles, CA, June 5, 1968, for museum consideration.)

Rick Wester Fine Art (here): Sharon Harper (1), Irving Penn (4), Josef Sudek (1), Emmet Gowin (2), Jehsong Baak (3), Pinar Yolaçan (3), Harry Callahan (1), Frank Gohlke (1), Jeff Mermelstein (8), Meghan Boody (2), Louis Faurer (portfolio), Garry Winogrand (portfolio), Aaron Siskind (portfolio). I first saw Pinar Yolaçan's powerful portraits at the ICP Dress Codes show, and I continue to think they are among the most startling and memorable contemporary images I have seen recently. (Pinar Yolaçan, Untitled, 2007, at $5000.)

Deborah Bell Photographs (here): William Eggleston (1), Marcia Resnick (8), Geroge Gardiner (4), Vito Acconci (2), Robert Frank (1), Esther Bubley (1), August Sander (3), Susan Paulsen (4), Sid Kaplan (2), Louis Faurer (3), Harry Callahan (1), Tod Papageorge (1), Garry Winogrand (1), Gerard Petrus Fieret (4), Man Ray (1), André Kertész (1), Brassaï (1).

Stephen Daiter Gallery (here): Paul D'Amato (5), Helen Levitt (1), Joe Schwartz (1), Barbara Morgan (1), Marvin Newman (3), Lewis Hine (1), Sid Grossman (2), Andre Kertesz (5), Aaron Siskind (2), Art Sinsabaugh (1), Gyorgy Kepes (1), Harry Callahan (1), Frederick Sommer (1), Kenneth Jospehson (3), Walter Peterhans (1), Wayne Miller (1), Irving Penn (1), Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1), Heinrich Kuhn (1), Brassai (1), Barbara Crane (4), Lynne Cohen (1), Barbara Kasten (1). I think Art Sinsabaugh's thin panoramic landscapes and cityscapes have aged very well and are generally underappreciated; I liked the radiating lines of the tilled furrows in this particular work. (Art Sinsabaugh, Midwestern Landscape #34, 1962, at $25000.)

Stephen Bulger Gallery (here): Richard Harrington (1), Jean Louis Blondeau (1), Dave Heath (2), André Kertész (3, 1 group of 5, and 9 Polaroids), Helen Levitt (1), Lutz Dille (1), Sarah Anne Johnson (1 triptych and 1), Gilbert Garcin (2), Les Krims (1), George Zimbel (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), Bertrand Carriere (1), Eliane Excoffier (3), Alison Rossiter (3), Fausta Facciponte (1), Harry Waddle (1), Erin O'Neill Haydn (1), Robert Bourdeau (2), Volker Seding (1), Scott Conarroe (1), Sanaz Mazinani (1), Jeff Thomas (1), John Vanderpant (1), Mark Ruwudel (1). This was a packed, "one of each" booth; I liked the concentric circles and shadows of the Vanderpant pipes best. (John Vanderpant, Untitled (Drainpipes), c1930, at $10000.)

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): Randy West (2), John Wood (3), Frederick Sommer (12), Nathan Lyons (5), Leonard Freed (6), Rosalind Solomon (6), Dorothea Lange (3), Barbara Morgan (3), Michael Wolf (1), Todd Hido (2), Edward Weston (3), Aaron Siskind (3), Brett Weston (1). The three variants of Sommer's portrait of Livia were the standouts in this booth.

Danziger Projects (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (1), Annie Liebovitz (2), George Tice (1), Viviane Sassen (3), Paul Fusco (1), Mario Sorrenti (1), Jim Krantz (1), Christopher Bucklow (1), Julia Margaret Cameron (1), Cosmo Innes (1), Edward Weston (2), Seydou Keita (2), Ezra Stoller, (2), Adam Fuss (1), plus 2 bins. With its elegant simplicity, this has always been one of my favorite Mapplethorpe nudes. (Robert Mapplethorpe, Lydia Cheng, 1987/1990, at $55000.)

Galerie Baudoin Lebon (here): Nadar (1), Adolphe Braun (1), Edouard Baldus (1), Louis-Alphonse Dauanne (1), Francois Merille (1), Eugène Atget (2), Autochromes (2), Paolo Gasparini (6), Leo Matiz (1), Alberto Korda (1), Sameer Makarius (1), Barbara Brandli (6), JB Greene (2), Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1), Constantin Brancusi (2). There was a terrific wall of black and white images from 1970s Caracas in this booth. There was also a nice Atget shopfront with ghostly figures bustling past on the sidewalk. (Paolo Gasparini, Car + Soto, Caracas, 1968, at $5000.)

Picture Photo Space (here): Kunihiko Katsumata (8), Issei Suda (4), Hiroshi Osaka (5), Nobuyoshi Araki (4), Diane Arbus (1), Eikoh Hosoe (1), Helmut Newton (1), Garry Winogrand (1), Sally Mann (2), and a few others that weren't marked.

Barry Singer Gallery (here): Brigitte Carnochan (1), Irene Fay (1), Berenice Abbott (1), Jack Welpott (2), Dave Heath (2), Eugene Smith (3), Lou Stoumen (2), Edward Weston (1), Weegee (1), Carlotta Corpon (1), Laura Gilpin (1), Marc Riboud (1), Minor White (1), Brett Weston (2), Clarence John Laughlin (1), Lloyd Ullberg (1), André Kertész (1), Wynn Bullock (1), Ansel Adams (1), Irving Penn (1), Anne Brigman (1), Jan Saudek (1), Don Jim (4), Michael Garlington (2), Gyorgy Kepes (1), Edmund Teske (1), Kenneth Josephson (1). This was another excellent Minor White that I hadn't seen before or had forgotten; the range of tonalities was masterful. (Minor White, Parking Lot, San Francisco, from Sequence 9, 1952, at $15000.)

Continue to Part 4 here.

Helen Levitt, A Memorial Tribute @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 80 photographs (both black and white and color) and 1 video, hung in the entry, and two gallery spaces. Amidst a handful of vintage prints, there are three enlarged images of graffiti (48x38), from 1939 and printed in 2000, and a poster from an earlier exhibit in the entry area. The 1944 silent black and white video In the Street, made by Levitt, James Loeb, and James Agee, runs in a continuous loop in this area as well.

Most of the vintage black and white prints are from the period of 1939 to 1942, though there are a few prints from the mid 1980s as well. These prints are generally 11x14 or 8x10 (or reverse), and are variously framed and matted, primarily shown in the main gallery space, with a few hung in the entry. The 5 color dye transfers are 18x22, and were made between 1971 and 1980, and are intermingled with the black and white work.

The 30 black and white contact prints in the "First Proofs" area are of varying sizes, and were made circa 1940; they are framed in brown wood and matted, and displayed against bright yellow walls in a separate room. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When New York street photographer Helen Levitt passed away at the age of 95 earlier this March, I was surprised by the number of tributes and obituaries written by working photographers that were posted into the blogosphere. Given both the sheer number and the sincerity of these eulogies, Levitt's work has clearly made an impression on the generation of photographers active today, especially those based in New York.

This "memorial" exhibit does a fine job of covering the high points of Levitt's long career, as well as digging deeper into her process as an artist. Of course, the show is anchored by a variety of vintage prints of Levitt's signature subjects: children and old folks, playing in the streets and watching from stoops and staircases. In some ways, these images have become a reminder of authentic New York life, of running and laughing and blowing bubbles, of bringing a chair right out onto the sidewalk and sitting down to watch the show and visit with neighbors. The joy she found in the streets was genuine, without a trace of mocking, even when the scenes have their own warmth and irony.

When you visit the show, be sure to take a few minutes to sit down and watch the silent movie In the Streets. It is full of faces, grubby kids eating, dogs and cats, and Levitt's own poetry of everyday life, in full motion. There are two scenes worth looking out for: one where kids push a barrel over an open fire hydrant, creating a geyser of water spewing high into the sky, and another where a woman is seen from behind, walking along carrying a mop and swinging her hips in time. Both are classic Levitt.

The smaller prints entitled "First Proofs" are also worth a longer look, since they provide a glimpse into Levitt's process of refining her compositions and editing her images. The typical Levitt subject matter can be found in these works (people, store windows, etc.), but they are seen in variations and alternate views, as she experimented to capture just the right interaction of the figures.

What I like about this show is that it strikes a good balance between greatest hits and lesser known images, providing a sampler of a wide variety of her work, while at the same time offering new angles for understanding her artistic approach. It's a show worth catching before it closes.
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Collector's POV: Many of the images in this show are courtesy of the estate, and as such, are not for sale. In general, the vintage works that are available are priced between $7500 and $15000, with a few of the more famous outliers at $25000, $60000, and $98000 respectively. The color dye transfers from the 1970s are priced at $15000, and the larger modern prints are $7500 each. The "First Proof" contact prints are priced between $2500 and $15000.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Short reviews of this show: NY Times (here), Wall Street Journal (here)
• Slide Show, review by DLK COLLECTION (here)

Helen Levitt, A Memorial Tribute

Through June 26th

Laurence Miller Gallery

20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

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UPDATE: There is also a small tribute now on vew at the Met in the second floor hallway (which you walk past on the way to the Photography galleries). Though not exactly a full exhibit, it does contain 13 well selected vintage images by Levitt.

Book: Slide Show, The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2005 by powerHouse Books (here). 120 pages, with 110 color images. Includes a foreword by John Szarkowski.

Comments/Context: I don't think it was until we moved back to New York that I really started to resonate with Helen Levitt's work. Her 1930s and 1940s black and white images of children in the streets, while undoubtedly well crafted, somehow didn't grab my attention; I was more drawn to the architectural transformations documented by Berenice Abbott from the same period.

But it is her color work from the 1960s and 1970s that has made me change my mind a bit on Levitt's rightful place in the history books. How's this for a statement: of the great black and white photographers working prior to the 1950s, Levitt was the most successful at embracing color photography and making a superlative body of color work in her later career. The only other "old school" photographers I can come up with who made the transition to decent color work are Harry Callahan (his later dye transfers), Andre Kertesz (Polaroids) and Walker Evans (Polaroids). If I've missed some glaring great example, leave it in the comments, but I think the statement stands - Levitt did something that almost no one else did.

The images in this book perfectly capture the feeling of New York in the summer (no wonder her work is often labeled "social realism"). Virtually all the pictures are of people, not straight on portraits, but people in the context of their lives: on street corners, with pets, near parked cars, sitting on stoops, smoking, waiting, taking a break. Her compositions often capture the world slightly off-kilter, with spontaneous secondary stories playing out on the periphery, just like they do in real life. On first glance, these images look like snapshots; upon further review, they turn out to be tiny vignettes of everyday life, somehow optimistic amidst generally poor living conditions and plenty of old age. Her use of color isn't self-conscious; she doesn't use super-saturated attention grabbing color. Instead, color is used as just one of many tools that can make a picture resolve into something interesting, the hood or a car, or a dress, or a door frame suddenly providing a visual contrast. And even though there are a few dated fashions and hairstyles, these pictures have a timeless quality to them, as though you could step into the street in parts of New York in August and see these exact same stories playing out all over again.
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Collector's POV: Levitt's vintage silver prints from the 1930s and 1940s come up at auction from time to time, ranging in price from $10000 to $60000. Later prints from these same negatives are typically priced between $2000 and $6000. Her dye transfer prints have been much more scarce: only a handful of prints (some vintage, some printed in the 1990s) at auction in the past five years, selling for between $2000 and $12000. Levitt is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery (here) in New York, Fraenkel Gallery (here) in San Francisco, and Robert Klein Gallery (here) in Boston. While these images don't neatly fit into our city/industrial genre (too many people), they are growing on me over time, so perhaps there will be a place in our collection for one or more of these prints at some point in the future.

Transit Hub:

• NY Times obituary (here)
• Interviews: NPR 2002 (here) and WNYC 2001 (here)
• James Agee's forward to A Way of Seeing (here)
• Crosstown (here)
• Helen Levitt - In the street @FOAM, Oct 2008-Jan 2009 (here, in Dutch)