Slide Show

More about the book

Helen Levitt’s photographs are celebrated for their beauty and perceptiveness, creating a unified view of the world that serves as a subtle yet powerful manifesto of observation. Renowned for her iconic black-and-white street photography, Levitt also had a lesser-known archive of color work, now compiled for the first time in this monograph. In the late 1950s, she received Guggenheim grants to capture color images on the streets of New York, where she had previously worked in black-and-white. Unfortunately, many of her best color photographs were stolen in 1970, forcing her to restart her efforts. In 1974, her new work was showcased as a continuous slide projection at the Museum of Modern Art, marking one of the first exhibitions of serious color photography. This collection features over one hundred photographs, including eight from the original 1959-60 series, with more than half never before exhibited or published. This remarkable monograph stands as a worthy successor to her earlier works, including her extensive color collection in "Crosstown" and her intimate black-and-white volume, "Here and There," which highlighted previously unknown images taken over six decades.