Robert Coles

Helen Levitt

Marvin Hoshino

Photobook chiefly containing over 100 photos of children's street drawings and messages, taken between 1938 and 1948. Each photograph was selected and arranged by the photographer.

Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City, 1938-1948

In the Street

Thomas Zander

The most comprehensive publication of Helen Levitt's photographs from the New York subway, many of which are published here for the first time. Helen Levitt's pictures haunt like an intimate ghost - ever present, never forceful, curious, and receptive. In 1938 Levitt accompanied Walker Evans on a number of trips when he photographed passengers on the New York subway and soon she was taking her own shots. More empathetic and informal with a camera, Levittʼs finest photographs came from being present to the world, allowing herself to be seen as a fellow citizen, not as a photographer setting herself apart. The disarming ease of Levittʼs pictures builds up, page after page, into an undeniably singular attitude to the medium and the world. It was around 1978 that Levitt made her return to the subway, a full four decades after that first foray. She seems to have picked up exactly where she had left off in 1938, but in general her photography was less restricted, more in keeping with her looser street photographs. By the 1970s, public behaviour on the subway was much less formal, there was ʻelbow roomʼ. This is the most comprehensive publication of Helen Levittʼs photographs from the New York subway, many of which are published here for the first time.

Marvin Hoshino

Books

Your next favorite book is out there