Helen Levitt

I love the photography of Helen Levitt. She captures everyday city life so precisely that it feels as though she's in your head. She finds all those amazing and mundane vignettes you fleetingly see daily on the streets of any city and she forever captures them in her lens and then on paper. Her photos show absolutes and contrasts - old - new, clean - dirty, happy - sad, young - old, and a million nuances of all things urban and alive. Looking at her pictures, you can almost hear the sounds, smell the odors and feel the air.This book holds a large variety of her work spanning several decades, some in color, some black and white. It is printed on heavy, quality paper. Still, it isn't a complete collection and lacks some of my favorites, so I wish this were a series of books, so I could easily collect all her photographs without duplication, and so superbly done. The format is simple: It is a picture book without captions. A short forward hardly tells you anything about her, but it doesn't need to. You can spend the day in her picture city know her intimately through her photographs.

Well, if you're looking at this book, you probably know who Helen Levitt is and you can probably imagine the amazing photographs that are in this book.Helen Levitt was one of the pioneers of street photography, a self taught photographer who eventually began working with Cartier-Bresson, another pioneer of street photography. Mind you, these two photographers represented REAL street photography, not the (pardon my language) crap we see today from the college kids running around with their $6,000 Leica that Mommy or Daddy bought them. Street photography, unfortunately, has become WAYYYYYYYY overdone and destroyed by people with no true "eye" for it. Now we just see photo after photo of homeless people, stray animals, homeless people with stray animals, etc. etc.Anyway, sorry to get off topic a bit there. My point is, BUY THIS BOOK. This is REAL street photography where talent and hard work are demonstrated through these beautiful prints. And if you truly want to learn what real street photography is all about, this book is a great starting point.

Book Arrived in time in excellent condition. The mention of Walker Evans name in conjuction with the book is a little decieving. There is only a short quote from him. I do like the simplicity of the book, no verbose self-important essays and keeping the photographs chronological history to a minumum.

Helen Levitt is deeply respected among photographers. Her work is collected by museums andshown in galleries. I wish she were more widely known. Her street photographs of New York inthe '40's are pure art. She had an incredible eye, sense of humor and intuitive sense of the spacebetween the documenter and what is being documented. Her prints were created with great attentionto tones of black and white that enhance subject matter and never overwhelm it. This is a beautifulcollection. In a world now inundated with manipulated images, spend some time with this book andappreciate this woman's genius for presenting a place in time with simplicity, directness and respectfor craft.

I ordered 5 copies of this book! It was such a pleasure to see all the new images that have never been published. I love Evans forward (brief but articulate), and to see the genius of Levitt through the years makes this my favorite book to date in 2008! I couldn't recommend it more!

Great book

I found this book nearly as good as Crossroads, which is now going for $200+. The binding and reproduction quality is excellent. The only difference with this is a lack of a tipped in image on the front. I purchased 7 of these books. One of them was defective, and this sometimes happens, but Amazon is very amenable to returns and I'm going to send it back for a replacement. Amazon pays the return shipment. I own over 6000 photography books and this is well-worth the investment!

... of HL's street photography (mainly). Well produced. The Walker Evans contribution is about one paragraph.

Como tudo desta extraordinária fotógrafa , o livro demonstra mais uma vez o talento de Helen.

Excellent

Die Fotos:Streetphotographie in Schwarz/Weiss und Farbe. Helen Levitt hat dabei Ihren eigenen Stil gefunden. Überwiegend Menschen die selbst etwas skurill und schrullig soind oder Situationen mit einem Augenzwinkern. Die Fotos meist gestaltet mit viel Umgebung,. Die Kamera also nicht mit dem 35 mm vor der Nasenspitze platziert. Es handelt sich dabei eigentlich um Alltagssituationen der kleinen Leute, keine Stars und Sternchen.Mir persönlich gefallen die Fotos sehr gut.Der Druck ist auf qualitativen dicken Papier als sehr gut zu bezeichnen. Eventuell dunkelt das weis bereists an den Rändern kaum wahrnehmbar nach, so zumindest mein Empfinden.Es gibt aber einen Stern Abzug, da weder Jahreszahl noch Ort der Aufnahmen vermerkt sind und auch keine Biografie für nötig befunden wurde.

Great book, tons of great pics. It wasn't the Levitt book I was looking for but it turned out to be really wonderful especially if you dig NYC.

Firstly, the book arrived very quickly.The book itself contains 160 odd pages of photographs of street scenes. At first glance, one looks at each picture thinking it's nothing overly special. But take a few minutes to study them and the humour, pathos and charm lies underneath.