Helen Levitt

 ( American Street Photographers ) 

In 1936, she purchased a 35 mm rangefinder camera. While teaching art classes to children in 1937 for New York City's Federal Art Project, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory Sidewalk chalk that were part of the New York children's street culture of the time. She began to photograph these chalk drawings, as well as the children who made them for her own creative assignment with the Federal Art Project. They were ultimately published in 1987 as In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City 1938–1948.

She continued taking street photographs in Manhattan, mainly in East Harlem but also in the Garment District and on the Lower East Side. During the 1930s to 1940s, the lack of air conditioning meant people were outside more, which invested her in street photography. Her work was first published in Fortune magazine's July 1939 issue. The new photography section of the Museum of Modern Art, New York included Levitt's work in its inaugural exhibition in July 1939. In 1941, she visited Mexico City with Alma Mailman, then wife of author James Agee, and took photos in the streets of Tacubaya, a working-class suburb. In 1943, Nancy Newhall curated her first solo exhibition Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children with photographs from Harlem and Mexico City.

In 1959 and 1960, she received two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation for her pioneering work in color photography. In 1965 she published her first major collection, A Way of Seeing. Much of her work in color from 1959 to 1960 was stolen in a 1970 burglary of her East 12th Street apartment. The remaining photos, and others taken in the following years, can be seen in the 2005 book Slide Show: The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt.

Levitt lived in New York City and remained active as a photographer for nearly 70 years. However, she expressed lament at the change of New York City scenery: "I go where there's a lot of activity. Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something."

In the late 1940s, Levitt made two documentary films with Janice Loeb and James Agee: In the Street (1948) and The Quiet One (1948). Levitt, along with Loeb and Sidney Meyers, received an Academy Award nomination for The Quiet One.

Another Light (1952) is dramatized documentary about a small town and its new hospital, focusing on the reactions of an elderly farmer, a housewife, and a businessman. The film explains how town citizens in Ridgewood, NJ, raised construction funds, and how the hospital supports and serves the community. Presented by the Federal Security Agency's Public Health Service, the film was produced by William Levitt, written by William B. Mahoney, camera by Richard Leacock, co-edited by Levitt and Loeb, and directed by Levitt.

Made by Film Documents Productions.Levitt was active in film making for nearly 25 years; her final film credit is as an editor for John Cohen's documentary The End of an Old Song (1972). Levitt's other film credits include the cinematography on The Savage Eye (1960), which was produced by Ben Maddow, Meyers, and Joseph Strick, and also as an assistant director for Strick and Maddow's film version of Jean Genet play The Balcony (1963). In her 1991 biographical essay, Maria Hambourg wrote that Levitt "has all but disinherited this part of her work." In 2012 Deane Williams published a comprehensive overview of Levitt's films in Senses of Cinema. A critical review of Levitt's filmmaking career.