Synopsis
“All over the city on streets and walks and walls the children . . . have established ancient, essential and ephemeral forms of art, have set forth in chalk and crayon the names and images of their pride, love, preying, scorn, desire. . . . The Lady in this House is Nuts . . . . Lois I have gone up the street . Don’t forget to bring your skates . . . . Ruby loves Max but Max hates Ruby. . . . And drawings, all over, of . . . ships, homes . . . western heroes . . . and monsters . . . which each strong shower effaces.”So wrote James Agee in 1939. He shared this fascination with children’s street drawings and messages with his friend Helen Levitt. Here now are over one hundred of her photographs, made in the years between 1938 and 1948. Most of these pictures have never before been published. They have been selected and arranged by the photographer and carefully reproduced.Robert Coles has written especially for this book an essay on the imaginative live of children and of a time when “. . . children still had some visual independence, some keen-eyed interest in laying pictorial claim to the world around them. . . . I have not seen scenes such as Helen Levitt offers in my wanderings through America’s city streets twenty and thirty and forty years after these were taken. They offer, then, a look backward—though they are also timeless in certain aspects. For children will never really stop being tempted by their imaginative faculties to show and tell—to let others see what they find themselves conceiving in thought and fantasy and dream.”
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From the Back Cover
"In common situations Miss Levitt finds the glint of an often bizarre beauty that most of us--including photographers--do not notice. . . . She brings to her pictures an intensity that can be almost hypnotic."--Owen Edwards, "New York Times"
Review
“In common situations Miss Levitt finds the glint of an often bizarre beauty that most of us—including photographers—do not notice. . . . She brings to her pictures an intensity that can be almost hypnotic.”—Owen Edwards, New York Times
Comments on the Work of Helen Levitt
“There is no fundamental difference in the great landscapes and quiet portraits of Edward Weston and the profoundly revealing pictures of children by Helen Levitt. Both are photographic perceptions of the highest order.”—Ansel Adams
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In the Street
Published by
Duke University Press, Durham, 1987
ISBN 10: 0822307286
ISBN 13: 9780822307280
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Feldman's Books, Menlo Park, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Seller Inventory # 045697
Seller Image
In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, 1938 - 1948, Photographs by Helen Levitt
Published by
Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1987
ISBN 10: 0822307286
ISBN 13: 9780822307280
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: A&D Books, South Orange, NJ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. First edition, first printing. Helen Levitt's second book features images of children's street drawings and messages taken in the 1940s, some with the young artists at work. Most are reproduced here for the first time. The first printing was issued in conjunction with an exhibition of this work, held at the International Center of Photography, NYC. Photographs by Helen Levitt (1913-2009); essay by Robert Coles. 112 pages; 116 duo-toned b&w illustrations; 9.25 x 11.25 inches. Caption list. Condition: Near Fine clothbound hardcover with very light evidence of handling in a Vey Good+ dust jacket with light rubbing along the top edge, a touch of shelf wear, and a tiny tear and two small abrasions at the heel. Overall, a nice copy. All dust jackets are protected by a clear mylar cover. Ships the next business day, wrapped in padding, in a box. Seller Inventory # 17254