Helen Levitt was born and raised in Brooklyn NY. After dropping out of high school she began working for a commercial photographer, where she learnt the technical aspects of what was to become her profession. Around 1937 at the age of about 24, she purchased a second hand Leica camera and – intrigued by children’s chalk drawings she would see around her neighbourhood – started to take photos of her own.
Levitt did not restrict herself to images chalk drawings however; her first published image was of three children on the front steps of a building, in paper masks preparing for Halloween. And she went on to capture some of the most lyrical documentary images to have been published.
What Levitt captured in the streets of New York City between 1938 to 1948 were everyday occurrences that where beautifully composed. Her main subjects were simply of ordinary people in the streets, going about their daily business, but most of all of children and their very own street culture of sorts. She continuously captured intimate glimpses of them playing or dancing, in ragged clothes or with sticks and chalk as toys, or simply using their own imagination that would blossom into beautiful self-expression.
She captured moments in these children’s lives that in some way seem magical and unreal, especially to adults living in the 21st century. But in fact these dreamlike instances happened all the time – or that’s what her work would have us believe – she simply took the image at the right moment.
Levitt seemed drawn to capture the underprivileged (Levitt & Oles 1997), and although she would use the whole city for her images Levitt preferred to shoot in the Spanish Harlem or poorer working class areas of town (Block 2002).
She was quoted in sa...
... middle of paper ...
...hotographs right up until her death in 2009 (Williamson 2009). She hated attention, and was what some would call a “photographers photographer” (Block 2002), as she was far more acclaimed by her peers than she ever was by the public. In her lifetime and after her death she has been called a street, documentary and lyrical photographer, and compared to the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, someone she drew great inspiration from.
I’m going to end with extract from James Agee’s forward in Helen Levitt’s published work: ‘A Way of Seeing’ (1965), which I believe sums up her early work perfectly.
“In Miss Levitt’s photographs the general feeling is that surrealism is that of the ordinary metropolitan soil which breeds these remarkable juxtapositions and moments, and that what we call “fantasy” is, instead, reality in its unmasked vigour and grace.” (Levitt & Agee 1965)
...t way, like Varley’s 1930 Vera, she remains a mystery, a forgotten artist, best known for he work as a muse, model, and wife. It is often wondered what kind of work she would have done if she had remained single mindedly focused on her art like the famous Emily Carr
In Ann Petry’s novel, The Street, the urban setting is exposed as an enemy with all who encounter it. This formidable adversary challenges anyone who wishes to brave the city including Luttie Johnson. Luttie forms a complicated relationship with the setting as she fights its challenges in attempt to find her place within it. Through her use of literary devices, Petry establishes Luttie’s relationship with the urban setting. Using selection of detail and imagery, the urban setting is revealed as the antagonist, and through personification, the conflict between Luttie and the wind is illustrated.
She was able to see a young woman only besmeared by old age and the labyrinth of a fulfilled life. The importance of peering beyond the earthly armor we develop through out our lives cannot be understated. Perception often changes easily for better or for worse. When we choose strengthen our resolve to read between the lines understanding
In this passage “The Street” by Ann Petry, Lutie Johnson’s relationship with her urban setting is expressed using figurative language. Lutie allows us to walk with her and experience one cold November night near the streets of seventh and eighth avenue. The relationship between Lutie Johnson and the urban setting is established using personification, imagery, and characterization.
Art could be displayed in many different forms; through photography, zines, poetry, or even a scrapbook. There are many inspirational women artists throughout history, including famous women artists such Artemisia Gentileschi and Georgia O’Keeffe. When searching for famous female artists that stood out to me, I found Frida Kahlo, and Barbara Kruger. Two very contrasting type of artists, though both extremely artistic. Both of these artists are known to be feminists, and displayed their issues through painting and photography. Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger’s social and historical significance will be discussed.
The Life and Works of Annie Leibovitz Annie Leibovitz is one of the best portrait photographers in this modern age. Her works focus on varied subjects but hover more among celebrity portraits. Apart from these, her photographs depict visual stories that affect the audience's emotions. The diversity and life of her photographs create visual artistic realms that touch the soul. Biography:
Annie Leibovitz (born Anna-Lou) was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on October 2 1949 to her father Samuel Leibovitz, a was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and her mother, Marilyn Edith, née Heit, a modern dance instructor of Estonian Jewish heritage. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz) Because her father was part of the military, it forced her and her large family to move around constantly. “Years before it ever occurred to me that one could have a life as a photographer, I became accustomed to looking at life through a frame. The frame was the window of my family’s car as we traveled from one military base to another.” (Leibovitz 11) Annie attended Northwood High School and became interested in a variety of artistic accomplishments such as writing, music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she enrolled as a painting major in 1967. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz)
conception of her encounters highlight her fixation on a kind of lived fantasy blinding her from
Ellison, Ralph “Invisible Man” The Places Where We Dwell Reading and Writing About New York City. Juanita But, Mark Noonan. Dubuque, Iowa. Kendall/Hunt Publishing 2007, P 196-199
...ised by the public. Her ability to show the affectionate body language between mother and child captivated its audiences. Mary Cassatt also experimented with print making and explored different patterns that made her work all the more lively. Her work with drypoint and aquatint are some of the most famous color prints in the art world today.
First, the scene in the image was manipulated through stage-managing, a common practice in photojournalism. While the image of the migrant mother, Florence Thompson, appears to the viewer to be a genuine and unprompted look at the hardship and deprivation of a dejected migrant woman. This, of course, was the reality of Ms. Thompson’s personal situation at the time. But the scene itself was micromanaged to appear in a lucid and vivid form in the image, including editing Ms. Thompson’s older children from the image to create the more poignant scene of a mother holding a small child and using a pose in which the woman is looking out into the distance, with the two children told to lo...
Mary Cassatt was most widely known for her impressionist pieces that depicted mother (or nanny) and child. She was faced with many struggles throughout her life and received much criticism, even after her death in 1926. She found it difficult to receive appropriate recognition for her pieces during her early career. Many were unaccepted by the Salon. Cassatt lived for many years in France after her successful career, which ended abruptly when she went blind. Her talent placed her pieces in many famous museums throughout the world and landed her name among the famous artists of her time. As well as paving the way for powerful women, like herself. She lived during a time of suffragettes searching for equality.
Frida Kahlo’s honest, often bizarre, self-portraits reflect a beauty beyond the physical--- an impishness in the wide eyes, a small smirk teasing at the corners of her mouth. In her renderings, her cheeks are always heavily rouged, and exotic flowers adorn her raven hair. Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress uses the contrast of light --- Kahlo’s glowing skin --- and dark--- the black background, and in doing so, this painting not only communicates the subject’s outward beauty. It also points to an unspoken turmoil inside of the painter: as dark as the night sky and as deep as rolling sea.
He started to explore female figures in the 1940’s but it was not till 1950 he started to do female figures exclusively. He had his work shown in the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953 which caused a sensation because they were mainly figures of his fellow abstractionists and they were painted with blatant technique and imagery. He applied his medium in such a way that it looks as though it was vomited on but to reveal a woman in what would seam as some mens most widely held sexual fears.
Surrealism and the surrealist movement is a ‘cultural’ movement that began around 1920’s, and is best known for its visual art works and writings. According to André Berton, the aim was “to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality” (Breton 1969:14). Surrealists incorporated “elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and ‘non sequitur”. Hence, creating unnerving, illogical paintings with photographic precision, which created strange creatures or settings from everyday real objects and developed advanced painting techniques, which allowed the unconscious to be expressed by the self (Martin 1987:26; Pass 2011:30).