Helen Levitt born in 1913 in Brooklyn, is an American street photographer and filmmaker whose work captures the bustle, squalor, and beauty of everyday life in New York City.
Levitt began her career in photography at age 18 working in a portrait studio in the Bronx. After seeing the works of French photographer Henri-Cartier Bresson, she was inspired to purchase a 35-mm Leica camera and began to scour the poor neighborhoods of her native New York for subject matter.
In the mid-1940s Levitt collaborated with David Agee, filmmaker Sidney Meyers, and painter Janice Loeb on The Quiet One, a prizewinning documentary about a young African American boy, and with Agee and Loeb on the film In the Street, which captures everyday life in East Harlem.
