passing icon- Helen Levitt

From the NPR obit (which features a swell slideshow): "In the 1930s and '40s, Levitt would wander the streets to document the lyrical quality of daily city life. In an era of social radicalism, she set out to make commentary on the plight of the working class. But after seeing the photographs of Cartier-Bresson for the first time, she realized that photography could be art, and that realization informed her work for the rest of her life."

From NYTimes obit: "In Ms. Levitt’s best-known picture, three properly dressed children prepare to go trick-or-treating on Halloween 1939. Standing on the stoop outside their house, they are in almost metaphorical stages of readiness. The girl on the top step is putting on her mask; a boy near her, his mask in place, takes a graceful step down, while another boy, also masked, lounges on a lower step, coolly surveying the world.

“At the peak of Helen’s form,” John Szarkowski, former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, once said, “there was no one better."

hat tip: T.Buckwalter / Image: Helen Levitt