{
"data": {
"id": 157079,
"accession_number": "1993.214",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "New York, 1938. Helen Levitt (American, 1913\u20132009). Gelatin silver print; image: 14.5 x 21.1 cm (5 11/16 x 8 5/16 in.); matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1993.214. \u00a9 Film Documents LLC, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne",
"current_location": null,
"title": "New York",
"creation_date": "1938",
"creation_date_earliest": 1938,
"creation_date_latest": 1938,
"artists_tags": [
"Jewish artists",
"female"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "gelatin silver print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1900-1950",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 14.5 x 21.1 cm (5 11/16 x 8 5/16 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.145,
"height_inch": 5,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
"width": 0.211,
"width_inch": 8,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.3125
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.356,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.457,
"width_inch": 18,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Film Documents LLC, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"f\"; \"NY CIRCA 1942\"; \"Helen Levitt\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311616,
"title": "Recent Acquisitions: Prints, Drawings, Photographs",
"description": "Recent Acquisitions: Prints, Drawings, Photographs. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 13-November 27, 1994).",
"opening_date": "1994-09-13T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 299125,
"title": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression",
"description": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 13-December 31, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-08-13T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 393871,
"title": "A New York Minute: Street Photography, 1920\u20131950",
"description": "A New York Minute: Street Photography, 1920\u20131950. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 11-November 7, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-07-10T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Ed Wells",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "A frequent theme for Helen Levitt was the power of the imagination in children\u2019s play in New York City\u2019s poorer neighborhoods. The boys with toy guns may be playing war or cops and robbers. Whatever scenario they chose, their game echoed grave events from the adult world. Levitt often used a right-angle viewfinder so her subjects were unaware; they thought she was pointing the camera in another direction. The children in Walter Rosenblum\u2019s image, in contrast, smile directly at the photographer as they express the sheer physical joy and glee of taking flight on swings.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79947343"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "\u201c1993 Annual Report.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143\u2013218.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 163",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161457"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 222",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1993.214",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 157079,
"creators": [
{
"id": 571,
"description": "Helen Levitt (American, 1913\u20132009)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Helen Levitt American, 1913-2009 Born in New York City, Helen Levitt is a documentary photographer known for her images of urban street life. She began her career in the mid-1930s, inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. In 1936 she purchased a 35mm Leica (the same type of camera used by Cartier-Bresson) and by the following year was photographing people on the streets of New York, particularly children in the city's poor and working-class neighborhoods. From 1938-41 Levitt worked with Evans on a series made in New York's subways, and in July 1939 her first published image appeared in Fortune magazine. By the early 1940s her photographs were also being reproduced in U.S. Camera, PM's Weekly, Minicam, and Harper's Bazaar. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, featured her images of children in a one-person show in 1943 and three years later awarded her a photography fellowship. In the 1940s Levitt also became involved with film, assisting director Luis Bu\u00f1uel in editing documentary footage and working as an assistant editor in the Film Division of the Office of War Information (1944-45). Encouraged by writer James Agee, Levitt began directing films in the late 1940s. She worked with Janice Loeb and Sidney Meyers in 1949 on The Quiet One, a feature-length documentary about a home for delinquent boys, and in 1951 made In the Street with Agee and Loeb. During the 1950s she concentrated primarily on film, producing very little still photography. In 1959-60 Levitt was awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to explore color photography and began shooting 35mm color slides of street scenes and children. Her color slides were included in a three-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963, and in 1974 her color images were featured in a solo exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Levitt's work was included in numerous one-person exhibitions throughout the 1970s-80s, and in 1992 was the subject of a major retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Levitt lives in New York. M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1913",
"death_year": "2009",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1993-12-06T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1938,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1938",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:51:45.978000"
}
}