Helen Levitt’s Street Photos Blend the Poetic With the Political – The New York Times

New York City’s doorways, storefronts and cascading fire escapes were the grand backdrop to Helen Levitt’s photos. In the Lower East Side and Harlem, children pretended to be bride and groom, wore masks for Halloween or drew with chalk on the sidewalk. The lyricism of her work led her to be called the city’s visual poet laureate, supposedly an apolitical, black-and-white photographer of the everyday.