The Easel

Archives: The World of Interiors

24th March 2026

Leica hawk

Why isn’t Helen Levitt more widely known? Street photography emerged fully in the post war period but Levitt, with her lyrical images of New York neighbourhoods, was an earlier “pathfinder”. Similarly, she turned to colour photography ahead of more famous names like Eggleston. Her preference was for the emotional over the descriptive or the political. Her most famous images remain those of New York neighbourhoods, rather than the glamour of uptown. Said she “I can feel what people feel.”