[Graffiti: Chalk Drawing of Figure with Double Pupils, New York City]

Helen Levitt

ca. 1940 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Helen Levitt practiced photography with a small handheld camera on the streets of New York, making tender depictions of ordinary city people, especially children. The street was a stage upon which her young subjects played games, performed improvisational dramas, and made fantastic, untutored chalk drawings such as this figure with double pupils and a hovering crown. For Levitt, graffiti and children's drawings were present-day emblems of a precivilized, magical art, both spontaneous and archetypal.

Artist

Helen Levitt

Date

ca. 1940

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1987