New York

Helen Levitt

ca. 1939 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Playing Billiards, 8 Ball, and Straight Pool was once a favorite pastime of petty hustlers and young people on a night out in New York. Off-limits to minors, pool halls were dark, smoky joints for adult games, ricocheting luck, and the winning and losing of cash and romance. A master of street photography where chance is courted, Helen Levitt composed an image in a split second that shows the street yet suggests an interior world hidden just behind the opaqued billiard room windows. The agitated protagonist leans into the parlor. Is she a player or a passerby just awaiting the bus? We will likely never know. What is certain is that she transfers kinetic energy like a moving cue ball to the entire scene surrounding her.

Artist

Helen Levitt

Date

ca. 1939

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2020