Helen Levitt was a friend of the family but I only met her maybe 5 or 6 times. As it turns out she was best friends with one of Mom's close friends, also named Helen. Well, these two Helens were often falling out of love with each other and so we only saw Helen Levitt rarely. But I remember studying with astonishment one of her books of photographs of New York City street scenes. What I immediately loved about her pictures was that there was so much richness of the human experience in every shot yet they were framed and angled in a way that did not dictate how I was to feel. Like life, these photographs did not prejudge. There was room the breathe.
Take a look at this marvelous moving picture which really works a lot like her still photographs do.
