Museo Carmen Thyssen

Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb y James Agee, "In the Street", 1948

Vídeo, 12 min 34 s
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.

Short film about life in New York’s Spanish Harlem neighbourhood –groups of children playing in the street– which Helen Levitt made with painter and filmmaker Janice Loeb and critic James Agee. Closely corresponding to Levitt’s photographic work on display here, the cinematographic project was a forerunner of American direct cinema, characterised by the desire to film reality directly and represent it truthfully, without any intervention by the filmmaker in the action. This simple, experimental film is the result of the edited footage that Levitt shot with a 16mm camera as a natural extension of her work as a photographer.

Street Life. Lisette Model and Helen Levitt in Nueva York (From March 07 to June 11, 2023).