REPORTAGE
Contemporary Street Photography : Helen Levitt
I researched material about Helen Levitt (american photographer, 1913-2009) in internet, and found the link http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Helen-Levitt.html. (accessed on 25/03/2017).
First of all I read the text and was informed that ".... Her photographs were not intended to tell a story or document a social thesis; she worked in poor neighborhoods because there were people there, and a street life that was richly sociable and visually interesting..... ".
But after I looked to her work about New York streets in 1940, I do see how people were living in poor neighborhoods in those years, and all this tells a story. Why not call it a reportage?
I chose two pictures from the site, one in black & white and one in colour:
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| Helen Levitt, New York, 1940 |
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| Helen Levitt, New York, year not shown |
In my opinion the choice between black and White and colour photography is in connection to a sharp social message.
Colour is associated to prosperity: the old couple crossing the Street, even if juxtaposed with brightly coloured sport cars, is well dressed, suggesting that they had a good and untroubled life. Colour is positive, associated to a society where everything is in order, the sun is shining, there is no trouble. Colour is associated to advertising, that itself carryes an idea of prosperity. Colour is associated to things more than to human being.
Black and white is associated to people, and their life. Life in black and white is full in troubles, empty in money, welfare, things.
In 1941 Helen Levitt arrived in a Mexico City not yet as enormous as it is now (27 millions): the town was about one million and half. Then she published the book "Mexico City".
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| Helen Levitt, Mexico City, W. W. Norton & Company, NY & London, 1981 |
I found this book 2nd hand. The all work is in black and white: I believe that it was an easy choice for Levitt, if I refer to what I wrote before. As stated in page 9. "But Helen Levitt had not planned her trip based on the hyperbole of travelogues or the nation's artistic splendors......On the contrary, the modern city was her frame of reference as much as the viewfinder on her camera.......Working almost exclusively in urban e semi urban areas of the capital, she confronted the conflicts and juxtapositions that provided inescapable evidence of Mexico's presence in the modern world." (essay by James Oles, page 9).
Mexico City is full of contrasts and contradictions, so juxtapositions inspired several photographers, like Tina Modotti (Italian photographer, 1896-1942) with her "Elegance and poverty" (page 11):
The use of black and white in a place full of vivid colors like Mexico, is itself a contradiction, confirmed by Levitt's aim to avoid "....the busiest streets of Mexico City, to enter the "theater with no audience"(essay by James Oles, page 35).
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| Helen Levitt, Mexico City, 1941 |
