Monday’s Photography Inspiration – Helen Levitt

“I never had a project. I would go out and shoot, follow my eyes – what they noticed, I tried to capture with my camera, for others to see.” Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt was an American photographer born on August 31st, 1913. She was born in Levitt was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York and was considered to be the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.

She dropped out of high school and in 1931 and learned how to develop photos in the darkroom when she began working for J. Florian Mitchell, a commercial portrait photographer in the Bronx. She saw the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a big influence on her career, at the Julien Levy Gallery and for the first time saw photography as art. She practiced by photographing her mother’s friends with a used Voigtländer camera.

While teaching art classes to children in the mid-1930s, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that…