From the Archives

I was trying to find a particular photograph of a bed with sheets (which sounds boring when described, as most photographs sound boring when described), but I couldn't find it. I roamed the internet for a while and found some of my favorite photographs by Helen Levitt from her book, Crosstown.













She never makes children look small. She shot most of her photographs from the hip, looking down at her subjects through the viewfinder instead of shooting above them. Even though her images could be considered off-beat (they're not), they aren't focusing on the strangeness of kids playing in their own world or looking too old or simply out of sync with their age, as if it's unreal to not look exactly 6, or 7, or 30.

I also like the New York in these pictures. Most of them were shot in the 1930's.