Word: levitts
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...contrast with those expansive views, Levitt also frequently collapses her depth of focus. Brick walls—blank or covered in graffiti—provide frequent backdrops, and for this reason her pictures could truly be anywhere, but they carry a special connotation because the audience knows it is New York. It begs the question: Were these pictures not taken in New York, would they carry the same emotive force? Given the set of ready associations that the city has in our cultural memory, likely not. However, this is Gotham unlike many have ever witnessed. Levitt?...
...Helen Levitt...
...face is half-obscured by an enormous brown paper bag. Far in the deep background, yet clearly visible, are the two towers of the World Trade Center. This exhibit was assembled in the wake of Sept. 11, so it cannot but be for conscious choice. Amazingly, Levitt reverses convention and puts the frame’s most monumental element far removed from view—so much so as to render it almost invisible...
...exhibition’s flagship print epitomizes that ingenuity as it depicts the quotidian event of a laborer on the street handling a dolly laden with boxes. Front and center, Levitt constructs a fractured lattice from the box edges, the dolly handles and painted street lines; behind and off to the right, an undulating white canvas runs into a street covering a construction site, thus breaking up that structured rigidity. In the middle background, between the tarpaulin and the worker, cars stream by, having just come out of gridlock. Most unsettling, in the very close left foreground, half a woman?...
Moreover, Levitt questions a photograph’s focal point. An artist would normally discard a print with such an interruption, but here, it is featured prominently. Simultaneously, Levitt creates as well as breaks geometry with straight and serpentine lines. Immediately, she personalizes and evokes the greater context of the city with her depth of field...