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Exhibition: ‘Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Exhibition dates: 8th June – 17th October, 2010

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Handball Players, Lower East Side, NY' 1950s-1960s from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Handball Players, Lower East Side, NY
c. 1950s-1960s
Gelatin silver print
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1987
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Although taken in the same city at around the same period as the work of Helen Levitt, these photographs by Leon Levinstein have less formality in their composition and definitely possess a more eclectic style evidenced by the dissection and placement of bodies within the image frame. This is not to denigrate either artist but merely to observe how two great photographers can see the same city in totally different ways. In both previsualisation was strong, the camera freezing what is placed before the lens in a balletic display that captured “just what you see.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Nuclear Protest, Wall Street' 1970s from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Nuclear Protest, Wall Street
1970s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Street Scene - Elderly Man Walking with Cane, New York City' 1970s from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Elderly Man Walking with Cane, New York City
1970s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Woman in Blonde Wig and Tight Dress, New York City
1960s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Untitled [Head of Man with Hat and Cigar]' c. 1960 from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled [Head of Man with Hat and Cigar]
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print
27.8 x 33.3cm (10 15/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 1986

A master of classic American street photography, Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York City neighborhoods from Times Square and the Lower East Side to Coney Island. From June 8 through October 17, 2010, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the Metropolitan’s collection, features 44 photographs that reflect Levinstein’s fearless approach to the medium. Levinstein’s graphic virtuosity – seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies – is balanced by an unusual compassion for his off-beat subjects from the demimonde.

Born in West Virginia in 1910, Levinstein moved to New York in 1946 and spent the next 35 years obsessively photographing strangers on the streets of his adopted home. Early in his career, Levinstein was quoted in Photography Annual 1955: “In my photographs I want to look at life – at the commonplace things as if I just turned a corner and ran into them for the first time.” With daring and dedication to his subject, Levinstein captured the denizens of New York City at extremely close range. He used his superb sense of composition to frame the faces, flesh, poses, and movements of his fellow city dwellers in their myriad guises: sunbathers, young couples, children, businessmen, beggars, prostitutes, proselytisers, society ladies, and characters of all stripes.

Although he was a life-long loner, Levinstein was mentored and supported by Alexey Brodovitch, artistic director of Harper’s Bazaar, and Edward Steichen, the eminent photographer and curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, both of whom recognised his unique talent in the medium of photography. He was also greatly influenced by workshops led by the distinguished photographer and teacher Sid Grossman.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Levinstein’s work appeared frequently in photography magazines and books alongside that of his peers, such as Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, and Diane Arbus. Nonetheless, he rarely worked on assignment, as they often did; nor did he ever produce his own book of photographs. Instead, he worked as a graphic designer and devoted his evenings and weekends to photography. In 1975, Levinstein received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to “photograph as wide a spectrum of the American scene as my experience and vision will allow… I want my photographs to be spontaneous rather than contrived.” Despite this recognition of his achievement, he never seemed able to fit into the commercial photography market that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and consequently, his powerful body of work continues to be known mainly by other photographers and by specialists in the field.

Press release from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 28/09/2010 no longer available online

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Street Scene - Man in Boots Walking and Adjusting His Collar, New York City' 1960s-1970s

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Man in Boots Walking and Adjusting His Collar, New York City
c. 1960s-1970s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2007
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Man Resting Foot on Lip of Trashcan, New York City
1970s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

That idea of authenticity, ineffably captured as a decisive instance on a strip of light-sensitive celluloid, was ridden out of town a long time ago by postmodern theorists and certainly seems quaint today, but its power, as fixed in black and white by Levinstein, is undeniable. His mtier was a kind of reductivist monumentality, in which he captured his subjects – ordinary New Yorkers going about their business – in close-up, a technique commonly associated with cinema, to create images that were at once abstract and pregnant with narrative.

Like Weegee and Diane Arbus, Levinstein had a taste for the offbeat and grotesque (he often zeroed in on corpulent pedestrians; midsections and backsides, absent any trace of individuality, were a frequent motif). Also like them, he could be accused of engaging in a form of slumming. But he was less interested in abjection than he was in grandeur, and in this respect, the people in his photos are imbued with a sculptural nobility that simply doesn’t exist in the work of either Weegee or Arbus. More often than not, the “hipsters, hustlers and handball players” of the show’s title loom into the lens, crowding out background details. We get only fragments of the metropolis around them: a bit of stoop or curbstone, or a patch of sand out at Coney Island. Yet the pictures themselves express a sense of velocity, of lives hurtling toward some destiny that’s as heroic as it is bleak. What’s remarkable about Levinstein is that his framing – both epic and destabilising – stands in for the pitiless dynamic of New York itself.

Howard Halle. “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980,” on the Time Out New York website, Monday June 14, 2010 [Online] Cited 26/12/2019 no longer available online

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Woman in Striped Dress on Stoop, New York City
1970s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2007
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Street Scene: Young Man Leaning against Shopfront Window, New York City?
1972
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gary Davis, 2008
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled
New York City, 1960s-1970s
Gelatin silver print
34.5 x 25.8cm (13 9/16 x 10 3/16)
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled
New York City, 1960s-1970s
Gelatin silver print
35.5 x 26.3cm (14 x 10 3/8 in.)
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled
New York City, 1960s-1970s
Gelatin silver print
34.5 x 25.8cm (13 9/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

I think Levinstein’s gift lay in his ability to capture the essence of New York’s rough, funky cool (particularly in the 1960s and 1970s), without getting overly sentimental or kitchy. Nearly all of his images were taken at close range, often cropping out unneeded heads and body parts, focusing on overlooked subjects and elemental gestures found on the city’s streets and sidewalks. His compositions are often angled and dark, and he was particularly adept at capturing the nuances of clothing and fashion as worn by New York’s imperfect and eclectic masses, finding the hidden joy in a bold pattern, a wide collar or a tight fitting pair of shorts. The pictures are tough, edgy, sometimes harsh, and always refreshingly real.

As you look more closely at these candid pictures, Levinstein’s talent for making the common look uncommon shines through. He finds earthy wonder in a foot perched on a wire trash can, a sweat stained tank top, 70s-era moustaches, a grey pinstripe suit, bulging stomachs and belts, a man fluffing his afro in a window, eating corn on the cob on the beach, tattoos, an overcoat with shiny buttons, kissing on a stoop, and a groovy floral blouse paired with tight leggings. He seems to have been fond of backs and sides, abstracting his subjects into fragments of movement or pose, paring them down into types and moments that were representative of something larger in society.

Loring Knoblauch. “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980 @Met,” on the Collector Daily website, July 23, 2010 [Online] Cited 21/03/2025

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
54th Street, New York
1950s
Gelatin silver print
34.9 x 27.9 cm (13 3/4 x 11 in.)
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled [Beach Scene: Woman Wearing Paper Bag Hat, Coney Island, New York]
1950s
Gelatin silver print
35.4 x 28.1cm (13 15/16 x 11 1/16 in.)
Gift of Gary Davis, 2009
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Coney Island
1955
Gelatin silver print
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Untitled
Coney Island, 1960s
Gelatin silver print
35.5 x 28.1cm (14 x 11 1/16 in.)
© Howard Greenberg Gallery

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Information: 212-535-7710

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Exhibition: ‘Helen Levitt: A Memorial Tribute’ at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 9th May – 26th June, 2009

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York, NY
1945
Gelatin silver print

Further to my earlier posting about the passing of renowned New York photographer Helen Levitt comes this wonderful exhibition at the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York. How I wish I was in that city to see it – what a joy!

Below are a selection of 1940’s black and white photographs from the exhibition.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Laurence Miller Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Kids Dancing, New York' c. 1940 from the exhibition 'Helen Levitt: A Memorial Tribute' at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, May - June, 2009

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Kids Dancing, New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Kids graffiti, New York
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print

Laurence Miller Gallery will present a memorial tribute to Helen Levitt from May 9 – June 26, 2009. Helen Levitt passed away in her Greenwich Village home on March 29, at the age of 95. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, a show of her work entitled Passages, which Helen had approved, was already in the works, and her death caused a momentary pause in how to proceed. It was decided that Helen would not have wanted her passing to intrude upon best laid plans. Hence, guided by her spirit, we celebrate her legacy with this exhibition, her twelfth at Laurence Miller Gallery.

Helen Levitt: A Memorial Tribute will present a series of passages, in both colour and black-and-white, from her extraordinary 70-year career. Featured will be her pictures of animals, which were among her earliest as well as last pictures taken; a little-known series of portraits taken on the subway using Walker Evans’ camera; children’s street drawings; elderly folks in conversation; and children at play, the photographs for which she is most well-known. Helen Levitt’s classic and rarely seen silent film, In the Street, from 1948, will be shown as well.

One of the tribute’s highlights will be a selection of never-before-exhibited “first proofs.” These early documents of her working methods are often unique. Some are vintage, others were printed as late as the 1970’s, but all were printed by Helen in her bathroom that doubled as the darkroom. Often they are variants of iconic images, and often they are sequences of several shots taken at the same time. They all reveal the photographer’s “dance” as she observes boys climbing up a tree, a large family gathering on the front stoop, two men seated beside a curious cat, or four boys peering into a pool hall. In combination with the film In the Street, the early sequences reinforce her reputation as a cinematographer, and are genuine and valuable records of the working methods of a canny and poetic photographer.”

Text from the Laurence Miller Gallery website [Online] Cited 12/05/2009. No longer available online

In the Street
1948
Directed and edited by Helen Levitt
Cinematography by NYC photographers James Agee, Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb
Re-edited version rereleased by Levitt in 1952 with musical score by Arthur Kleiner
16mm film photographed in Harlem

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Three Girls Playing Dress Up, New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (1913-2009) short biography

Helen Levitt’s playful and poetic photographs, made over the course of sixty years on the streets of New York City, have delighted generations of photographers, students, collectors, curators, and lovers of art in general. The New York Times described her as: “a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York”. Throughout her long career, Helen Levitt’s photographs have consistently reflected her poetic vision, humour, and inventiveness as much as they have honestly portrayed her subjects – men, women, and children acting out a daily drama on the sidewalks and stoops of New York City’s tenements.

She shot and edited the film In the Street with Janice Loeb and James Agee, providing a moving portrait of her still photography. Levitt’s first major museum exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, and a second solo show, of colour work only, was held there in 1974. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at several museums: first in 1991, jointly at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; in 1997 at the International Center for Photography in New York; and in 2001 at the Centre National la Photographie in Paris.

In 2007 “Helen Levitt: Un Art de l’accident poetique” opened at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris; in 2008, the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany chose Ms. Levitt as the recipient for the Spectrum International Photography Prize which was accompanied by a major retrospective; and FOAM Museum Amsterdam, mounted another major retrospective in October, 2008. She was a 2008 recipient of the Francis Greenburger award for excellence in the arts.

Text from the Laurence Miller Gallery website [Online] Cited 29/01/2019

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York [Children with Soap Bubbles, New York City]
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Kid in Tree with Mask, New York
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print

Laurence Miller Gallery

Laurence Miller Gallery is now operating as a private dealer and consultant with no physical exhibition space.

Laurence Miller Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year, New York, 1949-50’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 7th June, 2009

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985) 'New York, August 11, 1949 (girl and coal chute)' 1949 from the exhibition 'The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year, New York, 1949-50' at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Feb - June, 2009

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York, August 11, 1949 (girl and coal chute)
1949
Gelatin silver print

A brilliant but under appreciated American photographer, Homer Page used a Guggenheim fellowship in 1949-1950 to photograph New York City. Included in the 2006 Hallmark Photographic Collection gift to the Nelson-Atkins were some 100 of his vintage black-and-white prints. The Museum is thus in a unique position to celebrate his remarkable artistic achievement: his vision, at once gritty and lyrical, of the face of metropolitan America at mid-century. In recording the city so intently, Page had a larger goal in mind: to suggest nothing less than the emotional tenor of life at that time and place.

From an artistic standpoint, Page’s work represents a “missing link” between the warm, humanistic, and socially motivated documentary photographs of the 1930s and early 1940s in the works of Dorothea Lange, and the tougher, grittier and more existential work of the later 1950s as seen in the images of Robert Frank.

Text from The Nelson-Aitkens Museum of Art website

Many thankx to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985) 'The El at 86th, New York' 1949-1950 from the exhibition 'The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year, New York, 1949-50' at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Feb - June, 2009

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
The El at 86th, New York
1949-1950
Gelatin silver print

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York (boys and manikin)
1949
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York City
1949
Gelatin silver print

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York, June 19, 1949
1949
Gelatin silver print

“Page captured both the facts and the feeling of life in post-war New York: commuters in transit to and from their offices, the signs of commercial and consumer culture, leisure pursuits and night life, psychological vignettes of the lonely and dispossessed. His work provides a rich and original vision of 1949 America.

Page was devoted to the visible facts of his world, but his real goal was something much deeper: the emotional tenor of life at that time and that place. This is a body of work of great passion, intelligence, and artistic integrity – one that is all the more important for having remained essentially unknown to the present day,” Davis (former Hallmark Fine Art Programs Director) said.

Text from the ArtDaily.org website

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York City
1949
Gelatin silver print

Homer Page (American, 1918-1985)
New York, June 16, 1949
1949
Gelatin silver print

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
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Phone: 816-751-1278

Opening hours:
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Exhibition: ‘Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson’ at the Museum of the City of New York

Exhibition dates: 14th November, 2008 – 12th April, 2009

Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) 'Untitled (7-16-6)' 1984 from the exhibition 'Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson' at the Museum of the City of New York, Nov 2008 - April 2009

Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944)
Untitled (7-16-6)
1984
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.

Documenting the abandoned, burnt out, and razed structures of entire city blocks in the South Bronx in the aftermath of the 1970s, during which this neighbourhood experienced dramatic decline, Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York from November 14, 2008 through March 9, 2009. The 50 black and white cityscapes and interiors on view – five of which are large-scale – were taken between 1982 and 1984, and they vividly illustrate the results of a downslide that began in the Great Depression of the 1930s and accelerated with the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway in the 1950s and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Broken Glass is Mortenson’s first museum exhibition in New York City, and it is the first presentation of the South Bronx photographs.

The 50 photographs on view, all black and white, range in size from the smallest at approximately 11″ by 14″, to the most monumental at 40″ by 60″. Each conveys a devastating silence, serving as a reminder that these city blocks were once the homes of individuals, families, and a large community. Mortenson has written, “The buildings were like tombs – sealed up, broken open and plundered. Inside, stairways with missing steps led up to abandoned apartments. Doors opened into rooms that were once bedrooms or kitchens. Small things left behind hint at who the occupants might have been – a hairbrush, photographs, or bits of clothing.” Ghostly remnants of the once prosperous and thriving neighbourhoods can be glimpsed in his images which document the extent and severity of the urban decline experienced in the South Bronx.

These photographs document an important chapter in the history of a New York City neighbourhood, augmenting their aesthetic power. The decline of the South Bronx began as early as the Great Depression when previously sustained development came to an abrupt halt. After World War II an exodus of New York’s middle class began and continued into the 1970s. This caused a population decline throughout the city, but the effects were particularly hard on the South Bronx as more than 200,000 residents left the community between 1970 and 1980. As entire communities left the city, Robert Moses’ road building and slum clearance, along with other urban renewal initiatives had dramatic effects on the lives of all who remained. In the 1970s New York City faced another economic crisis and virtual bankruptcy. City government was unable to maintain services in the South Bronx and “planned shrinkage” became an unofficial policy as services were slowly withdrawn. With little incentive for landlords to upgrade or even maintain their property, waves of arson and “insurance fires” decimated the by now largely minority community. Astonishingly, some 12,000 fires a year occurred through the 1970s, averaging more than 30 a day.

A successful resurrection of the South Bronx began in the mid-1980s, as grass roots organisations and community development corporations, along with financial reinvestment by the City, sparked its regeneration. The photographs on view stand in starkest contrast to today’s revitalised neighbourhood, which has been the result of the dedication of its citizens combined with government support. The photographs serve as a reminder of the ruins that once dominated the now-vibrant streets and that the balance between prosperity and urban decline can be fragile.

Brief Biography

Ray Mortenson was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1944 and studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the San Francisco Art Institute. In the early 1970s, Mortenson moved to New York and began working with photography. His first significant photographic project was a comprehensive investigation of the industrial landscapes of New Jersey’s Meadowlands (1974-1982). Since then, Mortensen has continued to focus on landscape photography that is often interested in liminal places of transition, set apart from everyday life. His photographs have been accepted into the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Press release from the Museum of the City of New York website