New York Archive / Black & White features previously unpublished photographs from Helen Levitt’s archive alongside a selection of her most iconic images. Levitt’s unsentimental yet deeply empathetic vision—once described by Walker Evans as “anti-journalistic”—defined a singular street aesthetic, capturing the rhythms, improvisational nature and exuberant humanity of everyday life in New York.

A pioneering figure of twentieth-century street photography, Levitt began photographing the people of her native city in the 1930s, often working in Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side. Her camera recorded fleeting encounters, children’s games and chalk graffiti with lyrical restraint, visual humor and extraordinary clarity. An illuminating essay by photographer Tod Papageorge explores Levitt’s art and influence, examining what he calls her extraordinary ability to “trap those moments when form and meaning spark together in a flash of ignition” and her conviction that “a camera trained on the commotions and tumults of the street could produce poetry.” Complementing New York Archive / Color, also published by Steidl this season, this book affirms the lasting significance of Levitt’s black-and-white œuvre.

Co-published with Zander Galerie, Cologne