Helen Levitt
[Photographer, b. 1918, New York, d. 2009, New York.]
It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection; it is like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorizes about.
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.
All I can say about the work I try to do, is that the aesthetic is in reality itself.
A lot of my early pictures are, I think, quite funny. And these days I tend to look for comedy more and more.
