Image: Helen Levitt, New York, 1982 © Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Köln
Fotomuseum Winterthur will present “Helen Levitt – Die Strasse als Bühne” (The Street as Stage), a comprehensive retrospective of the American photographer, from 24 October 2026 to 31 January 2027. According to the museum, it is the first exhibition to show works from Levitt’s archive, which has only recently become publicly accessible.
The museum describes Levitt (1913–2009) as one of the defining voices of American photography in the 20th century. Born in Brooklyn, she found her principal subject in the streets of New York. From the 1930s onwards she observed urban life in Harlem and on the Lower East Side, recording its spontaneity, its poetry and its contradictions. Children, and the drawings they left chalked on walls and pavements, became a recurring theme in her work.
Levitt was a member of the Photo League, worked with Walker Evans and was influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson. She is also regarded as one of the early pioneers of colour photography. Alongside her photography she worked as a filmmaker and editor, including for Luis Buñuel, experience that the museum says sharpened her sense of rhythm and narrative.
The exhibition brings together more than 200 photographs spanning half a century. They are shown alongside the documentary short film In the Street (1948), a projection of colour slides and around 115 pieces of ephemera and archival material. Together, these are intended to give an insight into the range of her photographic output.
The show is a touring exhibition, organised in collaboration with Fundación Mapfre and curated by Joshua Chuang. Its other venues are Fundación Mapfre in Barcelona and Madrid, Kunsthal Rotterdam and C/O Berlin; the museum’s page does not give the dates of those presentations. The museum lists support from the H.E.M. Stiftung Vaduz, Hunziker Betatech, Temperatio and the Guggenheim-Stiftung.
A programme of public guided tours accompanies the exhibition, with Sunday tours from 11:30 to 12:30 currently scheduled between 25 October and 27 December.
