Slide Show: The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt

Often squalid and always unsentimental, but full of wonder and sly humor, photographer Levitt's New York City is both familiar and startling, never more so than in these color photos from the early 1970s. (The book also includes a handful of prints from 1959–1960.) Without the arty distancing effect of black-and-white (for which she is primarily known), Levitt's trademark wit has more hard-edged immediacy. Levitt's city on a summer afternoon, the time of day when most of these photos were taken, is as full of oddities as the ocean floor. In one striking shot, a tiny girl crouches awkwardly by the curb like a little crab, her delicate knees and elbows askew. Levitt seems to regard the human body as a fascinating bit of found sculpture. She captures a man's belly sagging in counterpoint to a crumpled car fender, a beggar's folds of fat hanging down like the fabric of his rag bags and the brutal contrast between an old, bent-over couple and the gleaming hoods of a pair of sport cars. Old age and poverty are on extensive display, but the effect is never grim. Levitt—who still lives and works in New York—never lets the pathetic and dirty overshadow the pure pleasure of seeing without flinching. (Feb.)