New York
Playing Billiards, 8 Ball, and Straight Pool was once a favorite pastime of petty hustlers and young people on a night out in New York. Off-limits to minors, pool halls were dark, smoky joints for adult games, ricocheting luck, and the winning and losing of cash and romance. A master of street photography where chance is courted, Helen Levitt composed an image in a split second that shows the street yet suggests an interior world hidden just behind the opaqued billiard room windows. The agitated protagonist leans into the parlor. Is she a player or a passerby just awaiting the bus? We will likely never know. What is certain is that she transfers kinetic energy like a moving cue ball to the entire scene surrounding her.
Artwork Details
- Title: New York
- Artist: Helen Levitt (American, 1913–2009)
- Date: ca. 1939
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 5 3/4 × 8 1/2 in. (14.6 × 21.6 cm)
Sheet: 5 3/4 × 8 1/2 in. (14.6 × 21.6 cm)
Mount: 7 5/8 × 9 5/8 in. (19.4 × 24.4 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2020
- Object Number: 2020.198
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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