Photo: Helen Levitt, Untitled, New York City,1972
It was a coup, in every sense of the word. Helen Levitt was giving an interview. Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker was the lucky cat who received the invitation to Helen’s fifth-floor walk up apartment on 12th Street.
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I had not yet met her, but we had spoken on the phone, and I could hear her Bensonhurst accent as she cut things down to size. The story was published in November 2001, and the city as still reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Center.
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I, too, lived on 12th Street that year. I knew the horror of being close, but not too close, to it all, just outside the deepest circle of hell. It was visceral, on levels its impossible to articulate, particularly for any True Yorker who had lived through the government warfare under benign neglect, crack, and AIDS.
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The interview was done in tandem with the release of “Crosstown,” Helen’s magnum opus that was just released from powerHouse. It was a picture of New York that insiders know: life on the street, perhaps the best thing about this town.
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Gopnik sang her praises, calling her New York’s poet photographer laureate. And to be fair, he wasn’t wrong. I just fell down a Tumblr rabbit hole of her work. But, there was another Helen, the one I wish I got to know, the broad from Brooklyn, ya dig.
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I can still hear her scratchy voice in my mind’s ear, as Gopnik broached the subject of 9/11. It sounded like he was looking for guidance and wisdom, something to help the readers of the magazine deal with the trauma that had devastated their daily lives. Who better than a lifelong New Yorker who had reached her nonagenarian year to offer a word of solace?
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Gopnik asked Helen what she thought New Yorkers should do in the wake of the tragedy.
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“I think yous should get the hell out,” Helen said, succinctly.
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Happy Birthday Helen Levitt ~*~ thanks for the memories !