© Helen Levitt, 1972, ‘Boy with Bubble’, New York

Helen Levitt’s photograph of two children on a New York street is a wonderful example of her prolific engagement with street life. The capacity to transform the documentary into poetry, to interpret a scene on the street from a humanistic perspective and give it a new meaning, is a key feature of Brooklyn-born Levitt’s lifelong photographic practice, always more artistic than journalistic.