Helen Levitt:

Another great photographer you never knew about.

NPR has a short article and a slide show of some of her (really killer) photos over here.

Another good reason i should really stop dicking around and just get to school, already. i could have learned about her ages ago. It's not surprising, either, that she made two documentaries in the '40s with another extremely talented individual, James Agee. i've gotta get my hands on those...


Had a labyrinthine dream last night involving babies and pearl anklets... in Part One, i was carting this baby around on my hip for hours. i was at work (the bakery, my old job), and i couldn't find a place to put him down so as to get anything done. At one point someone left the door open and i was in a rage because the baby had managed to toddle out into the hallway. Curious, we ventured down to the large windows at the end of the hall together, where a college class was assembled on the stairwell quietly watching the goings-on outside with great interest. The "goings-on" i speak of were an intense armageddon/firestorm scenario. i felt like all the wind got knocked out of me, so baby and i sat down heavily on the steps and watched, in silence, with the rest of them.
Eventually, we got up to leave but some of the students swarmed around us (were they fleeing?) and blocked our way back to the room we had been in. Two men started duking it out right there in front of us, very viciously, so nearby that i was cringing and trying to cover the baby with my head and arms as best i could.

Trip out!

Anyway, in Part 2, i was at a huuuuuuuuuge flea market with my sister, and we were scoping the scene for a really important piece of jewelry. Basically i was just following her around, up and down rickety stairwells and peeking behind dirty tarps until she finally saw what she was looking for from a raise walkway. There! she pointed. i followed her finger down to a small studio space where a woman was belly-dancing rhythmically. i couldn't see what my sister was trying to show me, but finally it appeared: beneath the woman's long russet-hued skirts, i saw a flash on her ankle. She had an exquisite pearl anklet on her left leg. This was the "jackpot", apparently. It meant something, somehow, which was beyond me. A creepy guy had attached himself to out cause, at some point, and now he and my sister argued about how to wrest this priceless bauble form the woman's ankle. After a half-hour of listening to (increasingly sketchy) scenarios, i finally offered up, How about we just ask her how much it is? It's probably not very much. We can just pay her, no? and they looked at me like i was crazy. But my sister grudgingly agreed. The woman penciled the price on a grubby slip of paper and handed it back to us: $37.95. i felt a wave of relief wash over me but one look at my sister and her cohort was all i needed to know that this adventure was far from over. Their faces were wide with shock.


So yeah! interesting night up there, in the ol' brain pan. Gosh, to be a fly on the wall in there- oh. Wait.

Ta ta!