Helen Levitt (1913–2009) began her lifelong exploration of photography in the 1930s under the guidance of her mentors Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. She dedicated her work to the streets of her native New York and mostly photographed in less privileged areas including Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side, finding subjects in everyday encounters between the locals, and the improvised games of children. Levitt’s work was included in the inaugural photograph exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940; three years later the museum mounted her first solo exhibition “Photographs of Children.” Levitt began working in color in 1959 and was a pioneer of New Color Photography.