n ine streets

Helen Levitt’s timeless images at Presentation House Gallery

© Helen Levitt: a touring
retrospective echihit curated by
the San Francisca Museum of
Modern Art: a Gallery exhibit
in the Presentation House
Museum, 333 Chesteriield Ave.,
North Vancouver, untif fuly 25,
» Lorna Brown: Character, an
installations al Proventation
House Art Gallery, 334 Ches-
terfield Ave, North Vancouver,
until July 25.

Ron Falcioni
ART REVIEW

ONIJURE THE fol-
lowing image with
your mind’s eye. It’s
1945 on the backstreets of
New York. In the
foreground, lounging about
the sidewalk on dilapidated
chairs, two old men in drab
suits are engaged ina
languorous conversation.
Across the street, in the penum-
bra of the el, a horse-drawn laun-
dry van makes its way past a park-
ed roadster with whitewalls and
mounted headlights — as con-
spicuous a reminder of the esthetic
of another era as the laundry
wagon itself.
Further lett, offset by a

IS

SEVEN DAYS A WEEK

FOR THE WEEKEND!

NOW GOING

syne
h

pt

it

Neem

a tenet

NEW YORK: 1939. In Levitt’s world children ‘‘inhabit a joyful if fleeting reatm impervious to the
jeering taunts of reality.”

brownstone tenement building
and in direct view ot the eld man
gesturing in the foreground, a soli
tary child, distant. inconspicuaus
and seemingly ignored, is framed
by the plumb pillars of the el,
hands raised to mouth in an am-
biguous expression whose mean-
InB NO amMOuNT of vain conjecture
on my part could ever precisely
explain.

Such is the substance of just one
of the 60 black-and-white

WATLTING

PLAYLAND

FULL

FROM

phatographs currently on display
at Presentation Hoi

Pregnant with lyricisay and sub.
tle drama, itis typical of the life
achievement of Helen Levitt, who
Was able to maintain a distance
and anonymity not unlike that of
the child in the photo described
above.

In Helen Levitt, a belated
retrospective of works by one of
America’s most highly esteemed
living photographers, Presentation

ALM.

ENGINES.

EVERYONE,

House has once again brought to
Vancouver an exhibit as rich and
sausfying as one is ever Ttkely to
find anywhere.

Unlike Diane Arbus, another
New Yorker five years her junior,
Levitt fel no auraction to Grand
Guignol. no affinity tor
transvestites, nudists and circus
treaks.

Infact, even in the "605, ‘70s
and ‘80s when she switched from

See Short film page 34

START

IVAL:

ra

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