In the Street

James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family , won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize. James Agee was born in Knoxville,... Tennessee, at Highland Avenue and 15th Street in what is now the Fort Sanders neighborhood to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six, his father was killed in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, Agee and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross. It was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye and his wife began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye received many of Agee's most revealing letters.
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Helen Levitt was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for "street photography" around New York City, and has been called "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time." Levitt grew up in Brooklyn. Dropping out of high school, she taught herself photography while... working for a commercial photographer. While teaching some classes in art to children in 1937, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children's street culture of the time. She purchased a Leica camera and began to photograph these works, as well as the children who made them. The resulting photographs were ultimately published in 1987 as In The Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938–1948. She associated with Walker Evans in 1938-39. She enjoyed early success. In July 1939, the new photography section of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City included Levitt's work in its inaugural exhibition. In 1943, Nancy Newhall curated her first solo exhibition "Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children" there.
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