The Lyrical Gaze: On James Agee and Helen Levitt’s 1944 film In The Street

The photographer and filmmaker Helen Levitt collaborated with the writer James Agee in the 1930s and 40s - most famously enlisting Agee to write the introduction to her collection of New York street photography. While Agee was more known for his collaboration with the photographer Walker Evans, this chapter argues for the cinematic rather than the static photograph as the moment when Agee's remarkable writing on the visual crystallises. In Levitt's short film the experimental and the humanist vision of both artists comes together.