In 1997, the American poet and cultural critic David Levi Strauss said Helen Levitt was simultaneously “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.” Levitt was born in Brooklyn in 1931, and at 18 took a job with J. Florian Mitchell, a Bronx-based portrait photographer. Those interwar years saw the rise of street photography, and when the Julien Levy Gallery presented work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Levitt looked on with awe. Until her death, in 2009, she would photograph New York’s children and its minority populations with mastery and grace. This exhibition presents 176 of her poignant shots. —Elena Clavarino