[14][11] She began to photograph these chalk drawings, as well as the children who made them for her own creative assignment with the Federal Art Project.

[6][15] She continued taking street photographs in Manhattan, mainly in Spanish Harlem but also in the Garment District and on the Lower East Side.

[17] The new photography section of the Museum of Modern Art, New York included Levitt's work in its inaugural exhibition in July 1939.

[18] In 1941, she visited Mexico City with Alma Mailman, then wife of author James Agee, and took photos in the streets of Tacubaya, a working-class suburb.

[22] A second solo exhibit, Projects: Helen Levitt in Color, was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974.

[23] Her next major shows were in the 1960s; Amanda Hopkinson suggests that this second wave of recognition was related to the feminist rediscovery of women's creative achievements.

[25] In the late 1940s, Levitt made two documentary films with Janice Loeb and James Agee: In the Street (1948) and The Quiet One (1948).

[26] Another Light (1952) is dramatized documentary about a small town and its new hospital, focusing on the reactions of an elderly farmer, a housewife, and a businessman.

The film explains how town citizens in Ridgewood, NJ, raised construction funds, and how the hospital supports and serves the community.

[17] She stepped away from the normal practice set by other established photographers at the time of giving a journalistic depiction of suffering.

Helen Levitt instead explored the narrative of those who lived in these areas and played in these streets as a way to empower the subjects of her photos.

[31] She had to give up making her own prints in the 1990s due to sciatica, which also made standing and carrying her Leica difficult, causing her to switch to a small, automatic Contax.