HELEN LEVITT | 'MEXICO CITY' (MAGUEY AND LAUNDRY)

Helen Levitt traveled to Mexico City in 1941. The photographs taken there formed her first major body of work outside of New York. She traveled with a Leica, the camera which Henri Cartier-Bresson had popularized and himself used during visits to Mexico City. The photograph offered here, taken far from tourist attractions, was one of many that provided her American audience with an intimate view of contemporary Mexican daily life.

Levitt discovered magueys in the outskirts of Tacuba, a section of northwest Mexico City. The meat and juice of a maguey, a type of agave common to central Mexico, can be extracted for a variety of purposes, such as traditional medicine, soap, food, needles, nets, and alcohol. Here, Levitt documented laundry being sun-dried, draped across the plant’s spiny leaves. Photographers Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Edward Weston also made stylized images of the maguey, but only Levitt’s image transcends documentary and transforms the arid landscape into a nearly surreal tableau.