海倫．勒薇的女性漫遊攝影

Helen Levitt's Photography of Female Flânerie

本文是第一篇從女性漫遊者的角度，探索現代街頭與地鐵攝影的論文。從波特萊爾（Charles Baudelaire）以來，漫遊者（“flâneur”）一直被視為現代藝術家的典型，在藝術史與文學史中的相關研究汗牛充棟，從1980年代下半開始，女性主義學者才開始爭辯在現代時期是否有女性漫遊者（“flâneur”）？伍爾芙（Janet Wolff）與波洛克（Griselda Pollock）以降的學者，一再地論辯出悲觀的結論。當筆者開始以海倫‧勒薇（Helen Levitt, 1913-2009）的具體個案，探尋女性漫遊者的活動蹤跡，豁然發現勒薇與公共空間的邂逅，確實激盪出與男性漫遊攝影家殊異的視象與歷史。勒薇從1930年代晚期迄今，一直是深受喜愛的街頭攝影家之一。藉由對照勒薇與影響她的布烈松（HenriCartier-Bresson）、艾文斯（Walker Evans）的街頭與地鐵攝影，筆者發現，相對於這兩位男性漫遊者以保持距離、抽象、普遍的觀視來認識城市生活，勒薇表達了一種女性漫遊者對城市的獨特觀看方式：她仍然保持漫遊者的隱匿感，卻喜歡拍攝住家附近的地方性街頭，正如她自述「可以感受到人們感受到的」，因而比當時幾位男性街頭攝影家有「更多的同理心（empathy）」（Gopnik, 2001: 90），藉由隱匿地拍攝住家附近的地方性街頭，勒薇得以默默地感受人們對活動的熱衷，以及彼此之間的情感連繫，以同理心捕捉一種洋溢著社區性與親密感的公共空間。

This article explores the street photographs and subway photographs taken by the ＂flâneuse＂. Since Charles Baudelaire, the ＂flâneur＂, or the idle stroller, has been regarded as the ＂ur-form＂ of the modern artist, writer and intellectual who anonymously wanders amid the flux and flow of the crowd in the city streets and arcades and keenly scrutinizes and studies the crowd-with aloof detachment. For about a century, the ＂flânerie＂ was treated as a white, bourgeois, artistic male privilege. In the late 1980s, feminist scholars began to debate the possibility of a female ＂flânerie＂. Against their negative arguments, this paper presents a case study of Helen Levitt's vision of female ＂flânerie＂ in the poor areas of the New York City. Comparing Levitt's street and subway photographs with Henri Cartier-Bresson's and Walker Evans's similar works, I find that her photographs exhibit a special vision of a ＂flâneuse＂, who tends to remain detached and yet to empathize with the people in their enthusiastic activities and their intimate connectedness in their community-oriented lives in the street.