Elizabeth Gand is writing the first comprehensive study of one of America's greatest living photographers. Gand's dissertation in Art History, Wild Child: Helen Levitt's Photographs and Films, explores Helen Levit's depiction of working class life in her native New York, particularly her images of children at play. Levitt's fascination with children—for which she first gained recognition in 1943—reflected a trend shared by many contemporaries in the 1930s. In 1938, the United States Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit child labor, and the anti-war movement published photographs of children killed in air raids as well as drawings by young war survivors to mobilize public opinion against Germany's expanding Third Reich and Spain's Civil War. Gand relates Levitt's concern for the vulnerability of children to such public displays of lost innocence. By situating Levitt in this way, Gand offers insight not only into one artist's development, but also into the affective history of childhood in the United States.