Monday Entry: David Levinthal

American photographer David Levinthal was born in San Francisco, California in 1949. He studied studio art at Stanford before receiving his Master's Degree in Photography from Yale in 1973. Levinthal's family was very wealthy and well respected, and allowed him to explore his interest in the arts fully. He is known for his saturated images of figurines shot with an extremely shallow depth of field. The artist constructs environments for the pre-made figures he collects and photographs them with a 20"x 24" Polaroid camera. Although he does not create the figurines, he does repaint them builds backgrounds for the tableaux.
In Hitler Moves East, his first series to feature toys, Levinthal collaborated with cartoonist Gary Trudeau on recreations of Germany's invasion of Russia in the winter of 1941. He was able turn this successful series into an entire book. Growing up Jewish, the artist had a painful link to the second world war, and he has explored this in multiple series dealing with German soldiers and concentration camps. His photographs explore concepts such as voyeurism, Jewish identity, and the re-creation of events. He has had great success with his recreation of inherently American scenes which feature baseball legends and western heroes in the form of plastic figurines.

Levinthal employs intensely saturated colors to dramatic effect. I am drawn to the richness of his color palettes as well as the depth in his shadows. As I continue with my series of tableaux, I intend to experiment with shallow depths of field, a hallmark of Levinthal's photography; he wisely uses focus to draw attention to certain areas in the images and to mask some aspects of his fabricated backgrounds. His artwork is a sophisticated extension of what, I am sure is the way many artists began to be interested in photography and compostion as a children, by filming scenarios created with toys.


www.davidlevinthal.com/index.html

http://www.connercontemporary.com/artists/david-levinthal/

http://www.davidlevinthal.com/article_artinamerica.html