David Levinthal began his works using toy figurines with the series Hitler Moves East in 1977. It was conceived with a package of toy Nazi soldiers posed on the floor of his parents home and became a recreation of the Germans’ 1941 invasion of Russia.
Since the success of this first publication he has continued to photograph toy people in a wide array of projects. His works pertinent to my project include Modern Romance (1984-86), The Wild West (1987-89), American Beauties (1989-90), Desire (1990-91), Mein Kampf (1993-94), Baseball (2003-04), The Passion (2005), Hockey (2007), and I.E.D (2008).
In his work Levinthal makes use of a very shallow depth of field to almost create a sense of motion within the image. The pictures below are from Hitler Moves East and I feel that they are closest to what I hope to achieve. They appear, at first glance, to be pictures of real people and real events rather than a tableau created in a studio from model people.
His latest project I.E.D again uses a battleground as its scenario, this time the ongoing military work in Afghanistan.
Levinthal is aware of the power of toys: "Ever since I began working with toys, I have been intrigued with the idea that these seemingly benign objects could take on such incredible power and personality simply by the way they were photographed. I began to realize that by carefully selecting the depth of field and making it narrow, I could create a sense of movement and reality that was in fact not there."
http://www.davidlevinthal.com/index.html
http://www.davidlevinthal.com/index.html
Have you seen the documentary about David Levinthal working on his baseball series? It is amazing to see the size of the camera that he uses.
ReplyDeleteDavid Levinthal looks like an interesting chap. For one moment when you look at his images, you think the content is real but a second later you realise it is not. But for that fraction of a second, you saw something different and that is the power and one of the great things about his photography.
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