David Levinthal - Reading his photographs

David Levinthal 'War Games'

David Levinthal, a central figure in the history of American postmodern photography, has staged uncanny tableaux using toys and miniature dioramas for nearly 40 years. Mounted to celebrate the Corcoran Gallery's acquisition of a major, career-spanning body of work, this publication features the artist’s photography on the subject of war.

Levinthal’s combat-related tableaux constitute a remarkable critique of the ways society experiences conflict through its portrayal. His groundbreaking project "Hitler Moves East" (1975–77), a series of imagined scenes from World War II’s Russian front, first established his reputation, becoming a touchstone for the iconoclastic generation of American photographers that includes artists like Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. 

"Wild West"(1987–89), Levinthal’s best-known body of work, explores the American frontier and the American Indian Wars, filtered through the lens of Hollywood westerns and late-20th-century advertising. "Mein Kampf" (1993–94) luridly re-enacts Adolf Hitler’s theatrical rallies as well as horrifying scenes from the Holocaust. Levinthal’s "I.E.D."(2008) echoes contemporary news imagery of our military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Levinthal has based his 'War Games' photography series on the deeply disturbing scenes of Adolf Hitler's horrifying Holocaust scenes. He has gathered his emotions and placed it into his photography by re-creating scenarios from the Holocaust. This photograph portrays the blood, sweat and tears in the conflict. The gore blood dripping from the exhausted soldier's head reveals how violent and brutal these periods were. Levinthal has captured a intense close-up shot to gain a selective focus for the viewer. The depth of field builds the attention on the soldier as he is the main subject of the photograph. Levinthal is showing us what the soldier is thinking as we are put into his perspective, our mindset has been automatically altered as we feel sympathy for the subject. As you can clearly see, Levinthal has blurred everything expect the dry blood mixed with dirt and pain. This could be to challenge how society examines conflict and violence which is a effective theme in today's generation as we are consumed by the digital age.  

This photograph portrays another true event which occurred during the World War 2. Levinthal has increased the exposure and offset to create a historical ambience within this photograph. His effect reveals the violence and conflict portrayed throughout this photograph. The soldier's falling reminds me of Robert Capa's falling soldier photograph which is iconic to war photography. The proximity that is a hallmark of Levinthal’s pictures allows us to see the plastic seams of his subjects, even as it provides a kind of detachment from the uncomfortable subject matter. That sense of a game dissipates with the Holocaust images. After all, toy companies don’t make death camp action figures, forcing Levinthal to repurpose ordinary dolls to stand in for concentration camp victims. Here, there’s no point of reference to connect us to the familiar; the images have a somber reality that belies their surreality. The sense of play — of war unfolding as a game — is only one way in which Levinthal’s images work. The earliest pictures in the exhibition show a sequence in which the artist unwraps a box of World War II soldiers and sets them up on a table. “War Games” also references pop-cultural representations of conflict — from first-person-shooter video games to Westerns and war movies to documentary photographs of actual war by photographers such as Robert Capa. Levinthal uses a shorthand vocabulary of what war looks like to question our unquestioned assumptions.