David Levinthal

David Levinthal is a New York–based photographer whose work explores the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events and characters that shape the  collective American consciousness.  

Refining a personal photographic style and vision, Levinthal utilizes toy figures and structures as subject matter for the creation of a surrogate reality.  Levinthal has endeavored to create a 'fictional world' that simultaneously calls into question our sense of truth and credibility.

Levinthal's photographs of soldiers at war, cowboys and Barbie dolls reference and reexamine the iconic images and historical events that have shaped postwar American culture.  Through his expansive series such as Hitler Moves East, Modern Romance, Wild West and History, Levinthal’s photographs also reveal the false memories and stereotypes that lurk beneath the surface, challenging viewers to confront the stories we tell about ourselves and our country.    

Levinthal is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his photographs reside in the permanent collections of  New York's The Museum of Modern Art,  the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and  the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris,  the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.

In 1997, The International Center for Photography in New York presented the first retrospective of his work titled David Levinthal: Work from 1977 – 1996.  The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, organized the most recent retrospective, David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, in 2018.  And In 2019, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized American Myth & Memory: David Levinthal Photographs to showcase seventy-four color photographs. 

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