David Levinthal is regarded as one of the earliest postmodern photographers. In Levinthal’s photos, what you see is not the actual scene or figures, but the self-built scene centered on toys. After Levinthal published his first work, “Hitler Moves East,” he started to explore some of the basest parts of popular culture and American history through his unique recreation. The online exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum “American Myth and Memory: David Levinthal Photographs” reflects on iconic events, including JFK’s assassination. Through the stereotypical toys and scenes that represent recognizable objects and historical events in America, Levinthal tends to encourage viewers to rethink the meaning of the American identity and how the collective American myth and memory are being constructed.
Images from David Levinthal's American Myth and Memory
Including the series Modern Romance, History, Barbie, Baseball, and Wild West, the exhibition collects more than 70 Levinthal’s famous photographs created between 1984 and 2018. These topics explore quintessentially American themes and imagery after the postwar. The toys cowboys, Barbie dolls, and baseball players in Levinthal’s photographs are not simple toys but the representation of the American myth and memory that we can resonate with. When you first look at Levinthal’s photos, you will think of them as interesting images of toys. But after a while, you’ll recognize the events or the objects in the photographs and bring your own association and memories to the photographed subjects. The combination of high art and simple plastic toys challenge traditional photography and create a new way of symbolism to present American culture. I think this is the uniqueness of the postmodern art. Like the style of the postmodern literature that we’ve learned, postmodern art breaks our understanding of traditional artworks and uses a critical way to motivate viewers’ reflection on our society.
David Levinthal, Dallas from the series History, 2013
Dallas 1963 (2013) is one of my most favorite Levinthal’s work from the series history in the exhibition. It shows a model of President John F. Kennedy in black Lincoln moments before he was assassinated. This photograph is based on Abraham Zapruder’s tragic 8mm color motion picture sequence of the presidential assassination. The movie footage is also regarded as the most important 26 seconds of film in history that a historic, horrific, and clear-vision of the assassination. However, different from the original image, the orientation of the car and the figure is reversed which makes the First Lady and her pink hat become the focus of the photograph rather than the president. What is also noticing is the blurring of the photograph. Even if the image is blurring and reversing, the subject is clear and unmistakable to the viewer. When we are looking at this photograph, we see more than what’s actually in the photograph because we’ve connected the visual cues in the image with the connections we’ve stored in our memory. Through the adaption of the scene, Levinthal reveals how the continual repetition in the media has embedded this scene in the collective psyche and reinforces the public’s fascination with the tragedy. At the same time, Levinthal questions the accuracy and objectivity of photography. The restaging of the scene in Zapruder’s picture illustrates the fact that the camera can also construct photography, which is viewed as a more reliable record of history and reality.
There are some similarities between Levinthal’s way of representing the JFK assassination in the Dallas 1963 and Don DeLillo’s story of the murder in the Libra. Both DeLillo and Levinthal’s works focus on the reconstruction of historical events and make people think about the limit of the history that we’ve known. In Libra, DeLillo focuses on Oswald’s life and the conspiracies that surround the assassination to reconstruct our understanding of this traumatic historical event. Through the process of knowing Oswald’s motivation and how conspiracies were controlling him, we get to see the complexity and mystery of history. Levinthal is using the camera and the opposite shooting angle to show how our version of history is being constrained by the popular media.
The influence of mass media on American society is another important theme that both Levinthal and DeLillo have manifested. When DeLillo is describing the continual broadcast during the assassination and the shooting of Oswald being repeatedly played on television, he is showing how media are incorporating our memory and understanding. Same as DeLillo, Levinthal also uses the representation of historical events through toys and the re-built scene that the public is familiar with to show how mass media has embedded scenes in our cognition and has gradually formed a collective psyche that becomes our fixed consciousness. In Levinthal’s Helicopter (2014) which is about the Vietnam War, Levinthal uses the visual elements in the opening sequence from Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic 1979 film Apocalypse Now in which the Huey helicopter is flying in front of the setting sun to conjure a vivid and recognizable picture of the Vietnam War. This photograph also shows how Levinthal employs the public’s familiarity with the media to form a consensus.
David Levinthal, Helicopter from the series History, 2014
I think the greatness of David Levinthal as a postmodern photographer is he shows us which individuals, events, and ideas are revered by the concept of American identity. Also, he examines the idealization of American culture that has been artificially re-described and embellished to make people believe that particular objects and images are symbols of the nation. Levinthal’s photographs also provide his viewers a new kind of visual experience to the myth and memory of America and encourage people to think about our relationship with the history and what it means to be an American.
By Jiaxin Huang
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