Untitled from Wild West

Date

1989

Creator

By photographing constructed vignettes with miniature toys, David Levinthal conjures memories of childhood play. His earliest works in this vein represented incidents from World War II, and the artist realized that the boyish fancies distorted events of terrible seriousness. When Levinthal turned to cowboys and Indians, he drew upon the movies, television and advertising of his youth. In many ways these characters and adventures provided archetypes for masculinity in 1940s-50s America. In this, and other early photographs of Levinthal’s Wild West series, he used an amber tint to evoke the appearance of nineteenth-century albumen prints. He precisely narrowed the depth of field in these photographs, enhancing the illusion of movement. The artist shifted images in and out of focus, with techniques like those of film and television photography. from Touchstones of the Twentieth Century: A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame (exhibition, 2020-21)