Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Digital Age of Street Photography


The modern age of photography has seen major developments. Most notably, the change from traditional black and white photography developed in the darkroom to the use of digital cameras and digital programs such as Photoshop. The above clip of colour images provides a contrast to the black & white work of Leon Levinstein examined throughout this blog. However, New York and the same principles of street photography apply!

Photo of the Day!

Saturday, December 4, 2010

What Leon Levinstein Means To Me

Leon Levinstein is something of a tragic figure. He was criminally underrated in his time and has become something of a Van Gogh-cliche. During my research of him, Leon comes across as a reserved and almost reclusive man. This is at odds with his art. He got into people's personal space and highlighted their most intimate moments. Some critics have said that his work is stereotypical of all street photographers. In my opinion, that's not correct. The reason some of his work seems that way is because the genre was being formed by him and others throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. In fact, the 1970s saw an explosion in street photography - unfortunately, Levinstein wasn't overly active at this point.

His compassion for real people and social commentary is something I'd like to emulate in my own work. I love how unpretentious he was - all he cared about was photography. About looking, seeing and photographing.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Exhibition: The Met

From the 8th of June until the 17th October 2010, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held a Leon Levinstein exhibition titled 'Hipster, Hustlers and Handball Players: Leon Levistein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980.' I happened to be visiting my sister in New York in August and got to go see this exhibition! The collection was donated to the Met in 2009 and this was its first time on display to the public. Below are some of my favourite images from the exhibition:






The top image of the two handball players in action is probably the most remarkable photograph of the collection. The black pants, their physique and posture make them look like ballet dancers. Taken just as the man in the foreground is throwing the ball and his feet are lifting off the ground, energy and movement is caught on camera. Composition and balance are perfected in this photograph and Henri-Cartier Bresson would have been envious of Levinstein's decisive moment!

Walking through the exhibition, the space was intimate yet the photographs stood tall. After reading a lot more about him since the exhibition, I can't help but think his photographs finally reached the place they belong - out in the open and viewed by thousands. 


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Exhibitions and Critical Reception

Levinstein's work began to attract attention quickly. Several of his works were featured in Popular Photography and he won its International Photography Contest in 1952. He was also included in the U.S Camera Annual in 1951 and 1952 and he was one of six photographers featured in 1956.


Over the course of Levinstein's career, his photographs were featured in numerous exhibitions. He took part in several group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, including Edward Steichen's famous 1955 exhibition The Family of Man. Steichen, art director at MoMA, was a fan of Levinstein's work and did what he could to help promote his photographs. In January 1956 Levinstein held a solo exhibition at the Limelight Gallery. Helen Gee, founder of the gallery and another advocate of Levinstein's work, recalled that the show created a lot of excitement and several prints were sold. The exhibition was given complimentary reviews in several newspapers. The Village Voice reported that "the current exhibition at the Limelight really opens the year on a strong note. The selection of 80 photographs by Leon Levinstein is a powerful group of pictures by a photographer whose work is too rarely seen."




However, the Limelight Gallery closed in 1961 and in 1963 Steichen retired from his position in MoMA. With his two main supporters gone from the photography world, Levinstein began to struggle. Unable or, in some ways, unwilling to promote himself, Levinstein became disillusioned and the 50s were to be the highlight of his career.

In 1980, Gee managed to secure Levinstein in the Photography of the Fifties exhibition at the Centre for Creative Photography in Tuscon and in 1985 Levinstein's photographs were featured in two exhibitions; American Images at the Barbican Art Gallery and The New York School at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

Posthumous solo exhibitions were organized by The National Gallery, Ottawa, Canada, in 1995 and the Centre Photographic d'Île-de-France, Pontault-Combault, France, in 2000. Helen Gee once commented: "success will come to Levinstein only when he is no longer around to stand in its way." An all too true statement.



Interview

A soft spoken and intorverted man Leon Levinstein gave a rare interview in 1988.

Introduced by Jeff L. Rosenheim (Curator of Photographs at MoMA, New York) and Jem Cohen, who recorded the interview with Levinstein, the interview gives a great insight into Levinstein's personality and work. Cohen described Levisntein by saying: 'he was very unpretentious, deeply down to earth, and quite a loner. And this all fed into his work.'

I highly recommend taking the time to listen to this ten minute interview with a very talented and creative person that saw the world through an artist's eyes: 'a good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see - see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see - where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.'




Friday, November 12, 2010

Photographers From The Same Period

  • Garry Winogrand: 'I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.' A true New Yorker, Garry Winogrand photographed the streets and the people of New York. He documented American Life in the early 1960s and his best known work belongs in his The Animals (1969) collection. Shot in the Bronx Zoo, it contains images that play on the connections between humans and animals.The photograph below caused a lot of controversy when it was first unveiled to the public eye as racial issues were a serious problem in 1960s America.





Winogrand died in 1984 but left behind 300,000 unedited images and 2,500 undeveloped rolls evidence of his passion for photography and life.
  • Diane Arbus was born in 1923 in New York. Arbus is known for her images of 'freaks'. Throughout her career, she photographed dwarfs, giants, circus performers and nudists. In 1955, she took part in the Family of Man exhibition and in 1963 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship where she was commissioned to document American rites, manners and customs.


Among her most famous images is the photograph titled: Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park (1962). Sadly, having suffered from depression throughout her life, Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48. If you wish to follow up reading about Arbus and her work, I recommend Susan Sontag's essay 'America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly' in her book On Photography (Penguin, 1977). However, it is necessary to keep in mind that Sontag's view is considered narrow and overly critical as many more praised Arbus for her work. In 1972, Robert Hughes congratulated Arbus for having 'altered our experience of the face.'