Untitled

David Levinthal

1972 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

This photograph of toy soldiers and tanks in battle predates by three years Levinthal’s collaborative project with the cartoonist Garry Trudeau published in 1977 as Hitler Moves East: A Graphic Chronicle, 1941–43. Although the picture was staged on the linoleum bedroom floor of the artist’s childhood home in California, it has the gritty out-of-focus quality of a war photographer’s image sent back from the front. By perceptively shortening the camera’s depth of field, Levinthal invested the picture with a palpable sense of movement. The effect is not exactly that of actual war but of child’s play gone terribly awry.

Artist

David Levinthal

Date

1972

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Rhoda and Elliott Levinthal Gift, 1997