Untitled

1975

Not on view

In 1972, when Levinthal was a student at the Yale School of Art, he bought a package of toy Nazi soldiers over Christmas break and began photographing them on the floor of his parents' house. He staged miniature battles, fashioned landscapes out of plastic garbage bags and top soil dusted with flour snow, set model airplanes on fire, and set off explosions using what he has described as "a variety of ridiculously unstable homemade incendiary devices." Shot using a very narrow depth of field and printed on high-contrast paper, the photographs have the gritty, out-of-focus quality of a photojournalist's images sent back from the front.
Back at school, Levinthal teamed up with his fellow Yale art student Garry Trudeau (better known for his "Doonesbury" comic strip) and together they sequenced the images into a graphic chronicle of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. The result was the 1977 book Hitler Moves East, a masterpiece of historical imagination that sustains an unsettling tension between the innocence of child's play and the ghastly horrors of war.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Exhibition History

References

Title: Untitled
Artist: David Levinthal (American, born 1949)
Date: 1975
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 27.4 x 36.1 cm (10 13/16 x 14 3/16 in. )
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Rhoda and Elliott Levinthal Gift, 1997
Object Number: 1997.50.4
Rights and Reproduction: © David Levinthal
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By David Levinthal

In the same medium

From the same time and place

A slider containing 5 items.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.

[Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, Seated with Hand on Table], David Levinthal American, Gelatin silver print — [Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, Seated with Hand on Table]
David Levinthal
ca. 1972

[Dead Pigeon], David Levinthal American, Gelatin silver print — [Dead Pigeon]
David Levinthal
ca. 1972

[Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, in Coat and Scarf], David Levinthal American, Gelatin silver print — [Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, in Coat and Scarf]
David Levinthal
ca. 1972

[Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, Standing Before Glass Doors], David Levinthal American, Gelatin silver print — [Young Woman, Possibly Susan Thornton, Standing Before Glass Doors]
David Levinthal
ca. 1972

Untitled, David Levinthal American, Gelatin silver print — Untitled
David Levinthal
1973

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.