Exhibition Preface (2009)
The Poetry of Information
Leon Levinstein was born on September 20, 1910, in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia. His father, an immigrant from Lithuania, had come to America twenty years earlier and, after hard work, became the owner of a novelty store. He met his wife through the circles of his fellow immigrants. Leon was the second of their four children.
Levinstein's inclination for Art became apparent already during his school years. Without ever completing university studies, he attended free painting and drawing classes, eventually turning to graphic arts professionally. After the war, he settled in New York, where he found work as a graphic designer. This was the profession he pursued consistently, albeit without enthusiasm, to secure his livelihood.
His relationship with photography began in the early 1940s when he bought his first camera, a used Rolleiflex. Twenty years later, he purchased a Leica, though he never abandoned his first camera. After the war and settling in New York, he began attending photography seminars with three then-famous teachers, notable for their differing approaches. Alexey Brodovitch, director of the major fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar; Lisette Model, a renowned photographer linked with her famous student, Diane Arbus; and Sid Grossman, a politically engaged New York photographer, each added to their student's photographic education in their unique style. Levinstein photographed mainly in the streets of New York for forty years, and much less abroad during his travels. In his later years, a car accident left him with severe health problems, and he eventually died from a stroke in 1988.
Levinstein lived a low-profile life, devoid of adventures and outbursts. He was reticent, solitary, and reserved, without spouses or steady relationships and with few acquaintances and friends. He did not make a significant career as a graphic designer, nor did he stand out as a photographer. Those friends who believed in the value of his photographic work and tried to help promote it faced his difficult character and his fundamental indifference to success. It seems he preferred the protection of anonymity. Nonetheless, many of his photographs were published in his lifetime in the few photographic magazines of the time, and he participated in several group exhibitions organized by the Department of Photography of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Limelight gallery, the first photographic art room in New York.
There is no easy answer to why some artists are recognized either during their lifetime or posthumously. The reasons are both objective and subjective, and their interrelation can significantly influence the outcome. If luck is added to these factors, any answer will involve a considerable degree of arbitrariness. Levinstein was born and grew up in a country always at the forefront of photography, particularly during the post-war period, which was marked by intense photographic fertility. Furthermore, he met nearly all the people who could help promote and recognize a photographer at that time. Therefore, it is initially surprising but partly explainable by two factors that Levinstein's work remained unknown or unrecognized until the 1990s, after his death.
Firstly, although like any creator he desired recognition for his work, Levinstein was clear-sighted and prophetic enough to have anticipated the communication storm of the coming decades, which would ensure that artistic success is more often recognized by the uneducated than by the experts. For someone who had secured his livelihood through other activities and was nurtured by the strict principles of the uncompromising ideologue Sid Grossman, displaying a "noble" indifference and deep respect for the autonomy and sufficiency of creation, and the enjoyment it entails, was not unusual. This stance becomes even rarer and more precious in light of today's artistic reality, where the opinion of the uninformed is augmented by the significance of a photograph's price tag as a measure of its artistic value.
The second factor complicating the recognition and dissemination of Levinstein's work relates to the prevailing conception of art or photography in particular. Photography struggled to be accepted as an expressive medium in the early post-war years, while even photographers sought points of interest in ideologies or representations of reality. Henri Cartier-Bresson stated in an interview that by the late 1940s, when he co-founded the Magnum agency with other photographers, a photographer had to declare himself a photojournalist to attract an audience, even if, like Cartier-Bresson himself, he was more interested in the non-realistic aspect of the photographic medium. Sid Grossman would also view with suspicion any photography not grounded in an ideological foundation. The controversy over the quality of Robert Frank's photographic work "The Americans" revolved around perceptions of correct or incorrect representation of American life, not the artistic value of the photographs. It's worth noting that this ideological conflict, along with Frank's alignment with the influential representatives of the beat generation, significantly contributed to the establishment of his magnificent work, whose artistic value was more broadly recognized only much later.
In summary, an artwork lives through eras of recognition and oblivion, related to broader or more specific artistic sensibilities. Time remains a significant, though not absolute, factor in valuing these qualities. Especially in the early period of a work's life, it's challenging to accept a new proposition from the creator, representing evolution rather than reproduction of accepted standards. In this case, the public more easily recognizes and accepts a clear and identifiable content, a representation or ideological stance, over an innovative artistic approach. This truth, which has caused many great artists to experience rejection, also strengthens artistic charlatanism in every era, as it prompts creators of dubious value to hide behind ideologies, opinions, representations, or references that ensure them a prominence their work does not merit.
During the period Levinstein seriously engaged with photography, New York was the capital of the photographic medium. Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Sid Grossman, Lisette Model, Edward Steichen, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Bruce Davidson, Walker Evans, Saul Leiter, Louis Faurer, Don Donaghy, Weegee, Roy De Carava, and many other significant photographers produced a body of work unparalleled in quality and breadth since then. More importantly, there was great photographic enthusiasm from both photographers and the public. Every photograph, regardless of its value, was considered important, while magazines with wide circulation, whether specialized or general, primarily supported photographic publications. However, except for those specifically engaged in photography, almost no one in the general public had any awareness or even thought about the potential aesthetic or artistic value of photographs. It's tragically comic to think that fifty years later, the situation has worsened. Today, both the public and photographers have lost their initial enthusiasm, often exhibiting saturation and snobbery towards photography. Yet all express too many thoughtless opinions about the photographic art, which they largely continue to ignore or even disdain.
It's indicative that when art had not yet sought the nobility of university and postgraduate titles, Levinstein frequented seminars delivered by renowned and noteworthy theorists and photographers, eager to exchange artistic thoughts with people who had knowledge and enthusiasm akin to his own. Diane Arbus did the same when she enrolled in Lisette Model's classes, even though she had already worked as a fashion photographer. Creation needs communication, but in the old substantial sense, not in the modern mass concept. And it needs education, but also in the old sense of apprenticeship, not in terms of certified "knowledge."
The presence of a good teacher helps the student-creator develop something that already exists within them. Thus, it's not just about influence but also about fortunate encounters. Levinstein clearly drew what he needed from each of his three teachers: from the politically engaged Grossman, social sensitivity and artistic consistency; from Brodovitch, the quest for form and aesthetic daring; and from Model, the sparkling photographic vision. Without a doubt, he surpassed all three.
The directions of photography were usually no more than two: one that gave greater importance to information, thus prioritizing the event (akin to journalism), and one that was based more on the appearance of the image (akin to decoration and graphic arts). In recent decades, another direction has been added, one that illustrates an idea or concept (obviously related to advertising). The apparent presence of each of these directions ensures easy communication with the public for photography, while also lending a semblance of seriousness, as it refers indirectly and analogously to older and more established fields in everyone's consciousness, such as sociology, painting, or philosophy. However, none of these directions ever produced good photography, even if they achieved other purposes, among which cultivating the vanity of photographers and primarily of viewers has always been of great importance.
Undoubtedly, Levinstein must have perceived these tendencies and their corresponding risks, conversing with such noteworthy teachers and other significant photographers of his time. It's evident he realized that all art, and especially photography, needs counterbalancing and contradictory forces. But incorporating them into a photograph, aside from the difficulties during creation, also entails additional challenges during promotion and communication. It took several years for Levinstein himself to fully understand what he was doing with his photography and to be able to support it. It's characteristic that in his repeated applications for funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, he always presented sociological and journalistic arguments far removed from his photography. However, except for his last and successful attempt, where he referred to his substantive and absolutely photographic goals, at least the specialized public was then able to accept (but unfortunately not understand) that photography had its own value. But what most still dare not realize is that the power of photography is the poetry of information. These two words, specialized public and not, are rarely ready to accept and enjoy intertwined in a photograph. Yet, they are the core and strength of Leon Levinstein's photographs.
Levinstein usually starts with a theme charged and dear to photojournalism, namely the pedestrians of metropolises and especially of the more populous neighborhoods. The majority are middle-aged, poor, and unattractive. This thematology inherently contains numerous risks. It's vulnerable to emotional emphasis and to class and political extensions. It can also channel messages, slogans, and ideological obsessions. After all, every intense theme constitutes a trap for the photographer, as it nearly impossible to transcend and typically ridicules any potential artistic abstraction, while hardly reconciling with a strong form. Experience shows that in the face of a leveling theme, the photographer should not exhibit acrobatic compositional skills, as the combination will dissolve the photograph's interiority and lead it into the realm of impressionism, if not kitsch.
However, Levinstein dared. And it's known that every artistic boldness, if it doesn't end in failure and rejection, can only lead to success. Never to mediocrity. The photographer in question avoided loading the intense event with any further information. We may have photographs taken on the street, but the street is nonexistent. There may be an insinuation of some event, but the event itself is not detected in the photograph. The depicted may belong to certain categories based on their appearance, but these categories are not even minimally elements of the photograph. We are thus left to face an absolutely intense theme, a bare piece of information, its significance intensified by the absence of any possible explanation. These people exist solely through their visual gravity. To better perceive this dimension, one need only try to describe a Levinstein photograph from memory to someone. It's impossible, just as it's impossible to describe a piece of music in words. Already, this is a characteristic of great artistic success, proving that the creator used the peculiar characteristics of the artistic medium to provoke intensity, admiration, and emotion.
What also commands admiration in Levinstein's photographs is that the great charge of the theme and the corresponding emphasis on form lead to photographs of exceptional simplicity and clarity, making their emanating power seem even more unexpected and, most importantly, more internal. This constitutes a prime success in revealing interiority through highly visible external findings. This is achieved, among other things, by something rare and difficult, which is the dialogue, the coexistence, the intertwining of two dimensions, two sub-themes, two small invisible stories. This prerequisite, necessary in any art form, becomes more urgent and much more difficult in photography, which is poor, small, and finite. Without these two dimensions, there will be no intensity, essential for creating emotion, as every intensity is caused by at least two conflicts, juxtapositions, or collaborations. These two "stories," these two "musical themes," may be insignificant as pieces of factual information, but they are magnificent as elements of photographic reality. They may be a detail that dialogues with the whole, a shadow, a tilt of a hand, a background, the presence or absence of a third dimension, or again a detail whose significance in the photograph is disproportionate or inflated compared to its place in reality.
In photography, it's very difficult to substantiate an artistic proposal or diagnose a personal style from a single, even good, photograph. Hence, in recent years, there's been a tendency, one might say, to "produce" either absolutely homothematic photographs or absolutely identical photographs in terms of form. This so-called "typology" preserves the honor (both financial and moral) of photographers by providing a recognizable signature to their work. What is forgotten is that the proposal and style are formed through series of autonomous and valuable works. Each photograph should bring its own world, which, of course, will be strengthened by the simultaneous presence of other autonomous and valuable samples with which it will constitute an artistic family, an intellectual proposal. This we observe in the work of Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, or August Sander, and all significant photographers. What surprises in Levinstein's work is precisely the impressive coherence in terms of content and form, but also simultaneously the absolute independence and quality of each individual photograph. Levinstein follows the organically correct path and does not photograph driven by a unified style to seek his obsessions, but uses his obsessions to create photographs that may fit into a unified style.
This particular exhibition and the accompanying catalog should be a small tribute to another artist who saw and understood before others, without managing to share with them what his insightful sensitivity helped him to conquer.
Plato Rivellis