Existing comment:
Untitled, from the series Barbie
1998 Polaroid Polacolor ER Land Film
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of an anonymous donor 2017.32.24
The Barbie series is an outlier for Levinthal in many ways. He doesn't own any of the dolls that appear in the photographs, even though he is an avid toy collector. Instead, he borrowed vintage Barbies from a private collector, who hired a costume designer to dress and style the dolls for the photo shoot. While Levinthal directed the studio session, he never handled the valuable dolls. And when it came to photographing them, Levinthal deviated from his signature blurring technique and captured the dolls in sharp focus. The artist likened his role to that of a fashion photographer working with the world's most cooperative models. |