Book by Levinthal, David, Woodward, Richard B.

David Levinthal: Work From 1975-1996

Arts & Photography

David Levinthal

Richard B. Woodward

Charles Stainback

Individual Artists

International Center of Photography

Mike Disfarmer is a true American eccentric. Born Mike Meyer, he changed his name to distance himself from both the surrounding farming community of his native Arkansas and from his own kinfolk—claiming that a tornado had accidentally blown him onto the Meyer family farm as a baby. The son of a German-born Union soldier in the heart of the South, Disfarmer was an agnostic from Lutheran stock among the church-going Baptists and Methodists, and remained a confirmed bachelor in a community of large families. Despite his outsider status, as the resident studio photographer in the tiny town of Heber Springs from 1917–1956, Disfarmer was the ultimate insider, privy to each family’s rites of passage—from first birthdays to high-school graduations, from engagements to anniversaries, from army furloughs to funerals. His studio portraits present the people of the heartland during the turbulent times of the early twentieth century. Disfarmer documented the farm families as they sent their sons to fight World War I, struggled through the Great Depression and returned to battle for World War II. His career concludes with the optimistic 1950s, as his previously somber camera joyfully captures the pairings of bobby-soxed young women and their James Dean–wannabe boyfriends. Previously, Disfarmer’s work was known only from a cache of glass-plate negatives that had been salvaged from his studio after his death and spanned a fifth of his forty-year career. The culmination of an unprecedented two-year historical reclamation project in which a dedicated team of researchers scoured every family album in every home along every dirt road in Cleburne Count, Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints presents the never-before-seen original vintage prints of the enigmatic photographer throughout his career.

Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints

Edwynn Houk

Gerd Sander

Michael P. Mattis

powerHouse Books

Wosene: Beyond Words

Nathan Vonk

Wosene Worke Kosrof

Charles Donelan

John Strawn

Sullivan Goss Gallery

Of all of David Levinthal's previous series of photographs, none is more challenging and provocative than his Blackface series, created over the previous three years. Levinthal has used his toy collection to question national myths, our childhood dreams, and the stereotypes and misperceptions of race and cultural identity. In his blow-up images of miniature toys he has recreated scenes of racism, genocide, and sexual fantasies. This series explores the blackface myth embodied in "black memorabilia", household objects infused with African-American stereotypes. Perhaps the artist's most important works, these images make the blackface myth speak to us directly, without an intermediary, and demand a response from us regardless of our race, age, or gender. Levinthal's Blackface images present a paradox; one that pits the beauty of photographic representation against the racism underscored by these ignoble objects. Magnified with the 20 x 24 inch Polaroid camera, the Blackface pictures explore viewer subjectivity, and question the recent popularity of "black memorabilia" amongst the African-American intelligentsia and why the manufacture of these objects proliferated earlier in this century. The photographs are accompanied by an in-depth scholarly essay by noted writer, critic, and filmmaker Manthia Diawara, an expert on the representation of the African-American in film, photography, and popular media. This book promises to be make major contributions to contemporary African-American studies.

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Books by Richard B. Woodward