David Levinthal was among the first photographers of his generation to elaborate an aesthetic of fabrication rather than of realism. For more than twenty years he has arranged toy figures on studio-constructed situations that mimic and cast doubt on representations of contemporary myths and American icons. The large-scale color photographs that he generates with the 20x24 Polaroid Land Camera give his effigies a seductive grandeur; at the same time he is often careful to make visible the seams of simulation. Probing the nature of such pervasive imagery, as it has been transmitted, filtered, and blurred in films, television, books, and magazines, Levinthal nevertheless tries to evoke the genuine emotions that any of us can attach to an entirely artificial world.

Born in 1949 in San Francisco, he graduated from Stanford University in 1970 with a degree in studio art. After spending that summer in the intensive photography program at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he began to experiment with Kodalith materials, he entered the M.F.A. program at Yale University, earning his degree in 1973. In collaboration with the cartoonist Garry Trudeau, he produced the book Hitler Moves East: A Graphic Chornicle, 1941-43, using a range of soft-focus or out-of-focus techniques to bring the illusion of movement or depth to this pseudodocumentary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. Its publication in 1977 can be seen in retrospect as a landmark of the movement that has come to be known as "postmodern photography." After earning a degree in Management Science at Massachusetts Intstitute of Technology in 1981, he co-founded a high-tech public relations firm in California. In 1983 he moved to New York, and has since devoted himself full-time to his art.

Levinthal's work has appeared in numerous one-man shows, notably at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia; George Eastman House, Rochester; Philadelphia College of Art; Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurichy; and Friends of Photography at the Ansel Adams Center, San Francisco. Recent work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C. (with Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons) and at the Museum Moderne Kunst, Vienna (with William Wegman and Eileen Cowen).

Some of the permanent collections that own examples of his photographs include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Hallmark Collection, Kansas City; the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the High Museum, Atlanta.

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