FOREWORD TO MICHAEL LEVIN’S PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK, ZEBRATO (DEWI LEWIS, UK)

ZEBRATO was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing (UK) in 2009 and was awarded 2nd Place Honours for Fine Art Photography Book of the Year at the 2010 International Photography Awards. This is an excerpt from the Introduction written by Barry Dumka. The 3rd Edition of ZEBRATO will be available in summer 2013.

Several years ago, I accompanied Michael Levin on a short trip to Port Townsend in Washington State. Once a prosperous logging community, the town was now crowded with B & B’s and rustically-polished charms. Still, vestiges remained of the old working port.

Levin found several of his key early photographs there. Seven Birds showcases the last remains of a pier ravaged to stumps and the skeletal bones of another pier make his photograph Floating appear elegaic. On that trip, I was interested to see Jetty in person as Levin’s photograph was seared into my head – the solid, angled form of the object; the sharp tonal contrasts of the water and sky; and the lyrical line of an approaching storm of clouds. That photograph had focused me like a clock hand many times. So much so that I wanted to see the scene in person.

Like most harbours, Port Townsend’s waterfront is cluttered with boats and buildings and seafaring debris. It’s ramshackle and nothing in particular stands out. Which is to say that I walked right by the low concrete pier that is Jetty. Instead I noticed a gangly boathouse before it and the commotion of rowers getting strapped into their gear just after. Even knowing the photograph, I still missed seeing the scene. To my eyes, from my vantage point, with my careless gaze – I did not see what Levin saw. His revelation of commonplace subjects – things that I might not notice had his camera not demonstrated their value – became my entry point for a more thoughtful appreciation of Levin’s work. He makes a heartfelt appeal for the significance of the ordinary moment.

According to Levin, “there is no agenda” in his photographs. Still, there are influences, personal biases and a ranging curiousity that mark his images. The agenda that he waves away is the burden that black and white photography, indeed photography as a whole, carries with it always. The expecation to tell a truth and to link that truth to a larger whole. The photograph as document or drama, or both at once, is a compelling concern for many photographers. Cartier-Bresson said that his aim was “to preserve life in the act of living” while Ansel Adams saw his photographs as a means toward ecological preservation. Agendas abound.

Michael Levin is more guarded when discussing his work. He allows that he has an interest in things ‘that are not obvious’ and places that go ‘unnoticed’. The photographs themselves rise above his modesty. Scenes gain weight, even emotional power, as they move through his lens. In his early work – shot mostly around the Pacific Northwest with water, water everywhere – Levin leads the viewer to consider the value and form of wooden pilings, ferry docks and steel pipelines. In Posts and Shadows, weathered stumps from a once thriving riverfront cannery now stand like sentinels warning of time’s cruel passage. The objects become less about their own specificity than what Levin makes of them. Despite their exacting clarity, these subjects are loosened from their quotidian values to better serve Levin’s goal.

It is interesting to note that Steel Pier is the structural underbelly of America’s famed Atlantic City Pier – the thick concrete posts holding up all these cheap and passing fancies. All that weight for nothing. Levin makes something more of the scene, turning the accordion-like scroll of the posts (akin to the structure of a large-format camera) into a telescopic portal out toward infinity.

There is always something more going on in Michael Levin’s photographs than you first consider.

© Barry Dumka

Client: www.michaellevin.ca