David Levinthal. The Social History of Objects

One of David Levinthal’s most controversial bodies of work is the series “Blackface” (1995–98). The project began as a reprisal of scenes from D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation in a series of tableaux photographs addressing the minstrelsy of Black stereotypes in popular culture. Levinthal began collecting figurines, like a mammy cookie jar and Black lawn jockeys featuring racist caricatures and soon found himself at antique shows from New Jersey to Washington, DC, struck not only by the volume of Black memorabilia in circulation, but also their production date range, from the late 1800s through the early 1990s.¹ “Toys are not benign objects,” says Levinthal, “but representations of the culture from which they came.”² Rather than a filmic remake, he photographed the figures individually, creating 221 lustrous portraits against black velvet—iconoclastic, but nonetheless lush, complex images.