In my recent post on American artists who work small scale, I forgot to mention photographer David Levinthal. He works with small-scale figures (often toys), but the final artifact is usually a 20 x 24 inch Polaroid. Polaroid film has a particularly malleable and atmospheric quality that’s magnified when using a macro lens in combination with a shallow depth of field. The effect is cinematic.

Levinthal takes as his subject the myths that preoccupy America and the West. His series titles say it all: Modern Romance, American Beauties, The Wild West, Barbie, Baseball. His minstrel series (Blackface), his re-imagining of the Holocaust (Mein Kampf) and his WWII “documentary” war images (Hitler Moves East, co-created with Garry Trudeau) have been controversial, though critically acclaimed.

What to make of another Levinthal series, Netsuke? Netsuke are miniature sculptures that originated in 17th century Japan (the Chinese were the first to make them) and continued to be produced over the next 300 years. A netsuke is a toggle that channels the cord securing a Japanese man’s “purse” (inro) to the waist of his kimono. Netsuke take many forms. Typical subjects: intertwined animals, groupings of monks, the gods and common street types (a monkey trainer, a street porter, a puppeteer). But Levinthal photographs only the sexually explicit shunga netsuke. Surprisingly, shunga netsuke were considered perfectly acceptable gifts for newlyweds, because they brought good luck and sexual guidance in one neat little package.

We’ve stepped outside of the Western imagination, yes? Crossed a border. Entered a new territory. It’s not baseball, or Barbie or modern romance. These nut-sized erotica were sculpted by and for the Japanese imagination. Yet Levinthal’s soft-focus attention reminds us of our tendency to eroticize and fetishize non-European cultures. Think of the seraglio, or Turkish harem, a popular fantasy among Europeans in the 18th and 19th century. Then there’s the odalisque, a virginal slave who might join the sultan’s harem if she plays her cards right. Jean-Léon Gérome, Edouard Manet, Jean Ingres (“Grand Odalisque”), Francisco Goya, Boucher, Delacroix, Matisse — all took the odalisque as an important subject. Arguably, the popularity of the seraglio and the odalisque illustrate deeply ingrained Western attitudes toward non-Western cultures, as well as toward women.

At first glance, Levinthal’s shunga netsuke (reproduced on small format X-70 Polaroid film) might suggest a parallel between the Western male gaze and the Japanese male gaze since the majority of figures in the photo series depict Japanese women, in pairs or alone. Levinthal’s lens adds a voyeuristic glaze to our experience of their private moments. We feel almost guilty as we watch the women arrange their hair, recline in contemplation or bathe. The camera brings the netsuke to life. But there are male-female couplings, too and this is interesting: the men and women are equals in their pursuit of pleasure, happily twisting themselves into knots. The contrast between Japanese and Western perspectives on sex and women is striking. Equally striking is the importance of scale. The small Polaroid prints and even smaller subject matter force a distancing from the sexual intimacy depicted.

In contemporary life the camera reigns supreme. Most people learn what they know about the world through digital cameras, television cameras, video cameras, surveillance cameras, satellite cameras — even military cameras. We see ourselves in home movies, on cell phones and karaoke screens. Each type of image has a “skin” or surface that informs our experience of our replicated self. An old home movie has a color palette and texture that immediately speaks to memory. Karaoke projections make us shiny — we are stars in our own music video. David Levinthal’s camera adds a buttery patina to his subject. The Polaroid surface softens the subtly-carved faces, cloaks and reveals the tangled limbs. We try to decipher the figures in these little photos but we cannot touch them, roll them in our hand, feel their curves and crevices. Still we try. We try to enter into their space, become the voyeur, consume their pleasure, as we have been consumed.

See Levinthal’s work. Image above: © David Levinthal, from the Netsuke series.