© David Levinthal / The New York Times

I’ve written about artist-photographer David Levinthal on this blog before. Now I’ve discovered he does photo illustrations, too. Regular New York Times readers may have seen his soft-focus photos in the August issues of the Times Sunday Magazine, illustrating “Mrs. Corbett’s Request”, a serialized story by Colin Harrison. Levinthal captures the weary, down-at-the-heel atmosphere of Harrison’s tale perfectly.

Just last week I noticed another Levinthal photo in the October 26, 2008 Travel Section (page 1, top of the fold) accompanying an article on winter vacations. The scene of brightly colored skiers in a clichéd winter landscape feels like a snow globe diorama.

Perhaps surprisingly, Levinthal’s sensibility translates quite nicely from “art photography” to “illustration.” He doesn’t seem compelled to assert his own “artistic” voice at the expense of the written piece. Yet the core of his creative voice remains identifiable. A nice balancing act. He clearly enjoys collaborative work and doesn’t need to hog the stage.

P.S. Check out the current serial fiction offering in the NYT Sunday Magazine—”The Girl in the Green Raincoat.” It’s a humorous “who dunnit” written by Laura Lippman. And James Benjamin Franklin‘s illustrations have a clean contemporary feel, in an Alex Katz cum American folk art kind of way.