Leon Levinstein

Leon Levinstein (1910–1988) was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia, and attended the Maryland Institute of Arts. 

For about thirty years, Leon Levinstein, a graphic designer at an advertising agency, devoted his free time to photographing everyday life in New York. Lisette Model, one of his first teachers in the late 1940s, supported him in his various projects. 

His radical perspectives—close-ups, high-angle shots, low-angle shots—attest to the sharpness of his vision and an almost tactile immediacy with his subject. Off-screen elements, tight framing of gestures, and quasi-abstract depictions of the human form reveal a particular attention to formal composition. Like Model, he manipulates his negatives to enhance the effects in the photographs, which he prints and retouches himself. 

starting in the 1960s, he began using the Rolleiflex, a medium-format camera whose 6 x 6 cm negative size ensured better results for his 30 x 40 cm prints. His work quickly attracted attention—it was featured in magazines such as Popular Photography and group exhibitions at MoMA—but Levinstein, a solitary figure, kept his distance from the art world.