Introduction

Mikael Levin's work often focuses on questions of identity and memory, place and time.

Time-lapse sequences is a body of work which Levin initiated while doing a residency at the Chinati Foundation in 2005. These are sequences of identical photographs of a given space, with only the light moving through it. The work is presented as looped movie clips. Sometimes these are also shown together with the component images, presented as a series of individual prints.

In a more documentary style are two major projects War Story (1995) and Notes from the Periphery (2003). In War Story he retraced his father's journey as war correspondent during the close of the Second World War, photographing the places his father wrote about then as he found them 50 years later. The exhibition presents those photographs with excerpts of his father's writings.It was shown at the International Center of Photography in New York, followed by 8 other showings (Paris, Innsbruck, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, etc.) The accompanying book was published in English and in German editions by Gina Kehayoff Verlag (Munich, 1996). A selection from War Story is included in the permanent installation of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Notes from the Periphery was shown at the Venice Biennial in 2003. It presents three series of photographs, from France, Senegal, and Trinidad, each relating to a different attribute of modernity. The underlying theme is an evocation of modernity's origins in the Triangular Trade.

Continuing in this line of itinerary projects, Levin is currently preparing a new work, Cristina's History, which takes the multi generational migration story of a branch of his family (Poland to Portugal to Guinea-Bissau) as a metaphor the dashed but undefeated hopes of modernity. It is about identity and Diaspora; abut how the modern day experience of displacement and migration can be taken as a basis for personal identity. It is also about our understanding of the notions of time and place. Cristina's History will be exhibited starting in 2009.

Walking City (1995-2008) consists of twelve short movie sequences, each focusing on a different feature the city as experienced within walking distance of Levin's midtown New York studio. The looped movie clips, made from still photographs, are each 2 - 5 minutes long. Presented as a multi-channel projection, the installation evokes the modernist gaze of the "flâneur", roaming of the streets, seeking refuge in the crowd. The city is both a room and a landscape, where the outward experience of the urban is ultimately an inward experience of self-reflection. The work is also presented as a 23 minute long film, in which the 12 sequences are woven together into a single continues stream.

Other works of Levin's include The Border Project (1993), which looks at the changing notions of borders in Europe, and Common Places (1996) about the manifestation of cultural identity in ordinary urban spaces of four typical European cities. His book Silent Passage is a study of an isolated lake in Sweden (Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1985). A more recent publication, Pleasant if Somewhat Rude Views, is an artist's book revolving around his photographs of a small farming village in France (One Star Press, Paris, 2005.)

Levin is currently preparing a new book, Settling into Nature. It is a photographic study of a small valley in France, an area whose ecosystem was severely damaged by various public works projects in the '70s. Paired with excerpts of writings on the contemporary landscape, it offers a reading of ways in which ecological issues are understood and interpreted in contemporary culture. Hence this is a book about a particular place, but also a reflection on our understanding of the landscape in general.

Levin's work is included in many leading collections in the US and in Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Pompidou Center and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, as well as the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Mikael Levin was born in New York City. He is of French and American nationality and was raised in those countries as well as in Israel. He currently lives in New York City.