Leventhal and our senior curator of contemporary interpretation, joanna marsh. It is always a treat to hear from an artist and i can tell you that david is a great storyteller. We are in for a delightful evening. Notso wanted to pause and only recognize david but his family who has come from far away, from utah and california, nephews, sisters, please join be in welcoming david and his family. [applause] after this program, i invite all of you to join us for the reception for the celebratory opening of american myth in memory David Leventhal photographs. For those of you who do not know me, i have the pleasure as serving as the director here at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and also our branch fusing, the renwick gallery. People,en i hear from once i introduced myself as the director, whats on view . Im always happy to share that news and the exciting programs and exhibitions we have going on, but it is truly the curious questioner who says why. Why this exhibition . Why now . Im going to let you in on a secret. Why do we have this special exhibition at this moment in time . It all began with a gift. Actually, two or three gifts now that i count it. Receivednd 2018, we remarkably generous gifts of large bodies of David Leventhals work. One comes from donald rosenfeld, whos here with us tonight, so please join me in thanking him for his generosity. [applause] the other donor has chosen to remain anonymous, but could be sitting next to you. [laughter] these generous gifts, totaling some 500 works, really put us in a very special position at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as one of the preeminent depositories of his work. The next gift i wanted to share with you is davids gift. Once he realized that we would have such a meaningful body of work here at the nations capital, he thought about his own collection, in this case not the toys, although i would love to have the toys, but rather his notes,s, his papers, his and that goes to our sister institution, the american archives. The archives of american art. Too. S worth clapping for, [laughter] as you may know, the archives is the worlds preeminent and most widely used Research Center , with the focus on collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in america. Those of you who really know this building will know there is a separate gallery dedicated to sharing some of their treasures. Its always wonderful when we can have deep holding of an artist work and important archival materials. For anyone who in the future wants to understand and fully delve into the creative world that David Leventhal has created, you have to come here to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and also using the resources of the archives of american art. Are honored to be entrusted with these treasures. Theas the keepers of largest and most Inclusive Collection of american art in 44,000ld, totaling some works of art and counting, we have a sacred duty also to collect artists, seminole american artists, photographers, this gives us a unique insight into the work of artists who have played such an Important Role in the life of our cultural community, inspiring other artists. Hear, wasyou will meant toward by walker man. A very young and i know he is an inspiration to many others. Here at the museum, we explore , bothhat images perpetuate and question stereotypes in american life. Exhibition, in particular, invites you to look closely at what seem at first to be very familiar images, but then i hope you will look longer and find the intriguing, and maybe even the questionable parts of the exhibition. And the individual works, which are grouped in various themes. One of my duties and pleasures is to thank the supporters of this exposition exhibition. Marjorie fund, the william and christine raglan family endowment, and the bernie statement endowment fund. You be happy to hear i would be happy for you to hear me say your name from the podium. You simply need to be a supporter for one of our projects,. Please join me in thanking joanna marsh and her colleague gatheringnderson in work presented at 40 or career of your remark of artist. Of a 40 careerve at a remarkable artist. [applause] you isy seem usual to unusual, in the sense that most photographers capture the outside world. They document what we see and experience. , ais the unusual artist group of artists that david is leading among, who focus on the interior world that they have composed. Landscapes,eated environments, historical moments, influenced by pop culture, by mass media, and by memories. And they all offer us an insight into the world that we live in, and what we call the american identity. ,ver shifting, everincreasing as we tell ourselves and future generations those founding stories, sometimes founding myths, of what it means to be truly american. Photography helps people see the world. What i appreciate about David Leventhal is that he helps us see america in a powerful way. I think you want to hear from the artist without further ado. Im going to invite joanna marsh now to the podium. Thank you for being here tonight. [applause] ms. Marsh thank you, stephanie. And thank you everyone for being here this evening. I have a few housekeeping items to run through before introducing tonights program and bringing david to the stage. Minutethere will be a 15 question and answer. Following the conversation. We have invited guests, all of you, to write questions on cards at the conclusion of our conversation. You will pass the cards toward the aisle and my colleagues will collect them and hand them to me on the stage. Reception inhave a our courtyard following the program tonight, and we invite all of you to be there with us. Next, i would like to echo the thanks to our donors and acknowledge a few other people who worked closely with me on this project. ,levinthals studio those who attended too countless questions and details for me and my colleagues, a filmmaker, rosenfeld and one of our donals donors. Gray, andsigner sarah Graphic Designer daniel phillips, lighting designer Scott Rosenfeld who made the gallery shine. Kate mainer, paper conservator. Our frame specialist tom area and, and barton kotler, who prepared the works for review. My interpretation team, stephanie mentioned Melissa Hendrickson and and showalter and kelly skeen, who are thought partners on this project from its inception, and who helped craft the dynamic interpretive materials that are on view in the galleries. Levinthal, e, david who has been the most gracious artistic partner that a curator could ever wish for. Thank you. Fitting that, it seems that we are gathered tonight on the heels of the 75th anniversary of dday, to talk about an exhibition that focuses on how Historic Events and iconic cultural subjects are collectively remembered and mythologized. It is doubly fitting, because davids first photographic series focused on events of world war ii. Specifically hitlers invasion of the soviet union. Collaborations a with a friend and former theyate, gary trudeau. Employ toy soldiers and constructed sets to stage the track by the troops into the former soviet union between 1941 and 1943. Iepia toned images might need some help. Ok. Im going to keep talking. The images were published in the book you see here, in 1977, and set the stage for the now decades long preoccupation with history, memory, and meth. The photographs provoked questions that still hover over work. Evinthals what am i looking at . Really, what am i looking at . [laughter] what am i looking at . Is this a document, a film still, or a fabrication . Are these human beings . Trudeaus images of the war were based on studying hours of archival photographs. It was equally inspired by their experience of the war, how it was passed down to them through film, novels, plays, poems, and even toys. Subsequent bodies of work were equally informed by various forms of visual culture, noirfilm new are film to televised westerns, to photojournalism, and even 19thcentury paintings. At the same time, his photographs explore and critique these various forms of visual culture. Popculture influence the way we experience, understand, and collectively remember people, objects, and events. Levinthals practice of using toys to surface deeply rooted societal ideas encourages us to look more closely at what we think we know about the subjects, and what they say about who we are. It is now my pleasure to invite David Levinthal to the stage. [applause] ms. Marsh high okay, hi. Mr. Levinthal before we begin, i want to thank you and everyone at the museum who have worked incredibly hard. Joanne and i started working on this back in 2013. And it has been a long, but wonderful process. Myth andur title about memory. However, now that i have just turned 70, i thought we could add a . After memory. [laughter] but i amnthal delighted to be here, and honored and thrilled to have this exhibition at the smithsonian. Ms. Marsh thank you, david. David jokes about his memory, but in fact he is not just a terrific visual storyteller, but also a great storyteller verbally. And i hope you will share some tonight. What is appealing about photographing toys . Why toys . Mr. Levinthal well, i think i gave you a glib answer earlier, by saying that they always show up for work and they do not talk back. [laughter] mr. Levinthal that was particularly true of the barbie series. You never had to worry about them gallivanting around at studio 54, and coming in unable to stand up. [laughter] mr. Levinthal i think part of it is my own personal history. Playing with toys, playing with toy soldiers. There is a wonderful photograph that you included in the in i believe the process area. That my sister found when we were going through my grandmothers things. Many years ago. ,t is of me lying on the floor playing with these beautiful germanmade cowboy and indian figures. Beginningat was the of a Long Association i have with toys. One of the things you do when you are playing with toys, is you imagine a world that they are in. Has always that stayed with me. I never intended to become an artist. I entered stanford in 1966, wanting to become a constitutional lawyer. I will tell a short story about how parents are trying to the best for you, and things actually work out for the best, but totally not what they were planning. Week, preregistration while everybody else was running around getting drunk and doing things, i was sitting down with the head of the poly Political Science department, a friend of my parents. He told me i should not take the introductory poly sigh class in the fall Political Science class in the fall. I should take his class, because i was so brilliant. It ended up being a class that was mostly for sophomores and juniors, and was held in the big auditorium, even bigger than this. But what really convinced me that science was not for me, was the eight or nine books we were supposed to read about local elections in small hamlets throughout new england. Those of you who may have gone to school around that time may remember pamphlets that one had to read. I believe i read two of the pamphlets and two of the books. The class was the most pedantic exercise that i ever encountered in my four years at stanford. Myemember, i poured all of knowledge from those two books and two pamphlets into it. And i got a bplus, and the comment, wish you could have elaborated more on this. And i restrained myself from writing, and saying, me. [laughter] mr. Levinthal but that was the end of my local science career. I eventually found my way, first. O making films a classicsbriefly as major, which was odd for some of who did not take latin in high school, which is a whole other story. I discovered photography at something called the free university. You have to remember this is mintz 1960s, the bay area the mid1960s in the bay area. It was a totally unstructured environment where anyone could teach a course about anything. The nobel winning physicist taught a course about the genetic inferiority of africanamericans. And there will was also a course , which probably would have changed my life if i had any idea what it was, tantra yoga and lsd. [laughter] as a 17yearold, a very sheltered 17yearold, i would have run right to that class if i had any idea what was involved. [laughter] mr. Levinthal but i ended up taking a photography class at the free university, because the person teaching it, graduate student in biology, was 70 that my sister knew, even though she is younger than i am. Somebody that my sister knew. And i thought dwight was the coolest guy in the world. Every time i saw him, there were always two beautiful women with him. Fact thatespite the he was married to the sister of one of my best friends from high school. But, it was this 1960s. Up to the first and only class, which happened at some at his home. Dwight showed me how to develop film, make up and make a print. And i continued hanging out and working with him. The class never met after that, they were mostly grad students in the sciences. Sciences. That is where i developed my passion for photography. Fortuitously, there was no photography taught at stanford. And i say fortuitously, because it made me seek out my own education. , ruth bernpeople hart, one of the great figures in photography. One of the group with ansell adams, Edward Westen. She ran come out of her home in San Francisco on green street, school ofrnhart photography. I went there and took classes. That everything was done as an extracurricular activity meant that i had to really want to do it. I think that was a great benefit to me. Now, of course, stanford has an mfa program. Really tested my interest and my desire. Im curious. Since youre talking about teachers, stephanie and her opening remarks mentioned walker evans. He went on to Yale University school of art where you studied under him. And you began to develop a style that could not have been farther from the documentary style of his work. What thatous transition was like. And how he continued to mentor you, despite you going in a very different direction . Walker was a very interesting man. With one of his proteges, christenberry, walker love talking about french literature. He did not have much interest in talking about photography. He had gone to paris as a young man and wanted to be a writer. Hewas only subsequently that delves into photography. So, i had the seminar with walker, and knew him. I got to know him more because one of my classmates, jerry thompson, ended up printing for walker, and taking care of him in the last few years of his life. Magnificent and a fastidious printer. He told this great story. He was out at walkers home making some prints. Walker came in, saw this print in the garbage, and starts to pull it out and get a pen and sign it. And he says this will be fine for that woman in fairfield. Jerry took it out of his hands and said im going to make a good print. Was i want tl specifically because of walker i went to yell specifically ecause of i went to yale because of walker evans. Being able to study with someone of that significance was something i really wanted to do. Its funny, because when i was applying for teaching jobs, back in the day when letters of recommendation work confidential , i had met these people from the university of kansas and was applying for a job there. I got my portfolio returned without an offer of a teaching job, inside they had mistakenly placed my four letters of recommendation. [laughter] mr. Levinthal and the three from the other faculty members and the head of the department, were nice, your typical letter. Walker had written a short, two paragraph letter, in which he said, david is an extraordinarily talented and gifted photographer, and would be a wonderful addition to your faculty. Apparently they did not think so. Stephanie mentioned the archives of american art. That letter is now there. By it,as so touched because walker would never say anything like that to me personally. But, it was wonderful to know that he saw, in this very raw with i literally started the toy soldier, photographing ,n the bedroom floor photographing in california on winter break. I remember, in january, when i came back to school we had a portfolio review. The other there were four photographers in my year. Or fourre were three and they are following. Everybody came in with particularly like jerry, beautiful prints, printed using the same technology as Edward Westen had used. They were all shooting with 8x10 and they would bring into this portfolio of elegant prints. Probably 250 with prints in boxes, and put stacks by everybody. Workingve just started on this and im really excited about it. It was complete silence. Fortunately, linda connor from the Art Institute of San Francisco was there. And she spoke up and said, of these are amazing. Oh these are amazing. I use this when im talking to students. Highyou study physics in school. They put a hockey puck on dry eyes, and give it a little push and it keeps going, and on dry ice, and it keeps going. Linda was that little push, and we have managed to stay friends. We even appeared together. And i have always made a point to tell her just how much i appreciated that. Because that was the energy that i needed, just to keep going for the rest of the year. And, to their credit, it was not as though the other faculty members were negative. They were just, sort of i remember that john sarcastic he came for a visit. Sky came for a visit. And people looked at them, and said, i have no idea what this is . They were not discouraging. Encouragementttle was really all that i needed. Then, after graduation, jerrys publisher, mcneil, we had exchanged some work. A faux s thesis was biography of a german waffle luftwaffe pilot, done only in images and symbols. I am not sure i understood what he was doing. When john mcneil, and jim andrews saw some of my prints, they foolishly suggested that gary and i do a book together. And we had no idea what we were going to do. We got a huge advance. We got 750 each. [laughter] saying tober gary me, when he handed me my check, cashu cap this check this check, we really have to make this book happen. We signed contracts and were supposed to do it in a year. It took three and a half years. There were diversions, such as gary being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for doonesbury, watergate, and so on. That was also fortuitous. Because my work went through significant changes. I would say that i did three iterations of photographs. The photographs in the book all came from a. Eight all to came from about six to eight months when i was teaching at new haven. Id set my apartment is a giant studio. Gary came over one day to help me. Bignew haven, being such a you can theater go and find an exploding powder at a theater store. I had set up a little image of the figures on a hill. Gary took the liberty of taking one figure, sticking a pin in it , sticking him in the hill. Ground. Blended into the so when i shot it, it looked like he was suspended in the air. I remember putting a little bit of this powder, and i think we lit it with a cotton ball, and it went proof. And he said, give me this. And he started spreading it the way a 10yearold would spread salt on french fries at a bowling alley. [laughter] so we lit it, and there was a sound like a shot going off. The cotton ball bounced against the window. Negative, which was virtually opaque, made this great picture. I will say that when i moved out , the landlord could not return my deposit fast enough. [laughter] despite the fact that there was stuff all over his carpets. He was just, like, get out of here. If you ever want an apartment, do not come back. [laughter] mr. Levinthal so it was a wonderful experience. Deal and i owe to mcneil and andrews. A couple of years ago i did an exhibit and john mcneil came and we walked through it. He looked at the photographs and said, i am so proud of that. It was the only art book that he had ever done. And they have since not ventured into that area again. [laughter] helped,nthal it really certainly my career, to have a book like that. To have it when i moved to new york, i remember meeting Cindy Sherman for the first time, and she said we were up in buffalo passing that book around. Back in those days, there was no internet. You knew what was going on in your immediate locale. And to hear that richard and cindy really that the work was significant to them, was a great feeling. To know that it had really. Otten out there in later years, it became a reference point. Ms. Marsh certainly. Mr. Levinthal there was an even an article from arts magazine, as more people started using toys in their work. The writer suggested i forget to show they were reviewing. But they had gone to the David Levinthal school of photography. And i thought about getting diplomas made up. [laughter] mr. Levinthal it is a wonderful that the workw has had so much impact. Is think for me, there i will not say it is a culmination, because im planning to live a few more years. But, to have this exhibition smithsonian, is one of those things when i was younger not in my wildest dreams. I think it wouldve been more realistic to dreamed that andy warhol invited me to the factory or something. Me. Oduced having a show at the smithsonian was beyond my wildest imagination. Have talked a lot about the process of creating series. Moves east but you came known for polaroid Technology Area you use polaroid over youfor well use polaroid film for 30 years. Much of the work in the current exhibition is shot with polaroid, with the exception of some of the most recent which are digital. The small instant polaroid as well as the can youmat 20x24. Talk about the influence of polaroid on the development of your work . Aving started shooting on the and then moving to an instant technology, how that change what youre doing . There is a. Al in the early 80s when i started printing on blackandwhite paper, but hand coloring some of the modern romance work. That was my introduction to color. And 1970s,1960s if you were serious, used blackandwhite. That is the way it was. Was edgingloring into color. Far as to develop 10 8x10 eight by transparencies in the darkroom in my parents house. I remember, to my great excitement, getting an image of. Motel in santa cruz but i made it in color, as prince. O the codalisc it was probably around midnight, my brother and , were housesitting and i said dan, i made this print and he said, great. He did quite share my enthusiasm. [laughter] but the polaroid, my first exhibition in new york was at the marble gallery. I think marlborough gallery. The title of the show was platos cave. And it featured other artists. Polaroids of 4x5 these tiny figures that i had been using. That got me to thinking about using color. Afterward and her said, i am thinking about doing some of this stuff in color with that be ok . These wered, oh, just test prints for me. I was not going to pursue it. And i tried doing some four by five polaroids. Live ded up using fx70. Ethics 670 the film comes out the front. 3. 50, aade for clipon, macro lens. So i can get close to these figures. The only problem was, as soon as i heard the motor start, i had to tilt the tripod back or the film would knock over my little scene. I got very adept at that. I figured there had to be a better way. And i think in 1984 or 1985, they were just starting to make video cameras with significant magnification. The manyt to one of photo stores in new york, with a tiny set up and my little figures. , this verythis out nice young salesperson kept helping me. I said to him, im really sorry to take up so much of your time. He said, please, most people come in, drop their kid on the floor, and it is videotaping him crawling him or her crawling around. This at least, is interesting. So i got a video camera. And what i did, was i hooked it , so that thevision image i had never actually recorded. But i could see the image on my television screen. And because the Exposure Time on the camera was fairly significant, you did not get those diagonal lines you sometimes get when youre photographing a tv screen. What you did get that miniature pixelation. That added in another layer of , andsm to the photograph they look like surveillance videos. This was prior to the omnipresence of surveillance videos. So, it worked great. And i regret that i did not record. Because i could go back and look at those scenes again. Medium. As a wonderful because it did not involve having to process. And polaroid, in the 1980s, was so incredibly generous to artists. Mine, barbara kasten, who is using a lot of polaroid material, introduced me to someone there. And, literally, i would call up an andlivan isnt say, can i get some fx70 film . And the next day one or two cases would arrive. Eventually, she saw some of my work with cowboys, and proposed doing a show at the kennedy cambridge, that polaroid sponsored. And i had started to use the 20x 24 camera. In those days, and exposure west when he five dollars. Ms. Marsh can you describe, for what who do not know, camera is . Mr. Levinthal is about the size of a refrigerator, with a vice grip holding something together on the side. It was an amazing process, because in about a minute, you would peel this apart and have your final image. 25 perd, it was around exposure. And polaroid would subsidize you. They would give you a free day at the studio, and 30 exposures. 25,eyond that, it was which was less than it would cost to make a ceva chrome c ibachrome print. So i became enamored of that. And connie offered me a show. And this is something i never had a curator do for me. She called me up a month later and that she wanted to move up the date of the show. And i said, well, i was planning on shooting more at the studio. And she is very direct. She said, how many days you want . And i picked a number out of thin air, and i said 10. She said, you have 10 free days. I had my retrospective in the late 1990s, at the International Center of photography, one of the Vice President s of polaroid was there. And i said, you know, you are kind of like a drug dealer. Days, ande these free then, for the rest of my life, i am sending you checks every month. For all of the film that i have continued to shoot. [laughter] he took it in good stride. [laughter] mr. Levinthal but it was a really amazing process. Time, polaroid had its own issues. A difficult material, but an incredibly beautiful material. Saturated, andso so instantaneous. And people often ask me about, say, the difference between shooting different digitally and shooting polaroid. The commonality is, like in digital, you are seeing the image right away. Difference is that i can shoot hundreds of digital shots and not pay anything for it. But it is that same thing of, moving a figure slightly, which is why i ended up with thousands and thousands of polaroids. Which now are in collections of museums. Like yours. There is a certain commonality there. One of the great advantages of. Igital, is the sense of scale he is bill and i used to camera for many years. I remember we were talking at lunch, he said yes, after a while, you start seeing everything vertically. Because that is the format of the polaroid. Both he and i, he more so than in, have occasionally done dip iptychs. One of the things about this exhibition is seeing some of the smaller digital prints, and some of the larger ones. Of 1 of the capabilities of my hasselbad camera. Eyes one lens, even the six. But it does what i wanted i havene lens, even though i six. It does what i wanted to do. To work within the scene i create, and make those little adjustments. So i have found a wonderful process. Are going to open things up to questions. So if you can send your cards to the aisles . And while we are collecting those questions, im going to ask you another one. Sort of relates to the photograph on the screen behind us, though i will change to a scrolling slideshow in a moment. Video in in the intro the gallery, and ive heard you sat on a number of occasions, that there is less in your photographs than meets the eye. I wonder if you would expand upon that . Im going to get up while you answer. Im coming back. Mr. Levinthal i wont notice. [laughter] mr. Levinthal what i mean by is that when you look at an image, the viewer has so much visual memory of their own. Particularly, Something Like the jfk pictures. Photograph was this big. So the figures were very small, and crudely painted and constructed. Know whereediately it is by the flag on the corner of the car, and jackies pink hat. I had tried initially, to put buildings behind the scene. And that did not look good at all. I was shooting in what is now my home, what was at the time my working loft. I had done custers last stand photographs. So i had a grassy hill. I grabs that and stuck it behind the car. The moment i clicked the shutter, i knew that i had made a really special photograph. It was instantaneous. But it was also fortuitous. Is the last photograph that i took in the studio, before we did our renovation, so our son could have his own room and not be living next to the washer and dryer. [laughter] mr. Levinthal something that he pointed out to us on many occasions. It was the largest thing in his room besides the washer and dryer. I think that is true of all my work, that it recalls the modern romance. I used to go, when there were revival theaters in new york in ire 1980s, to every film no that i could see. I would have my notepad and make sketches. Those photographs reminded me of film stills. I remember a curator in london, said, my modern romance photographs look like stories. Something had happened before, and something was going to happen. And the photograph was that moment in between. Do, i findften curators so much more eloquent about my work than i could ever be. So i coopt your phrases over time, and kind of make them my own, mainly by forgetting exactly what you said. Timenot room for the first that i used that. That if you looked at what is actually in the photograph, there is not that much. But there is so much memory that is evoked while looking at it. Thewith a cowboy and western work, it is so much about the western films. Symposium ining a that a great historian was part of. They were showing a film of my western work. My point, i said photographs were a bout a west that never was, that always will be. And he gave me the greatest complement, this ride smile came across his face this wry smile came across his face. And i thought, thats great i had a friend who is a union analyst, a jungian who asked me where i got my toys. She would have a sandbox set up for patients. [laughter] mr. Levinthal toys are so much a product of the time and the culture that they come from. Up. Ister and i were growing she would get the dollhouse, i would get the gas station. I love the fact that in later many i acquired dollhouses. It was a was the mother, the doll the father, the older sister, younger brother of the baby, the mother was often in high heels with an apron. And she could hold the vacuum. Was so fathers knows best father knows best and ozzie and harriet combined. Socializing,ort of movie, bornin the on the fourth of july, there is an opening sequence, where the tom cruise character is playing in the backyard with his friends. War. Then, it transforms into a scene of them getting off of the Landing Craft on the beach in vietnam. , you know, you make war, you projected as something that it is not. Thatoject it as something it is not. Oliver stones film is about that a lot, in the way that the reallife character lost both of his legs, and became this outspoken critic of the war, and for veterans rights. But it starts off with this playful, the way when i was growing up, we played cowboys and indians, and everybody had set of their Favorite Television cowboy. My favorite my first one was hopalong cassidy. It is about, not just a memory from films and television, but it is no longer as popular now, but life magazine. I had a friend who had the entire collection of life magazine from the first issue. I love going over to his house and looking at the magazines from world war ii, which became the way people sort of learned about the war. Years,emember in later the issue that came out, that was so powerful. Like highittle, School Yearbook photo of everyone killed that we can vietnam. And somewhere in there some were in their prom outfits, somewhere in their military outfit. It just had their name and where they were from. There was no commentary. It went on for page, after page, after page. And it was the most heartbreaking and profound statement about the cost of that war. Ms. Marsh sorry. I was going to say that it is interesting. In one of the photographs that is upstairs in the history section, youre no mans land i, thatph of world war is something i thought a lot about also. The idea of the myth of the glory of battle being lost. And that war ends the tremendous that war and the tremendous casualties and fatalities destroy that myth. Heref the questions i have on the card is, whether they are Current Events or people of the last decade, that you feel warrant recreation or reproduction as one of your photographs . Mr. Levinthal probably. Im one of those people who, will see something interesting, and i will acquire it long before i ever know exactly what im going to do with it. I do not to cause any political rifts in the audience. But i did come across a barbie with aonald trump background of the oval office. And it was one of those things, you know, i gotta have it. I have no idea what im actually going to do with it. I do also have a barbie sized flat mirror putin. Vladimir putin. [laughter] mr. Levinthal so, maybe someday. Ms. Marsh someday. Too soon. Mr. Levinthal maybe someday when i wont be attacked on fox and friends. Or people will not be looking at my address in new york, and harassing my family. Ms. Marsh may i . We are just going to let that live. Et that lie. One of the other questions, what other style would you like to explore, or is there a style that you have been hesitant or toaid to pursue echo pursue . Mr. Levinthal not really. It may be subtle, but i feel my style has changed over the years. Part of it is that i have been iing this for so long, that can set things up and often be very close to where i want to end up. Sometimes not. Again, it is just happenstance. I was telling you about the wagon train photograph of the sunset. You can see the diorama in the exhibition. I think it is three feet or four feet. It is huge. I set up with this background, and photographed. There was this little crescent through. Light coming and my first reaction was, i have two lower the background a little bit eerie but, fortunately, i did a double take and thought a little bit, but, fortunately i did a double take and thought that it looks like a sunrise. I played around a little bit with that. So, i think within my style, there is always changes. I may be more prone it took me a while, particularly, working with polaroids. I could never pull back very far. Me adigital, it gave chance to do more expansive scenes. Will onthe same time, i occasion, get very close. Part of that is because i have been spending my sons education fund, to buy beautiful models and dioramas. [laughter] mr. Levinthal i do not think he will miss college. [laughter] mr. Levinthal so im able to utilize again, like that diorama, where all of those figures were uniquely sculpted for that piece. And so beautifully. That there is no bad angle. That gives me tremendous flexibility. I have a rough. Roughlyion, i have a defined style. Adsosoft did a series of with 1 27 scale figures. Had friends who said, that is so cool, you did these microsoft ads. And i said, it wasnt me. They could have called, i wouldve been happy to do it. Really foresee any radical change. Is,me, a radical change say, shooting downward on a diorama. Haveproject ms. Marsh you done that . Bit. Evinthal a little for my next big series which will be on vietnam, and ive been collecting material for quite a few years, probably 10 years. Little, very this simple, inexpensive diorama, that has a ground scene and two jets. Elevated. By photographing straight down, im thinking that, you will not see the bases for the planes. They are cheap little plastic planes, but there is some detail. But you will get the sense of them flying over this grassland. It is sort of in my repertoire. For me, i do not foresee any really dramatic change. Ms. Marsh we will look forward to seeing, and may adding to our collection, that aerial view, of one of the vietnam dioramas. That concludes our program. Thank you, so much, david. [applause] [applause] ms. Marsh now, if everyone would join us in that courtyard for a reception, we can chat more there. Thank you. [applause] this weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River flyer. On sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, historian and coauthor of where the birth of bert where the river burned, joins us live to take your calls and talk about the fire, myths associated with it, any campaign by cleveland mayor karl stokes, to find solutions. Watch our program on the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fired on sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, on American History tv, on cspan3. American history tv products are now available at the cspan online store. Go to cspan store. Org, to see what is new for American History tv, and check out all the cspan products. Announcer monday night, on the communicators, we talk about the future of journalism in the age of big technician knology firms technology firms. Google, apple. They employed zero journalists. The amount of journalism they are doing is zero. They are not going to city hall. They are not going to school board meetings. They are not covering the president. They rely on delivering content and monetizing around content. And if you dont do that anymore , you do not have local journalism. The question is not whether or not we want a strong and vibrant journalism industry. The question is how to get there . Should we do it with an antitrust exemption . We tried it in the the broadcast era. It did not work. Watch the communicators monday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan two. Lectures in history, William WoodsUniversity Professor teaches a class about the American Revolution and the continental army. He describes how the force differed from the british andtary in demographics, the officer selection process. He also talks about the significance of military operation in the northern colonies. Alright, well welcome everyone to another exciting adventure in the history of war. Today, we have gotten to the consonantal army. [captions copyright national