Miniatures in Warfare: Wargames at The Corcoran Museum

Photographer David Levinthal has made a career out of photographing toys, especially toy soldiers and miniature action figures — which he shoots up close, often against lifelike dioramas. The close-up photography techniques that Levinthal uses allows us to even see the plastic seams of his subjects--at the same time as it provides a kind of detachment from the violent subject matter.

A selection of Levinthal’s military-themed photos, dating from the 1970s to this year, is currently on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in “War Games.” Part of a larger gift to the museum from the artist, the images in the exhibition are drawn from several of his past works and feature scenes from the American West, the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and World War II (including several from Levinthal’s groundbreaking 1977 book “Hitler Moves East,” created in collaboration with “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau).

A review of the exhibition can be found here at the Wall Street Journal.