I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq

By David Levinthal

Dealing with war in any context is a difficult and problematic venture. Acclaimed photographer Levinthal uses toy soldiers and plastic Humvees to explore and understand the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Although this may seem too light and playful, this is not just a recreation of the Iraq War, but a societal commentary about the imaging and imagining of war through the use of direct signifiers. Never before has there been such a massive production of toys directly related to a current and unresolved conflict.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1576874885
• ISBN13: 9781576874882
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: powerHouse Books
• Length: 95 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.7" x 11.2"

Customer Reviews

Toy Soldiers & I.E.D.

David Levinthal's photographic examination of the Iraqi War, using toy soldiers, is a unique diversion uniting photography and art and reality. Too much of the photographic arts are epiphanies or still images captured from a unique angle. Nothing more. Then there is the journalistic photography that is the opposite, it attempts to capture the totality of the event (A politician with head lowered after defeat). Levinthal shows the absurdity of both forms in "I.E.D.." Here toy soldiers are placed in still images and photographed in blurry motion as if in real action. To some degree there are so many plays on images that as you read the book, which is a short history of a troop of soldiers on tour in Iraq in real life, you are jolted back when looking at the next photo. The approach is not as good as it was "Hitler Moves East," which gave haunting real-life soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II. However, David Levinthal creates these photos with a sense of not tricking the reader but illuminating the point that photography is a deconstructive artform still evolving.