Meet the artist and explore David Levinthal’s intimate portraits of dolls that reveal the hidden desires and cultural myths shaping American sexuality. Intimate Alchemy: David Levinthal’s XXX Polaroids comprises three elements from the Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections: 26 prints from his XXX series, a selection of the XXX dolls he photographed, and 48 prints from his Netsuke series. Levinthal’s meticulously crafted scenes and use of large-format Polaroid cameras achieve trompe l’oeil realism, blurring the line between fact and fiction in our emerging age of digital intimacy.

Since the early 1970’s, David Levinthal has been exploring the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events, and characters that shape contemporary American’s mental landscape. His work has been a touchstone for conversations about theories of representation in photography and contemporary art as he has investigated the overlapping of popular imagery with personal fantasy through all of his major series including Hitler Moves East, Modern Romance, Wild West, Desire, Blackface, Barbie, Baseball, and History.

He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is exhibited widely and part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.