Wayne Levin
American, born 1945
Wayne Levin was born in Los Angeles in 1945. His father gave him a Brownie camera, and a little kit to develop his own film, for his 12th birthday and from that early age he was hooked on photography.
After graduating high school in 1962 he attended Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. Motivated to participate in the Civil Rights movement he left Brooks in 1964. Over the next several years he worked with the Congress of Racial Equality and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
No longer a student, he lost his deferment and was about to be drafted when he decided a better choice would be to join the Navy. He spent two years aboard the USS Hornet, seven months of which were off the coast of Vietnam. While in the Navy, his family moved to Hawaii, and upon his discharge in 1968, he moved there to join them. His interest in travel and photography led him to take a year and a half trip around the world. Wayne sailed through the South Pacific and traveled over land through Asia and Europe.
He later traveled for 6 months throughout Japan and Korea, and made a final trip to Mexico and Central America. Documenting his travels through photography, these images later became the basis for his first solo exhibitions at Gima’s Art Gallery and The Downtown Galleries’ in Honolulu. In the early 70’s he was hired as an assistant for the renowned Hawaii photographer Robert Wenkham. After several years working with Wenkham, and architectural photographer Augie Salbosa, he started his own commercial photography business. In 1976 Wayne decided to continue his education majoring in fine art photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied under Linda Connor, John Collier, Henry Wessel, Larry Sultan, and Ellen Brooks amongst others.
Wayne graduated with a BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1979, and the following year attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn New York. He studied with Arthur Freed, and Phil Perkis and received an MFA in 1982. He moved back to Hawaii in 1983 to teach photography at the University of Hawaii, and purchased a Nikonos IV underwater camera as a graduation gift to himself. Wayne began an underwater photographic study of surfers, receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Photographers’ Fellowship for this work in 1984. Later that year he was invited to go to the Leprosy Settlement at Kalaupapa on Molokai to photograph. He documented the settlement between 1984 and 1987 using black and white film and a 4x5 view camera. This work culminated in the book, Kalaupapa: A Portrait co-published by the Arizona Memorial Museum Foundation and the Bishop Museum in 1989.
In 1986 Wayne started the photography program at La Pietra, Hawaii School for Girls, where he taught as an artist-in-residence for a year. He received an Ohio Arts Council artist-in-residence at the Dayton Art Institute for two years in 1987. During his residency he taught photography and arranged exhibitions of his students’ work. Additionally, he produced and exhibited several bodies of work including an in-depth study of Hospice of Dayton, which was the second largest Hospice in the United States at that time. This project earned him an Ohio Arts Council Photographers Fellowship.
Upon finishing his residency in Ohio Wayne returned to Hawaii, marrying in 1990, and relocated to Kona on the Island of Hawaii. A friend suggested he photograph the dolphins in Kealakekua Bay, which led to a re-immersion into underwater photography. During the following years he received magazine assignments to photograph throughout the Pacific and Caribbean and further developed his reputation as a black and white underwater photographer.
In the early 90’s he participated in a book project along with photographers, Franco Salmoiraghi, David Ulrich and Roland Reeves, documenting the misuse, by the U.S. military, and restoration of the Hawaiian Island of Kaho`olawe. In 1995 Kaho`olawe: Na Leo O Kanaloa was published by `Ai Pohaku Press, and it received the Hawaii Book Publishers Association, Hawaii Book of the Year award in 1996. The photographs from this project were exhibited at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and traveled throughout the Hawaiian Islands over the following two years. An exhibition, Kaho`olawe: Rebirth of a Sacred Hawaiian Island, was presented at the Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 2002.
In 1993 Wayne was one of six artists included in the First Biennial Exhibit at the Contemporary Museum, in Honolulu. The underwater portraits of his daughter Elise, from age 6 months to 2 years, explored her interaction with the ocean while learning to swim, and further extended his black and white underwater portfolio.
Editions Limited published Wayne’s first book of his black and white underwater work, Through a Liquid Mirror. This book received the Hawaii Book Publishers Association, Hawaii Book of the Year award in 1997.
From 1999 to 2001, Wayne traveled throughout the United States and Japan photographing aquariums. His objective was to investigate the phenomena of society creating hi-tech mini oceans as the world’s oceans become increasingly endangered. This project led to the book, Other Oceans, published by University of Hawaii Press in 2001.
Wayne’s photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries including Tokyo Designer Space, Japan; New York University, Tisch School of Art Gallery, New York City; Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco; Louis Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles; Rosenberg & Kaufman Fine Art, New York; Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach; High Museum, Atlanta; and the VIP room of the American Pavilion at the World’s Fair, Japan.
Major public collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. His work has been published in Aperture, American Photographer, Camera Arts, Day in the Life of Hawaii, Photo Japan, and most recently LensWork, among others.
In recent years Wayne has continued to focus on depicting the underwater world in black and white. He has photographed sea life, surfers, canoe paddlers, free divers, swimmers, shipwrecks, seascapes and aquariums. In short, he has attempted to depict as many aspects of the ocean as possible within the boundaries of the black and white genre.
In 2006 he received an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Currently Wayne is working on two book projects, a book of his extensive work on the schooling fish Akule, and a new book on Kalaupapa.
Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco; Clic Bookstore & Gallery, New York City; The Contemporary Museum Shop, Honolulu; gallerynorth, Kauai and 20ltd, London represent Wayne’s work. For additional information please visit www.waynelevinimages.com or email Wayne at liquidmirror@hawaiiantel.net.
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
- male
