About Nick Levitin
When I was a kid, we didn't have a TV. My window on the world was Life Magazine. It was the photographs, taken by many of the best photographers in the world at the time, that captured my imagination.
I began using a camera seriously on a trip to Berlin in 1965, when my father bought me a 35mm Praktica camera with three lenses.
I studied acting and received my BFA from Boston University. While pursuing a career as an actor, I went on to study at the Germain School of Photography in NY.
Shortly thereafter, my camera and I became one. I began by documenting the mass gatherings in Central Park in the 1970s. Eventually, I left the theater and moved into portrait and theater production photography.
During the last several years, I returned to documentary, as well as travel photography. In addition, I have had several solo shows in Montclair, Livingston and Short Hills, NJ.
My early days in the theater inform the work I do today. I’m drawn to quiet and dramatic theatrical moments. My photographs attempt to tell a story, whether the focus is on people, or a place. The subject can be a person in the street, or a boat on the beach. Both can evoke emotions or memories and a sense of participation, or solitude.
I am fascinated by what is in the frame of the photograph –– the relationship between people and the space they occupy.
Most of my recent work is in black & white. For me, there is something mysterious, sensual and engaging about a black and white photograph. That is why, more often than not, I prefer it over color. Photographer Dominic Rouse, puts it well, “Color is everything, black and white is more.”
