{"id":21886,"date":"2016-11-11T00:50:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T08:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=21886"},"modified":"2016-11-11T10:25:01","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T18:25:01","slug":"keeping-things-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/11\/11\/keeping-things-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping things simple"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOverseas\u201d by Ivor Levin. (photo by Ivor Levin)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ivor Levin\u2019s path to artistic photography was a long and gradual one. \u201cPhotography is my hobby,\u201d he said in an interview with the Independent<\/em>, but one couldn\u2019t have guessed it from his solo exhibition at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery.<\/p>\n

Levin\u2019s images reveal an artist\u2019s perception. Where anyone else might see a dirty warehouse, he sees a play of light and shadows, a mosaic of colors and shapes. Peeling paint on a wall or a rivet screwed into corrugated metal transform under the magic touch of his camera into fascinating pieces of art.<\/p>\n

By his education and day job, Levin is a dentist. By inclination, he is an artist, walking around Vancouver in his spare time with his camera, capturing amazing and unexpected pictures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like simplicity,\u201d he explained. \u201cI don\u2019t like cluttered images. All my images have one focal point. I\u2019m interested mostly in two genres. One is urban geometry and abstraction: I look for patterns there, for lines and colors. Another is street photography: when I find an interesting geometric setting, I wait there until a person appears, walks into my scene, and then I take a picture. I don\u2019t do landscapes or faces. No mountains. And absolutely no flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levin said there was always a camera in the house when he was growing up. He snapped pictures during family gatherings, trips and holidays, but, in the last eight years, his passion for photography deepened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started looking around with more of an artistic eye,\u201d he said. \u201cI also discovered Flickr and opened an account there, saw what other photographers were doing on the site and taught myself to achieve the effects I like. Gradually, people started noticing and liking my pictures, too. Friends and family were the last to notice, and they began saying: \u2018Your photos are so interesting; why don\u2019t you have a show?\u2019 It happened about two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo
Ivor Levin at the opening of his exhibit Simplicity. (photo by Olga Livshin)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea of a show took root and, last year, Levin applied to the Zack Gallery. \u201cI sent them a link to my Flickr account, and they liked it. They offered me a show. It\u2019s the first time I actually printed my photos. Before that, I only had them digitally, on my computer and on Flickr.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show at the Zack \u2013 called Simplicity \u2013 reflects the artist\u2019s vision not only of Vancouver, his hometown, but also of some other places he has visited. One of his favorite hunting grounds for images is Granville Island, and a few of the images exhibited came from there. Others he found during his international travels, like \u201cOverseas,\u201d which originated in Cape Town, South Africa. \u201cThere is the ocean there, and a swimming pool on the other side of the walkway, and the sky above. Everything is blue, but different shades of blue. When I saw a woman in a blue dress on that sidewalk, I knew I had to take the picture,\u201d Levin explained.<\/p>\n

Most of his images depict bright and cheerful colors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can appreciate black and white, too,\u201d he said, \u201cbut only when the image demands it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One such image is his black and white street scene \u201cPiano Man.\u201d He shot it under an overpass in Brooklyn, and its punchy graphics are only slightly enhanced by computer editing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI rarely use the images straight from the camera, but most of my modifications are minor,\u201d he said. \u201cI adjust exposure and saturation. Sometimes, I crop or tilt the images.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike many photographers, he doesn\u2019t use Photoshop, but rather the online program PicMonkey. He taught himself to use it, like he taught himself the other aspects of photography. \u201cI learn from the other photographers\u2019 photos and from some internet sites,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As the years go by, Levin spends increasingly more of his free time on his hobby, although he confessed that taking pictures absorbs him much more than the editing process. \u201cI prefer creating with the camera, not with the computer,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m always on the lookout for the \u2018Wow!\u2019 factor. In the beginning, I kept everything, thousands and thousands of images. Now, I\u2019m much more selective. When I see an image, I know: it\u2019s a keeper. Otherwise, I just delete them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titles for his images are also important to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always liked to play with words, make puns. For me, it\u2019s half the fun to find the right title for the image. Each one needs a catch phrase to catch the people\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his love for photography, he doesn\u2019t have plans to abandon his day job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like my job,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course, if I could make the same living with photography as I do as a dentist, I\u2019d probably choose photography.\u201d He didn\u2019t sound too sure.<\/p>\n

Simplicity is at Zack Gallery until Nov. 20.<\/p>\n

Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOverseas\u201d by Ivor Levin. (photo by Ivor Levin) Ivor Levin\u2019s path to artistic photography was a long and gradual one. \u201cPhotography is my hobby,\u201d he said in an interview with the Independent, but one couldn\u2019t have guessed it from his solo exhibition at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery. Levin\u2019s images reveal an artist\u2019s perception. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2747,40],"class_list":["post-21886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-photography","tag-zack-gallery"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}