Distance Cousins, Connected Art; Photography Exhibition Opens at JCC

Editor's Note: The following event announcement was submitted.

Lavine/Levine: Relative Viewpoints, an exhibition featuring the photographs of Arthur Lavine and Dana Levine runs from Wed., Sept. 11 through Wed., Nov. 27, daily except Sat. from 9 am - 5 pm, at the Gotthelf Art Gallery, Center for Jewish Culture, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037, with a reception on Wed. Sept. 11 at 7:30 pm.  

The exhibition is free and open to the public. 

Twenty-four photographs by Arthur Lavine are matched to approximately 24 photographs by Dana Levine. Arranged side by side to allow viewers to compare and contrast them, the theme is a look at life from the mid-20th Century up into the 21st. The gentle humor of the scenes, character and dignity in the faces of people, quiet contemplation of daily life, and nostalgia for favorite places remind us that life has not changed all that much through the years. 

Arthur Lavine, of Rancho Bernardo, and Dana Levine, of La Jolla, are distant cousins who met for the first time six years ago. 

In May of 2007, Levine saw a notice of a photographic exhibition, Arthur Lavine: Peripatetic Wanderings and Meditations, at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. Her maiden name is Lavine and she wondered if Arthur Lavine could possibly be a relative.  

On a day at the museum when he was signing copies of his book, An Inquiring Eye, she presented herself, Lavine family history in hand. They soon discovered they are related. 

Arthur Lavine has been a working photographer based in New York City for more than six decades while Dana Levine, a scientist and artist, bought her first digital camera less than ten years ago.  

He is a nationally known photographer whose work is represented in museums across the country and she shows her work at galleries primarily in San Diego. 

They come from different generations and bring divergent life experiences to their work. He works with a film camera in black and white and she with a digital camera and Photoshop. But when one looks at the outcome, their photographs are strikingly alike. Their subject matter, compositional elements, emotional impact and visual imagery bridge the gap across the years and present a way of life and the world around us that show a similar point of view. 

In looking at the exhibition, viewers will come to realize there is an amazing visual thread, woven through time and space, that somehow connects the cousins to each other and to their audience. This connection forms the basis of the exhibition, Lavine/Levine: Relative Viewpoints.