Hitler Moves East ─ A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43: 35th Anniversary Edition

“A serious chronicle of war and a sympathetic—even moving—portrayal of the soldier’s hopeless stoicism. " — New York Times

First published to little notice in 1977, Hitler Moves East is now widely regarded as a groundbreaking classic of modern photography. In this elegant, large-format limited edition, David Levinthal and Garry Trudeau’s seminal book is finally being presented at a scale that does full justice to their haunting vision of war.

As the New York Times pointed out ten years after publication, “Levinthal’s war pictures are radically new," and indeed they were. Using cheap, molded plastic toy soldiers and tanks, art school classmates Trudeau and Levinthal conceived a fascinating new narrative form, a “paper movie,” at once deeply evocative and unabashedly fake. Combining selected archival materials with photographs of 1/35-scale toys placed in meticulously constructed miniature settings, the two artists conjured up an astonishing reimagining of World War II’s most epic campaign—the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Traveling precariously between fantasy and reality, Levinthal and Trudeau produced a work now recognized as both a sublime graphic manifesto and a powerful documentary of men at war.

David Levinthal and Garry Trudeau began their collaboration on Hitler Moves East shortly after both had graduated from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1973. Levinthal has since published numerous book of photographs, including Modern Romance, The Wild West, and Mein Kampf. Trudeau is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the long-running comic strip Doonesbury.

G. B. Trudeau has been drawing his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip for more than forty years. In addition to cartooning, Trudeau has worked in theater, film, and television. He also has been a contributing columnist for the New York Times op-ed page and later an essayist for Time magazine. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jane Pauley. They have three grown children.

Trudeau maintains a vivid online presence at www.doonesbury.com and offers deployed troops a forum via his milblog The Sandbox.

Online:
www.doonesbury.com







Writing in the New York Times, Charles Hagen said that, "What distinguishes Mr. Levinthal's work is his interest in emotionally charged historical material. But the real force of his images comes not from his choice of subjects but from the way he tells their stories." Levinthal is the co-author, with Garry Trudeau, of Hitler Moves East, originally published in 1977. Dark Light, a ten-year survey exhibition of his work, was organized in 1994 by The Photographers' Gallery in London, and traveled throughout the United Kingdom. In 1997 the International Center of Photography in New York presented the first retrospective “David Levinthal Work from 1977 to 1996”. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is included in numerous museum collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, and The Menil Collection.