AVIV (BIBI) LEVIN, 1932-2006

ALON KAPLUN

Aviv (Bibi) Levin was a beloved member of our family, the epitome of human kindness, a source of inspiration and a role model. He had a rare combination of sensitivity and strength. Noble, tall, and proud, with a deep baritone voice, he showered love and warmth on us, his family, as with anyone he met at random. We, like many others, dearly loved Aviv’s qualities, which were distinctive from a very young age and were manifest throughout his life.
Aviv was a charismatic leader. As a teenager he stood out as a counselor and leader in the Young Maccabi movement of his hometown, Rishon LeZion, and a Gadna cadet guide; as a young man he was an IDF officer, and subsequently, an active figure in the Student Association at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. As a result of his leadership abilities and other qualities, in the early 1970s he achieved the roles of Chief Legal Advisor, and membership on the Board of Management of Bank Hapoalim. He subsequently became Joint Managing Director of the Bank. In his personal as well as professional life, Aviv’s advice, opinions, and recommendations were highly valued and sought by many. In his name, appearance, and biography, Aviv embodied the beautiful Israeli. He absorbed the love of the land as a child from his family’s values and lifestyle: the agricultural enterprises of his grandfather, Asher Levin, a pioneer citrus grower in pre-State Israel, a visionary and an entrepreneur, and the lifestyle of his parents, Olga and Shmuel Levin, models of diligence, modesty and love of mankind.
From a young age, with thin brush strokes and an array of color, Aviv chronicled the images, orchards and vineyards of his village, Rishon Le Zion, as well as the hills on which he marched as a soldier. And again, with thin lines and typical humor he depicted his tall figure alongside that of his future wife, Hadara, on their wedding invitation of his design. With the same thin lines and vivid colors he decorated the cards he gave us and our children for our birthdays, cards which were filled with eloquently formulated wishes and warm loving words.
Aviv’s love for music developed at an early age. In his teens, he taught himself to play the accordion and a range of wind instruments. As a trumpeter he was a member of the Young Maccabi Band, and he played his harmonica on family occasions through his last years. As a youngster he purchased a gramophone on which he played classical music, jazz, and even marches from his record collection. The modest collection grew into an extensive library which he accumulated over the course of his life. As lovers of music, Aviv and Hadara were regular visitors of the Upper Galilee Music Festival at Kfar Blum, and were involved in selecting the Festival’s artistic program.
Aviv’s love for the country and the land exhibited itself in his deeds as well as his sensibilities. He loved the country’s flavors and aromas, as they manifested themselves in a fish restaurant on the waterfront or a spice restaurant in the Jerusalem hills. He loved the country’s scents, and especially the fragrance of citrus blossoms which reminded him of his parents’ orchards, where he had worked in his youth.
Aviv realized his love for the land and its vistas through his camera lens, while hiking through olive groves in the Lower Galilee, along the beach in Jaffa Port, or even sitting on his porch, watching the sun rise over the Samarian mountains and set into the sea, illuminating the Tel Aviv skyline. In his youth he bought a Box camera with which he lovingly captured scenes and events in his hometown. Several years ago he managed to purchase through E-bay the same camera model and reveled in the feel of the cold metal body, the sound of its springs, and the leathery smell of its original, old case.
Aviv liked to volunteer as well as to give. He faithfully attended reserve service in the IDF as Lieutenant-Colonel until the age of 72. Throughout the years, Hadara and Aviv encouraged and supported young musicians, and during the last years of his life Aviv volunteered to help adolescents at risk and took an active part in the project Photo Album for Every Child.
Aviv was a role model for us, his family. We were privileged to enjoy his virtues, to absorb ever more of his love and warmth, to engulf ourselves in culture whenever we spent time in his company or visited his home. We were fortunate to benefit from his counsel and profound wisdom.
Amidst the sense of loss and longing, one always seeks comfort and hope. It is our solace and hope that the sights, figures and events recorded by Aviv through his camera lens will eternalize the portrait of Aviv, his virtues, and magical appeal.

Foreward

In his book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes attempts to pinpoint the secret of photography “in itself”. As initial observations for these reflections he maintains: “From the first step, that of classification (we must surely classify, verify by samples, if we want to constitute a corpus), Photography evades us. The various distributions we impose upon it are in fact either empirical (Professionals / Amateurs), or rhetorical (Landscapes / Objects / Portraits / Nudes), or else aesthetic (Realism / Pictorialism), in any case external to the object, without relation to its essence, which can only be (if it exists at all) the New of which it has been the advent; for these classifications might very well be applied to other, older forms of representation. We might say that Photography is unclassifiable. Then I wondered what the source of this disorder might be.

The first thing I found was this. What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. In the Photograph, the event is never transcended for the sake of something else: the Photograph always leads the corpus I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency, matte and somehow stupid, the This (this photograph, and not Photography), in short, what Lacan calls the Tuché,¹ the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in its indefatigable expression.”²

The closer I became acquainted with Aviv Levin’s photographs, the more I felt the need to return to those basic categories of sights unfolding before us at any given moment, as long as we are conscious of what is visible; to try and fathom them anew, to shed a new light on them – the same light which Levin’s camera captured.

Notes

1. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977), pp. 53-66.
2. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans.: Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), p. 4.

Aviv Levin: Reflective Photographs

Curator: Shiri Broza

Aviv Levin’s photographs document natural scenery, urban scenes, and people with optimism, humor and compassion. They are the result of photographic journeys in Tel Aviv, in Israel and around the world, and are rooted in the tradition of documentary photography. Levin (1932-2006) used to observe and record sights he encountered, without interfering with the photographed object. At the same time, through the camera, he generated picturesque compositions typified by harmony of color and form, inclined toward abstraction. Thus, the photographs of people featured in the exhibition elicit curiosity, while formally tending toward minimalism or the abstract.

The poetic quality in Aviv Levin’s work stems from his humanist approach to the photographic object, alongside a tendency to focus on textures and reflections that infuse the work with ambiguities. In the photographs of water reservoirs, the reflected objects take part in interplays of light and color, assuming and shedding form. The documentary, yet lyrical, style invites the viewer on an adventure into realms oscillating between reality and a dreamlike, imaginary world.

In many of Levin’s photographs the composition is more dominant than the depicted object. Thus, for example, a close-up of the side of a fishing boat covered with layers of peeling paint pays homage to abstract painting. In the sky photographs, the subject matter is often but a pretext to capture forms, colors and light, and to translate his impressions, feelings and thoughts into images imbued with atmosphere. The photographs are often blurred, having been shot through wet glass or the window of a moving car, as in a photograph of an avenue of trees in the rain. The object in these works is a vehicle and a lever for the photographic act which strives for an abstract image, free of any concrete object, concurrently addressing motion, journey, and time.