Ethan Levitas

A self-taught artist born in 1971, Ethan Levitas graduated from Cronwell University in 1993 with a degree in political science. Six years later, he taught art in Japan, where he published a book on photography and identity: Conversation About Identity. For this book, he took his first series of photographs: he immortalized his students from Nagano College, geishas with porcelain complexions. 
From 2004 to 2006, the photographer produced a remarkable series on New York subway trains, systematically affixed with an American flag after September 11. In it, Ethan Levitas questions American identity after the terrorist attack and the security excesses of the Bush administration.
Several other series on the subject were born: In Advance in a Broken Arm (2009-2010) where he captures police officers on the spot; Ten-Years Study (2011), portraits of New Yorkers around the Ground Zero construction site, ten years after 9/11; or Photographs in 3 Acts (2012) in which he places himself in the field of vision of video surveillance cameras, armed with a full-frame camera.

Ethan Lévitas received the Prix Découverte at the 2008 Rencontres d'Arles, as well as numerous awards in Japan. The following year, in 2009, he was a finalist for the Cartier-Bresson prize. He has received, among others, the Aaron Siskind Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts.