Todd Lavine is a photographer and special education teacher, currently based in New York, NY. His practice investigates the tensions between representations of place and personhood and systems of power.
Lavine holds a dual BA in Art & the History of Art and Sociology from Amherst College and M.S.Ed in Childhood General & Special Education from Bank Street College of Education. He worked in the studios of Jim Goldberg, Katy Grannan, Michael Light, and Kota Ezawa, among others.
He is currently developing a book, titled “A Fragile State,” from photographs shot over two years in Lebanon, where he worked as a teacher. Through the close study of Lebanon’s built environment, it investigates the country’s deteriorating economic and political structures. Developed from his conversations with Lebanese colleagues and friends about the state of their country and the tenuousness of their lives. Across seventy images, it investigates the durability of a precarious system.