bio
Lev L. Spiro is a fine art photographer and filmmaker, whose photography tries to convey both the sense of mystery and wonder he finds in the natural world, and the ironic contradictions he can't help seeing in the man-made world.
A longtime lover of both nature and ethnographic photography, Lev focused his attention during the pandemic on the intimate landscape of his gardens. Images from his series “Fugitive Light” and "Night Creatures" have been chosen for multiple exhibitions from September 2020 through present, as well as for publications including the "Gold Artist" feature for Art Ascent Magazine's June 2021 issue, Black + White Photography Magazine's March issue, featuring his work in the article "American Connection", and most recently as a Featured Portfolio in Shadow & Light Magazine's January 2023 "Black & White" issue. His first solo exhibition debuted in 2022 at La Botega Art Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA.
In Fugitive Light Lev explored the figurative and literal concepts of darkness in light, trying to understand why the surface beauty of the natural world often gave way to darker emotions in his images. In the series Night Creatures, Lev conjured a mythological world in which plants move about, converse, fight, and make love in a highly anthropomorphized set of portraits which refer to Greco-Roman archetypes. In Naked Beverly Hills he examines his immediate surroundings from an filmmaker/ethnographer's perspective.
Lev is currently teaching a fine art photography course for Santa Fe Workshops titled "The Artful Garden". He's also well known for his work directing over 160 television episodes, pilots and features, including series such as Orange is the New Black, Modern Family, Weeds and Arrested Development. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and two dogs, who often accompany him and make helpful suggestions as he makes images.