Jeff Mark Leavitt

Jeff Mark Leavitt is a native Angeleno artist and educator. He is passionate about exploring histories and identities via visual mediums and art. His personal work is dedicated to the commonalities we all share: our bodies and how we mitigate the emotional distance we put between ourselves, along with our natural environments and how we interact and exist within them. Not all viewers will see the same thing in his work as each of our existences and realities are different and unique. However, his projects are meant to enable confrontation with these seemingly disparate truths, whether the images yield representations of one’s own life, intimacies, and experiences, or uncover an intangible feeling previously lingering on their periphery.

Jeff’s History MA thesis, Memories in Emulsion: Photography and the Remembrance of Japanese Incarceration, published in California State University, Fullerton’s Welebaethan journal of history, is a photographic investigation of how the memories and stories of the unconstitutional incarceration of over 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II are preserved, edited, or forgotten today at Manzanar National Historic Site. He received his BA and MA in history from UCLA and Cal State Fullerton, respectively, and has recently fulfilled a promise to himself that he would go back and finish his photography degree at Santa Monica College. He recently volunteered as an Artist-Mentor to youth from underserved communities at Venice Arts to help photography students navigate their visual worlds, and is currently a preparator at the Laguna Art Museum and photography contributor for SOVO// Magazine and Forecast Journal.