Andy Levin began his career in 1980 as a staff photographer for the Black Star agency. Over the course of his six years at the New York-based agency, he completed contract assignments for National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines. A Life Magazine photo essay on the 1983 farm bankruptcy crisis won Levin first place in the prestigious National Press Photographers Association Contest. Levin continued to contribute to Life until the magazine closed in 2000.

Levin's personal black and white work on Coney Island has been published in Reportage and Graphis as well as both Life and Popular Photography. He has partcipated in more than fifteen Day in the Life book projects. In 1984, he came to New Orleans for a Day in the Life of America story on the Charity Hospital Emergency Room. A decade later, Levin moved to the Big Easy to document and participate in the city's rich culture.

One year after Levin relocated to New Orleans, the city was decimated by Hurricane Katrina. He stayed in his Mid-City home through the storm and the disaster that followed, helping his neighbors to safety in an old aluminum canoe and photographing the tragedy. Levin's post-Katrina work has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, US News, GQ, Rolling Stone, US News World Report and People. He has shot two major Katrina-related stories for Time. In addition, Levin's work was displayed at the New Orleans Museum of Art's Katrina Exposed show. Levin was a finalist for the Eugene Smith grant for documentary photography. As one of the few Americans to have witnessed both 9/11 and Katrina, Andy Levin is committed to remaining in New Orleans to document the reconstruction of the city.