Higher Pictures (here): This nested square abstraction by Jessica Eaton was recently released, although it was originally made in 2019. Iteratively made via multiple masked/filtered exposures of physical boxes meticulously arranged in the artist’s studio, the resulting layers of additive color telescope through a rich range of pink, peach, orange, and light brown. Priced at $13000.
Charles Isaacs Photographs (here)/Grégory Leroy (no website): This 1978 image by Kati Horna turns the colorful painted walls of Mexico into a bold geometric abstraction. The camera flattens the picture plane, erasing the depth between doorway and the nearby wall. Priced at $16000.
Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs (here): While Hiroshi Sugimoto’s massive lightning fields may be familiar to many, he also made another series of electricity-based images in 2012 following his long standing interest in William Henry Fox Talbot. This image was made with an ingenious electrostatic wand used by Talbot, the white lines splayed out to fill the frame, like plant forms, river washes, or lung tissue. Priced at $100000.
Daniel/Oliver Gallery (here): Ben Laposky was an early computer art innovator, and made images like this one in the 1950s with an oscilloscope. The resulting abstraction seems to twirl and spin, almost like the blades of a fan, albeit made of light. Priced at $4500.
Vasari (here): This 1930s image from the Russian-born Argentinian photographer Jaime Bolotinsky turns the folds of ordinary socks into a surreal approximation of a face. Other images on view made similarly unexpected faces out of the creases in stacked hats, creating subtle charm and comedy out of photo-anthropomorphization. Priced at $12000.
Sasha Wolf Projects (here): The work of Arkansas-based Harlan Bozeman was a new discovery for me at this year’s fair. His most recent project considers the legacies of racial violence in the town of Elaine, the site of a 1919 mass killing by a white mob. This subtle seeing and not seeing (or not being seen) eyes covered portrait (from 2022) captures a resonant sense of grappling with conflicting histories and realities. Priced at $3000.
Marshall Gallery (here): This idyllic portrait by Donovan Smallwood puts the focus on the interrupting tree branch in the foreground rather than on the young man sitting on the grass, creating a sense of softened calmness and tranquil privacy. This image, and a few others hung nearby, is part of Smallwood’s recent project “Languor” (reviewed here), where the artist has made portraits and landscapes in Central Park that capture an understated mood of black serenity. Priced at $4500.
Abakus Projects (here): This 2019 portrait by Zora J. Murff captures a profound weariness, even when surrounded by cool fashions and golden sneakers. The image feels quietly emblematic of the reality faced by many younger black men in 21st century America, who spend their days fighting to make their way in a world that often fails to support them. Priced at $4550.
Obscura Gallery (here): In this 2024 work, Rashod Taylor has embraced the rich tactile qualities of the wet plate collodion tintype, capturing the dappled light coming through an ancient oak tree at a former plantation site. The scattered benches underneath the tree are lingering evidence of shared experience and community, mixing glimmers of hope in amidst the gloom of the majestic moss-covered branches and dark shadows. Priced at $12500.
Weston Gallery (here): The swirls and curves of this 1928 driftwood composition by Paul Strand are burnished to fine precision in this lush platinum print. Every crack and whorl feels sharply textural, with the mid-tone contrasts of light and dark capturing the nuances of the weathered wood grain.
Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. (here): While the towering vacoa trees and their hanging leaves are the obvious subject in this 1868 image made in Madagascar by Désiré Charnay, a close look underneath the tree finds that the picture is actually a self-portrait, with the artist and his photographic tent hiding in the shadows. Priced at $9000.
Polka Galerie (here): Drawing on a moment in the 1970 Jacques Demy fairy tale film “Donkey Skin” when a golden-crowned Catherine Deneuve peeks out a window, Marianna Rothen’s restaging adds a bit more curious wariness and mystery. The picture is part of the larger
2015 project “Shadows in Paradise” (reviewed here), where the artist turns her imaginative staging toward darker psychologies and deeper tensions. Priced at $3200.
Deborah Bell Photographs (here): When I first looked at this ethereal 1941 portrait by Clarence John Laughlin, I thought perhaps that it was a double exposure. But in fact, the thin veiling over the model’s face (it turns out the model is Charis Wilson, who also modeled for Edward Weston) was indeed part of the setup, creating a textural glow that drifts across her face. Priced at $10000.
Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière (here): Pretty much every time I come across this gallery at an art fair, I seem to select a photograph by James Barnor to feature from their booth. In this case, the booth was a solo presentation of a new 100-image career-spanning portfolio of the Ghanaian photographer’s work (with 48 prints on view), so perhaps in this case I can’t entirely be faulted for picking Barnor once again. This image of a woman enjoying cotton candy is a classic, which is likely why it is already sold out, even in the new edition. The whole portfolio is priced at $60000, and likely aimed at institutions.
Scheinbaum & Russek (here): This 2018 image by Cara Romero comes from her series “First American Girl” which smartly recasts the popular children’s doll with indigenous subjects and accessories. This setup captures the matching mother and daughter theme, with bold patterns and traditional foods. Priced at $3500.
Miyako Yoshinaga (here): This illusionistic image by Koyoltzintli is made up of cutouts and fragments of the artist playing a traditional flute. The artist is interested in ancient sound objects and their potential healing properties, which she has turned here into a kind of swirling visual melody. Priced at $4500.
ROSEGALLERY (here): This booth was a compelling solo presentation of the work of Tania Franco Klein. While this particular image by the Mexican photographer was also on view in a recent show in New York (reviewed here), it’s a knockout picture that captures the moods, colors, and innovative techniques that are found in her work. The lonely view repeats down through the television, only the woman on the screen seems to have now moved away, like a shift in time. Priced at $27500 for the last AP.
Gitterman Gallery (here): This 1974 portait of Kevin in drag by Allen Frame not only captures an effortless sense of stylish cool, but also sneaks in a clever image-within-an-image doubling, as seen in the framed picture on the side table. Maybe if you count the shadow silhouette cast on the wall, it’s actually a triple portrait. Priced at $6000.
Keith de Lellis Gallery (here): This 1947 multi-image work by George Platt Lynes was one I hadn’t seen before. It cleverly tracks the progression of two lovers, from conversation to desire and seduction, and eventually through to the aftermath of the encounter, where the man is left alone again, with a relatively equal emphasis on the bodies of the two participants. Priced at $145000 for the set of 18 prints.
Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): The so-called “one and nine” configuration of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typologies is my favorite. This 1972 example, in its wonderfully dated 1970s era plastic block frame, shows why – it intimately drives home the comparison of these cooling towers, showing us one specific model, and then nine variants arranged in a way that highlights their formal (or even sculptural) similarities and differences. The Bechers would of course go on to make much larger grids of prints, but these smaller, more intimate arrangements remain, in my mind, the clearest embodiment of how they were thinking. Priced at $60000.
Joseph Bellows Gallery (here): This 1976 image by the Australian photographer Grant Mudford does some mysterious flattening, with the car seemingly located inside the building. The frontal view is all strict geometries, including the cropped letters of the sign (the image was made in Mexico), set against a wasteland of desert. Priced at $8000.
Large Glass (here): This booth was an overdue-in-the-US solo presentation of the work of the Italian photographer Guido Guidi. Many of the images featured building facades and other built structures, including this dark view of a roadside marker (from 1972). Guidi makes its high contrast form his subject, paring it down to its elemental geometries. Priced at $16000.
Toluca Fine Art (here): This 1999 nocturnal view by the Peruvian photographer Luz María Bedoya joins the genre of images of apartment buildings where we can see different things going on in different windows at the same time. There is an elegance to her cinematic approach, with the darkness enveloping the scene, leaving behind the blocks of windows and stacked stairwell vents. Priced at $10500.
Richard Moore Photographs (here): This weathered hand placed on a battered hat feels emblematic of California farm work in the 1950s, so it’s not surprising that this simple but empathetic image was made by Dorothea Lange. Filled with balanced lights and darks and textural detail, it’s an understated photograph that does more with its humble subject than we might have expected. Priced at $6000.
Galerija Fotografija (here): The photographic still life of glass objects is a genre that goes all the way back to the beginnings of the medium but this 2014 work by Sergio Scabar tries something different. The image is quite dark and obscure, but the fragile details of the glass objects somehow come through, perhaps with some bleaching of the dark negative? The only explanation of his technique is “alchemical”, which offers more questions than answers. Priced at $2500.
Throckmorton Fine Art (here): While this gallery is best known for its holdings of Latin American photography, this early 1950s Josef Sudek still life tucked on a side wall caught my eye. Sudek made countless images of the window of his studio, and set up arrangements on the sill with flowers, glassware, and other objects. Several different mesh patterns add texture to this image, with the squiggly lines of the plant form acting like cracks or calligraphic marks. Priced at $15000.
Momentum Fine Art (here): Vincent Fournier’s floral studies imagine plants and blossoms of future worlds, which have adapted to new climate conditions. This “rose” channels wind through its swirled body, to better disperse pollen on a planet blasted by strong winds. It’s an imaginative take on the floral still life, finding beauty in the limits of what nature might create. Priced at $12000.
Robert Klein Gallery (here): Cai Dongdong has built his artistic career around interrupting archival imagery with thoughtful sculptural interventions. In this fresh 2025 work, he expands the few balloons holding banners in the air over a Maoist parade into a dense cloud of colorful orbs with trailing red strings, like tadpoles. Priced at $6500.
Stephen Daiter Gallery (here): The boldly graphic 1967 composition by Barbara Blondeau rearranges high contrast nude forms like puzzle pieces. The effect is something like a black and white checkerboard as seen through binoculars, the resulting circles thrumming with visual energy. Priced at $6000.
Galerie Johannes Faber (here): This small 1963 work by Jaroslav Rössler is difficult to unravel. Apparently made with three film strips (perhaps misaligned and overlapped), its colors and forms wobble toward psychedelic abstraction. Priced at $6200.
Andrew Smith Gallery (here): This 1991 image by Zig Jackson captures the smartly satirical inversion of “Indian photographing tourists who are photographing Indians”. The implied comedy of the picture quickly turns to biting discomfort, the strange inappropriateness of the situation cemented by Jackson’s photographic position as one of those being visually exploited. Priced at $6000.
Candela Gallery (here): The striped effect in this 2025 image by Dana Bell apparently comes from photographing fluted glass, but how the cut shapes are assembled into the human figures and gestures is somewhat more mysterious, apparently including an intermediate step of digital 3D rendering. Even if we can’t entirely puzzle out the techniques Bell has used, the resulting image still feels freshly constructed, using glass textures like fabric. Priced at $5000.
Galerie Julian Sander (here): The compositional complexity of this 1925 group of carnival performers by August Sander feels a bit different than the straightforward clarity we usually expect from the German photographer. Arms bend and flatten, bodies turn, and the whole exuberant group feels on the verge of falling. A vintage print, printed by the artist, priced at $100000.
