August Sander and Seydou Keïta, Portraiture and Social Identity @Walther Collection

JTF (just the facts): A total of 55 black and white works by Seydou Keïta and August Sander, generally framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery space (with a dividing wall) and the side book alcove. There are 19 images by Keïta, taken between 1950 and 1959, most of which are modern or posthumous prints; there are 4 vintage prints (much smaller in size) and 1 self portrait on view in the side room. There are also 36 images by Sander, taken between 1910 and 1929; these prints were made by Gerd Sander in 1994, in an edition of 3. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The second show at the Walther Collection Project Space matches the iconic portraiture of German photographer August Sander with 1950’s portraits made by the Malian studio master Seydou Keïta. For most collectors, both of these bodies of work will likely be well known, and one might think that as a result, this show would be somewhat tired; on the contrary, their familiarity doesn’t diminish the resonance between them in the slightest, and in fact, when seen together, I saw facets of each that I hadn’t noticed before.

The pairing highlights the idea that both photographers were capturing societies in flux. In the past, I had tended to look at Sander’s portraits individually, seeing the greatness of isolated single portraits of various types of people, all captured with Sander’s signature deadpan, unembelleished, frontal style. When seen together as a group, I started to see the societal movement in between the portraits that Sander was actually documenting. In the beginning, there are stern farmers and country families, matched with coal miners, priests, and rural schoolteachers. But as the society began to change and more people moved to the cities, suddenly there were new occupations to document: bohemians and revolutionaries, writers and painters, politicians and more middle class families. In this period of time (1910s and 1920s), German society was being transformed from rural to more industrial/urban, and Sander’s project captured much more of this wholesale national change than I ever really understood.

Keïta’s photographs come at this same idea, but with a much different stylistic approach. 1950s Bamako was a place where traditional African society was mixing with post-colonial Westernism, creating a melting pot of visual and cultural influences. Keïta’s portraits capture the aspirational aspects of his clients, their desire to create an identity, to be modern. Juxtaposing vibrant African fabrics with bold patterns (as backgrounds) with Western props like cars, radios, handbags, and sunglasses, he made posed portraits that found the essence of the mood of the times, with one foot in the past and one in the future. I particularly enjoyed seeing the intimate vintage prints in the side room (yellowed and wrinkled from age), as they seem to be a more authentic representation of Keïta’s process than the larger, more contrasty modern prints.

Both sets of images consistently document formal dignity and grace, an almost regal quality that has nothing to do with wealth or station in life. Steely eyes peer out and tell stories of hopes and dreams and of the constraints of life in a changing world. Even though you’ve likely seen these images before, the quality of portraiture on view in this small show is nothing short of superlative, and the pairing makes both richer from the comparison.
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Collector’s POV: Since this is a non-commercial space, no prices were available for the works on view. Keïta’s prints come up at auction from time to time, but very few are vintage; prices have ranged from roughly $2000 to $15000 in recent years. Sander’s prints are much more available in the secondary markets; there are portraits, landscapes, and later prints/portfolios made by both Gunther and Gerd Sander. As a result, prices vary widely, from as little as $1000 for lesser known images to more than $100000 for iconic vintage portraits.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Seydou Keïta artist site (here)
  • Keïta background: NY Times, 2006 (here)

August Sander and Seydou Keïta, Portraiture and Social Identity
Extended through March 10th
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526 West 26th Street
Suite 718
New York, NY 10001

Massimo Vitali: Arcadian Remains @Bonni Benrubi

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 large scale color works, mounted to Diasec and not framed, and hung in the main gallery space. The chromogenic prints range in size from 71×89 to 76×100; 4 are single images and 1 is a diptych. The images were taken in Greece, Italy, and Spain in 2011, and are available in editions of 6. A companion exhibit of Vitali’s works is on display at agnès b. Galerie Boutique (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Massimo Vitali’s newest pictures find him parked in a familiar location: looking down from above on the vast seashore, where sparkling blue water meets sand and eroded rock, and where tiny people in colorful swimsuits cover the available land mass like packs of insignificant ants. As usual, the light is squint inducing, so bright and white that it is almost a physical presence, draping the scenes with washes of blinding glare.

The gallery press release calls Vitali’s works “socio-landscapes”, and my experience of these new pictures is that they have a bit more landscape in them than his previous photographs. The scale seems broader, the white cliffs and rock formations more like harsh moonscapes, the crashing waves more dramatic. The tiny figures seem almost like the minuscule people found in the foreground of a romantic landscape painting, only multiplied into crowds, with each individual sun bather or pair of lazy swimmers identifiable and unique. The caustic irony I have felt in his earlier photographs seems more muted here, the folly of humanity (when compared to the grandeur of nature) made even smaller and more unimportant.

All in all, Vitali hasn’t strayed too far from the formula that brought him success in these new images, but he does seem to be bridging closer to traditional landscape forms than ever before. There are less miles of matching umbrellas and acres of human flesh in these pictures, and instead a more subtle tilt toward the timelessness of the land and sea.

Collector’s POV: The single images in this show are priced at 30000€  or 40000€ based on the place in the edition; the diptych is 50000€. These prices are a decent step up from his last show at Benrubi. Vitali’s work has become more routinely available at auction in recent years, with prices ranging from roughly $5000 to $80000.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)

Massimo Vitali: Arcadian Remains
Through February 4th

Bonni Benrubi Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Top Photography Venues in New York in 2011

I reviewed photography shows at 83 different venues in and around New York in 2011. When you step back and think about the scale of that number, it certainly says something about the tremendous diversity of galleries and museums committed to photography in one form or another that we have at our disposal in this great city. We are blessed with specialist photography galleries of all shapes and sizes, contemporary art galleries with strong photography programs, and museums of all kinds that regularly show photography.

In past years, I have tried to get granular with my statistical analysis of these various places, taking averages and tallying totals, in the attempt to discover unseen patterns and trends. This year, I have returned to a more straightforward approach: simply adding up the total number of stars I awarded to photography shows at a venue over the course of the year. The fact is that this method rewards both extremes in quality and show to show consistency fairly equally, without resorting to trying to build in zeros for those shows I didn’t review. I’m happy to report that the results below seem to realistically separate the wheat from the chaff.

The clear winner this year for overall strength of programming was Pace/MacGill Gallery. Of the total of 7 shows the gallery put on this past year, I reviewed 4 and issued a grand total of 8 stars. While there was a cluster of other strong galleries at 6 stars apiece (7 different venues at this score), no other venue in New York delivered as much. I think we would all expect to see names like Janet Borden, Yossi Milo, Bruce Silverstein, and Yancey Richardson among the leaders, given their recent historical strength, but I’d also like to single out newer galleries like Higher Pictures and Sasha Wolf Gallery, who have emerged from the pack with thoughtful and consistently intelligent programming.

With the exception of MoMA at 6 stars (padded a bit by 2 stars for a rehanging of the permanent collection), our museums were particularly weak this year. In general, not only was there a notable absence of blockbusters and scholarly retrospectives, these venues didn’t deliver the depth of photographic programming we have generally come to expect. Many galleries roundly bested these institutional players with their offerings. Notable absences from the lists below include both the Whitney and the Guggenheim, and contemporary stalwarts Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Pace, Gladstone, Paula Cooper, Sean Kelly, Robert Miller, and 303. None of these usual suspects had more than a single 1 STAR photography show in 2011, and several had none at all. Perhaps this is just a quirk of longer term scheduling, so here’s hoping to see them again in 2012, with the kind of quality photography we know they can deliver.

The complete data set is below, with gallery name, followed by total number of review stars earned over the course of the year (including only those venues with a total of 2 stars and above):

Specialist Photography Galleries

Pace/MacGill Gallery (here): 8
Janet Borden, Inc. (here): 6
Higher Pictures (here): 6
Yossi Milo Gallery (here): 6
Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): 6
Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): 6
Sasha Wolf Gallery (here): 6
Hasted Kraeutler (here): 5
Danziger Gallery (here): 4
Amador Gallery (here): 3
ClampArt (here): 3
Edwynn Houk Gallery (here): 3
Deborah Bell Photographs (now closed): 2
Bonni Benrubi Gallery (here): 2
Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): 2
Steven Kasher Gallery (here): 2
Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs (here): 2
Robert Mann Gallery (here): 2

Contemporary Art Galleries

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): 6
Salon 94 Freemans/Bowery (here): 5
Wallspace (here): 4
David Zwirner (here): 4
Matthew Marks Gallery (here): 3
Metro Pictures (here): 3
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here): 3
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (here): 2
Cheim & Read (here): 2
Gallery at Hermes (here): 2
McKee Gallery (here): 2
Murray Guy (here): 2
Friedrich Petzel Gallery (here): 2
Andrea Rosen Gallery (here): 2
Sonnabend Gallery (here): 2
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here): 2

Museums

Museum of Modern Art (here): 6
International Center of Photography (here): 4
Brooklyn Museum (here): 3
Jewish Museum (here): 3
Metropolitan Museum of Art (here): 3
Artists Space (here): 2
Bruce Museum (here): 2
Museum of the City of New York (here): 2
Florence Griswold Museum (here): 2

Top Photography Shows of 2011

While end of year “top 10” and “best” lists tend to be all effusive enthusiasm and back slapping congratulations, I’d like to go against the grain and state from the outset that I think 2011 was an underwhelming year for photography in New York. There were no game changing blockbusters, a surprisingly thin and forgettable program at our major museum venues, and not enough risk taking at our galleries. While I think we can reasonably chalk this outcome up to the challenges of real economic hardship across the board, I can’t really say with a straight face that we generated a massive amount of vibrancy or heat this year.

While I had a short hiatus during the summer which slowed me down a bit, I still reviewed a total of 138 photography shows this year, and likely saw (at least fleetingly) a roughly equivalent number that I didn’t review. Of all those shows in galleries and museums all over the region, only 7 merited 3 STARS (down from 10 last year that received that same rating and 12 in 2009). So my top ten isn’t really a top ten, it’s a top seven. 34 shows got a 2 STARS rating, and when tallied with the 3 STARS shows, there were actually 41 shows that should normally have been a top 50. Across the board, I think we were hunkered down, and it showed.

Having said that, the shows and exhibits listed below cut through that fog of uncertainty and provided some shining light and optimism we can build on going forward. In every case, the ideas were robust, the craftsmanship was meticulous, and the overall effect (from editing and sequencing to lighting and hanging) was superlative. These were the shows that hooked me immediately, dragged me in for close inspection and brain engagement, and left me in a head-nodding, smiling, state of wonder. A few additional words on each are below, now given the benefit of some small bit of hindsight, along with links to the original reviews.

Top Photography Shows of 2011 (all 3 STARS, alphabetically by last name/exhibit title)

Harry Callahan and Jackson Pollock: Early Photographs and Drawings @Pace/MacGill Gallery (original review here)

This show connected the visual dots that MoMA’s sprawling AbEX show failed to connect. The pairings and interplay here were simply astonishing.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN @David Zwirner (original review here)

A rethinking of the staged tableau in the context of fashion. Proof that with the right support, commissioned work can still be very exciting art.

Jill Freedman, Street Cops, 1978-1981 @Higher Pictures (original review here)

This show was the discovery of the year for me. Freedman’s work captures New York’s finest with an amazingly consistent warmth and grace, with an eye for photographic storytelling.

Nan Goldin: Scopophilia @Matthew Marks (original review here)

This was undoubtedly the most polarizing photography show in New York this year. Some, like me, found the video lyrical and transcendent, while others found the whole endeavor arrogant, tired, or even desperate. I know that I walked away with a new respect for and understanding of Goldin’s work, seeing it with fresh eyes after all these years.

Self Reflections: The Expressionist Origins of Lisette Model @Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here)

This show entirely transformed my understanding of Lisette Model. Placed in the context of German/Austrian Expressionism, her whole body of work suddenly made visual sense to me. A testament to the power of getting outside the photography bubble and looking for historical connections in the other arts.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951 @Jewish Museum (original review here)

This exhibit is the educational winner of the year. It tells a complex story with inclusiveness and detail without becoming dry and overwhelming. For me, it filled in some important historical gaps, both introducing forgotten talents and placing the entire group in clearer photographic context.

Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll: Days 1 through 30 @Salon 94 Bowery (original review here)

This show of new work was amazingly assured and accomplished, taking themes she has explored throughout her career and extending them in a new and provocative way. Here was a bit of the risk taking I was talking about above; what could easily have been a throw away gimmick in the wrong hands was made thoughtful and shockingly real by Simmons.

In thinking more about what ties these seven shows together, I began to see a divergence in my mindset when evaluating contemporary and vintage shows. While in both cases, I was searching for some measure of innovation, originality, and inherent quality (however defined), for contemporary shows, I was more focused on likely long term durability and freshness of vision, while for vintage shows, I was more interested in new ways of thinking/seeing work I was already familiar with. As such, I decided to create two top 10 lists, one for each type of show, promoting the most worthy shows from the ranks of the 2 STARS brigade; these two lists are below. In some cases, when retrospectives bled into the present or when “new” work actually came from more than a decade ago, I had to make some determinations of just which bucket was most appropriate. In general, I think this separation has some meaningful and useful logic behind it, allowing for more apples to apples comparisons.

Top 10 Contemporary Photography Shows of 2011 (alphabetically by last name/exhibit title)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN @David Zwirner (original review here)
Nan Goldin: Scopophilia @Matthew Marks (original review here)
Pieter Hugo, Permanent Error @Yossi Milo Gallery (original review here)
Rinko Kawauchi: Illuminance @The Gallery at Hermes (original review here)
Louise Lawler: Fitting @Metro Pictures (original review here)
Boris Mikhailov: Case History @MoMA (original review here)
Ray Mortenson: Full Scale/Meadowland Still Lifes @Janet Borden (original review here)
Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll: Days 1 through 30 @Salon 94 Bowery (original review here)
Lorna Simpson: Gathered @Brooklyn Museum (original review here)
Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide @International Center of Photography (original review here)

Top 10 Vintage Photography Shows of 2011 (alphabetically by last name/exhibit tile)

Harry Callahan and Jackson Pollock: Early Photographs and Drawings @Pace/MacGill Gallery (original review here)
Julia Margaret Cameron @Hans Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs (original review here)
John Divola, Trees for the Forest @Wallspace (original review here)
Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best @International Center of Photography (original review here)
Jill Freedman, Street Cops, 1978-1981 @Higher Pictures (original review here)
Robert Heinecken: Copywork @Friedrich Petzel Gallery (original review here)
Self Reflections: The Expressionist Origins of Lisette Model @Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here)
Mark Morrisroe: From This Moment On @Artists Space (original review here)
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951 @Jewish Museum (original review here)
Henry Wessel, Vintage Photographs @Pace/MacGill Gallery (original review here)

As I look to 2012, I remain as energized as ever to troll through the dreck in search of the revolutionary. I wholeheartedly believe in the real power of the simple gallery show review and its rightful place at the center of the critical discourse that surrounds this medium, and I expect to redouble my efforts in the coming year to see as much as I can and report on it as thoughtfully as possible. In my view, everything starts with looking at and responding to the pictures, and everything else, all the discussions of business models and art markets, social media and artistic memes, it’s all secondary (perhaps even an out right distraction) to the work itself. What we all need to do, whether we are collectors, or working artists, or just lovers of photography, is to see more shows. Resolve to double the number of shows you saw last year. If you can make that profound commitment, you’ll increase your odds of having the artistic moment that really matters: the one when a photograph interrupts your daily muddle and leaves you astounded, dumbfounded, and thoroughly amazed and befuddled. We’re making memories here folks, so here’s to a 2012 filled with mind-blowing contradictions, jaw-dropping shocks, and staggering, uncompromising photographic beauty.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 @Jewish Museum

JTF (just the facts): A total of 150 black and white photographs from 73 different photographers, framed in black and matted, and chronologically/thematically displayed against grey, green, yellow, and dark blue walls through a winding series of adjoining gallery spaces. The prints cover the period from roughly 1910 to 1959, with a concentration between 1936 and 1951. An exhibition catalog has been published by Yale University Press (here) and is available in the bookshop for $50. The installation shots at right are courtesy of The Jewish Museum/Christine McMonagle.
The show is divided into titled sections. These sections and the photographers included are detailed below, with numbers of works and dates in parentheses.
Precursors
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Lewis Hine (3, 1910, 1912, 1920)
Paul Strand (2, 1915, 1920)

1 video newsreel (1931)The Great Depression/Harlem Document

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Berenice Abbott (2, 1937)
Alexander Alland (3, 1938)
Lucy Ashjian (4, 1938, 1939)
Harold Corsini (1, 1939)
Jack Delano (1, 1940)
Robert Disraeli (1, 1934)
Arnold Eagle (1, 1935)
Eliot Elisofon (3, 1937, 1940)
Morris Engel (3, 1937, 1938)
Sid Grossman (2, 1936, 1940)
Rosalie Gwathmey (1, 1940)
Consuelo Kanaga (1, 1937)
Sidney Kerner (1, 1938)
Rebecca Lepkoff (1, 1939)
Richard Lyon (1, 1937)
Jack Manning (2, 1939)
Lisette Model (1, 1940)
Arnold Newman (1, 1940)
Sol Prom (1, 1938)
Walter Rosenblum (3, 1938)
Arthur Rothstein (1, 1935)
Joe Schwartz (2, 1936, 1939)
Lee Sievan (1, 1940)
Aaron Siskind (5, 1937, 1938, 1940)
Rolf Tietgens (1, 1938)
John Vachon (1, 1938)
Dan Weiner (1, 1939)
Max Yavno (1, 1940)
2 glass cases (syllabus, notes, membership cards, newspaper articles, magazine spreads, books)
The War Years
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Lou Bernstein (2, 1943, 1947)
Bernard Cole (1, 1944)
Harold Feinstein (1, 1945)
Godfrey Frankel (1, 1945)
George Gilbert (1, 1942)
Sid Grossman (2, 1945)
Rosalie Gwathmey (1, 1945)
Morris Huberland (2, 1941, 1942)
Arthur Leipzig (1, 1946)
Rebecca Lepkoff (1, 1947)
Helen Levitt (1, 1940)
Sol Libsohn (1, 1945)
Sonia Handelman Meyer (1, 1946)
Lisette Model (3, 1940, 1942, 1945)
David Robbins (2, 1941, 1944)
Walter Rosenblum (2, 1944)
Edwin Roskam (1, 1944)
Arthur Rothstein (1, 1946)
Fred Stein (1, 1945)
Louis Stettner (3, 1940, 1951)
Lou Stoumen (1, 1940)
Paul Strand (1, 1938)
Elizabeth Timberman (1, 1944)
Weegee (5, 1938, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1945)
Ida Wyman (1, 1945)
4 glass cases (book, installation/judging photos, magazines, brochures, flyers, party photos)
The Red Scare
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Vivian Cherry (2, 1947)
Robert Disraeli (1, 1950)
Morris Engel (1, 1947)
Rosalie Gwathmey (1, 1948)
N. Jay Jaffee (1, 1948)
Arthur Leipzig (2, 1949, 1950)
Rebecca Lepkoff (1, 1947)
Sol Libsohn (1, 1949)
Jerome Liebling (2, 1948, 1949)
Tosh Matsumoto (1, 1950)
Sonia Handelman Meyer (2, 1945, 1946)
Ruth Orkin (1, 1948)
Marion Palfi (2, 1948, 1949)
Rae Russel (1, 1947)
Edward Schwartz (1, 1952)
Erika Stone (1, 1947)
David Vestal (1, 1949)
Sandra Weiner (1, 1948)
Ida Wyman (1, 1947)
2 glass cases (newspapers, books, meeting notes, letters, photograph)
A Center for American Photography
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Nancy Bulkeley (1, 1946)
Ann Cooper (1, 1950)
Arnold Eagle (1, 1950)
Morris Engel (1, 1938)
Leo Goldstein (1, 1950)
Sid Grossman (2, 1947, 1948)
N. Jay Jaffee (1, 1950)
Sy Kattelson (3, 1948, 1949, 1950)
Rebecca Lepkoff (1, 1948)
Jack Lessinger (1, 1950)
Leon Levinstein (2, undated)
Jerome Liebling (1, 1953)
Sam Mahl (1, 1949)
Phyllis Dearborn Masser (1, 1948)
Marvin Newman (2, 1949, 1951)
Ruth Orkin (1, 1950)
Ann Zane Shanks (1, 1955)
Larry Silver (1, 1951)
W. Eugene Smith (2, 1951)
Louis Stettner (1, 1951)
Dan Weiner (4, 1948, 1949, 1950)
Bill Witt (1, 1948)
Ida Wyman (1, 1950)
Max Yavno (1, 1949)
George Zimbel (1, 1951)
2 glass cases (magazine spreads, Photo Notes, exhibit catalogues, installation/remodeling photos)
1 video film (1953)
1 interactive map
Coda
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Sid Grossman (1, 1959)
1 glass case (book, teaching photo)
1 documentary film (2011)
Comments/Context: The short hand story of the New York Photo League has always been a bit too overly easy for my liking: a few notable artistic names, some left leaning politics, and a muddy and inconclusive interpretation of its lasting influence on photography and the history of the city. I think that’s why I found this more comprehensive and inclusive retelling to be so much more exciting and useful; it’s not just a hackneyed, one-sided narrative about communists, but a broad, interwoven confluence of politics, history, geography, and photography, with a strong undercurrent of healthy artistic debate.

Walking through the twisting galleries, I found myself thinking about the Photo League in the context of a diagram. From one corner comes the march of history: the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, each with its own very real impacts on daily life in New York. From another corner comes the melting pot of the urban city itself: the people, the individual neighborhoods, the street life of mixed classes, races, religions, and ethnicities. And from a third corner comes the evolution of photography as a medium: the remnants of the between the wars Modernism, the arrival of the flexible hand held camera and the weekly magazines filled with photojournalism, and the beginnings of a more personal and subjective kind of image making. At the center of this diagram sits the New York Photo League, documenting the truths found on the streets of this great city, under the changing pressures of history, tugged in different artistic directions, trying to balance and synthesize these competing forces. Seen in this way, I suddenly started to understand where the Photo League really fits, and why the work on the walls looks the way it does.This show is roughly chronological, and this design allows the viewer to see the evolving stylistic approaches being employed by League members over the years of the club’s existence. Simplistically, one can imagine a continuum, at one end, documentary photography informed by activism, engagement and advocacy, a witness with an ideological purpose and a particular kind of social commentary to put forth. At the other end lies documentary photography informed by more subjective concerns, including individual emotions/reactions, aesthetics, formalism, and more personal questioning. As the years passed from 1936 to 1951 (the beginning and end of the League’s operation), it is possible to watch this internal debate raging on, where a new sensibility gradually starts to take hold. This evolving definition of documentary/street photography didn’t of course end here; these same issues remain intensely relevant and hotly argued on both sides even today.

With Hine and Strand as artistic precursors and with Abbott as a teacher, it isn’t surprising that the Great Depression pictures start with a formal clarity and slowly evolve toward more progressive messages, likely as a result of the crushing economic times. Bridges and storefronts, vacant lots and crumbling tenement buildings, these kinds of subjects slowly give way to more human stories, particularly the Harlem Document pictures, which take a heavier handed look at poverty and unemployment in the black community. While these images are seen today with an eye for their overly negative stereotypes, they still represent a style of activist, engaged street photography that held favor with many of the members at the time.

With the arrival of World War II, the subject matter changed again: soldiers, white hatted sailors, mothers, political rallies, crowded protests, blurred motion coming into the frame with more regularity. In these pictures, the aesthetic schism starts to appear more clearly, with some members moving down a more atmospheric path, telling smaller and more marginal stories with empathy, humor, and even dark irony. These are more individual scenes, often environmental portraits, with an increasing level of compositional freedom and experimentation. As the Cold War deepened and the Photo League was blacklisted (and ultimately disbanded a few years later), the stylistic changes became more widespread. Using aerial views, mirrors, reverse angles, silhouettes, complex graphical overlaps, and a host of other approaches, the Photo League’s brand of street photography became much more diverse, and by the early 1950s, it bore very little resemblance to the work from the late 1930s. The mood was harsher, the compositions more personal and less purely documentary.

What I like best about this show is its rag tag, unwieldy inclusiveness; there are dozens of names included here that have been largely forgotten, and yet their images fit together into a logical progression that seems fluid with the benefit of time. For me, I finally started to visually understand the small steps that made up the aesthetic and conceptual changes that took place between the 1930s and the 1950s, those missing evolutionary links between Abbott and Frank; The Americans now seems to me less like a thunder strike of genius out of nowhere and more like an innovative, original extrapolation from visual ideas that were already beginning to percolate around. This excellent show tells a uniquely New York story, and is worth a visit simply for the rich historical details of life in the city that it provides. But the reason I found this to be one of the best photography shows of the year is that it also successfully fills in an important (and largely missing) gap in the recounting of the American photographic narrative. Not only do I now have an increased appreciation for the talents of the many members of the New York Photo League (many of whom have been unjustly overlooked), I now understand much more clearly how the larger artistic puzzle fits together.

Collector’s POV: Given this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Given the wide number of included artists, it seems fitting to forego the specific secondary market discussion that usually fills this section.
Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: Wall Street Journal (here), Lens (here), NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), Artnet (here), Photograph (here)

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951
Through March 25th

The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St
New York, NY 10128

Administrative Note: This will be the last post of the year. I’ll return again in the New Year, beginning with the end of year roundups of the best shows and top photography venues of 2011. Happy Holidays!

The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) @Andrea Rosen

JTF (just the facts): A total of 83 color photographs by Walker Evans, framed in white and matted, and hung in the large single room main gallery. All of the works are SX-70 Polaroids made in 1973 or 1974, sized roughly 4×3. The exhibit also includes 4 photographic diptychs by Roni Horn. These works are iris-printed photographs on Somerset Satin paper, each panel sized 22×22. The images were made in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2007, and are available in editions of 15+3AP. Additional supporting photographs include an 1887 Eadweard Muybridge collotype from Animal Locomotion (sized 19×24), and a Eugene Atget albumen storefront from 1900 (sized 9×7); these two photographs are displayed in the entrance area. The installation also includes a selection of oak furniture by Gustav Stickley, an 19th century architectural model of a cooper’s workshop, and a 19th century English birdhouse. This exhibit was curated by Ydessa Hendeles; a spiral bound catalog of the show is available for free at the reception desk (and is worth taking). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: One of the unforeseen consequences of a proliferation of art on the Internet is that we have inadvertently (and permanently) diluted the meaning of the word “curator”. We’re all choosers, selectors, organizers, editors and like-ers now, whether we are celebrities, gallery owners, scholars/academics, collectors, or idle watchers. At one level, this is mighty freeing and empowering, breaking down old restrictive barriers and letting in some much needed fresh air. But at another, we seem to be losing sight of the nuances of old school curating craftsmanship and excellence that go miles beyond just gathering a bunch of pictures under a clever theme for a group show.

While this show takes place at the Andrea Rosen Gallery and selling is ostensibly going on, a retail experience seems wholly beyond the point of this exhibition. The art objects on view transcend being works by Walker Evans or Roni Horn or whoever, and become elements of an elaborate theatrical set piece. Taken together, the individual items have been meticulously arranged and sequenced to highlight internal relationships and connections that have very little to do with their inherent Walker Evans-ness or Roni Horn-ness. The hand of the curator is so evident here that it trumps the underlying works themselves; we’ve entered the carefully controlled world of Ydessa Hendeles, and it is the sum of the parts that matters.

This kind of mixed media, open ended, metaphorical curation is rarely seen in Chelsea these days; it’s such an unusual animal that we’ve almost forgotten how to react to such a complex presentation. My first reaction upon entering the main gallery space was to notice its clean geometries and the manipulation of scale going on: tiny Polaroids interrupted by larger prints, surrounding small church pews leading to a grand central object, in this case, an ornate, domed birdcage made of intricate polished wood. As I circled the gallery, the Evans Polaroids drew me into an intimate dialogue, vicariously wandering and circling the vernacular architecture just like Evans himself, moving in and out, around and across, seeing silhouettes and then details in succession. The Horn images of birds forced me to physically move back, to take them in as objects related to the central bird cage, and then to move back in to see their delicate layers of feathers in an architectural manner. The overall result is a sense of fluidity and motion that isn’t linear but more swirling and rhythmic, the movement through space not strict and rigid, but more loose and serendipitous than it appears on the surface.
While there are a number of individual standouts mixed in among the works on display, many of the Evans Polaroids aren’t hugely memorable, and are of more interest as a process flow, like contact sheets where we can see the photographer moving from frame to frame with deliberate action. There is a palpable sense of Evans testing the limits of the camera, figuring out how his eye could control the output of the device in ways that he wanted. Some work and some don’t, but seen together, there is the real feeling of being along for the ride with a master.

What I like best about this installation is that there is some curatorial risk taking going on here. Hendeles didn’t just give us a static ring of Evans Polaroids, but an immersive environment that draws from those Polaroids, one that offers additional less obvious pathways to explore; there are multiple “ways in” to this exhibit, leading to different contextual conclusions. I also appreciate the clear move to take photography out of its own separate artistic silo and to mix it together with other decorative arts that can provide alternate resonances. Her setting provides a richer experience of Evans’ late work, offering us ways to look and see that are beyond the simple or straightforward.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The Walker Evans Polaroids are priced at $7000 each, and the Roni Horn diptychs are either $85000, $120000, or NFS (she is represented by Hauser & Wirth here). Evans’ late Polaroids do come up for sale at auction from time to time; prices in recent years have ranged between $1000 and $5000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Features/Reviews: Vogue (here), Opening Ceremony (here)

The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project)

Through February 4th
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Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

High Line Billboard: John Baldessari

JTF (just the facts): A single billboard, 25×75 feet, displayed at the corner of 18th Street and 10th Avenue in Chelsea. The work is entitled The First $100,000 I Ever Made and is print on vinyl, from 2011.

Comments/Context: Plunked down in the middle of a Chelsea parking lot, John Baldessari’s monumental photograph of a real $100,000 bill is a disconcerting symbol for a neighborhood full of retail art galleries. By replacing the normal fare of forgettable movie ads and holiday sale announcements with a not-so-subtle swipe at the dollar driven world in the streets below, Baldessari successfully jolted me out of my huddled winter stupor and made me look again.

What I like best is that Baldessari’s work is more than just a snappy one-liner; it mixes photographic appropriation and Pop art, with a surprisingly current-events relevant Conceptual zinger. I’m pretty sure Woodrow Wilson was never particularly brash, but in this setting, his serious Big Brother visage seems both judgmental and confrontational, and depending on your point of view, the steely-eyed critique can point in many different directions. Baldessari’s wild transformation of scale is simultaneously absurd, cautionary, and perspective-changing, and it’s absolutely worth a detour down the High Line, even if the winter winds are blowing.

Collector’s POV: This work was not overtly for sale, nor are there many comparables in terms of scale in recent auction history. Baldessari is represented in New York by Marian Goodman Gallery (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: Daily Beast (here), Gawker (here), Arts Observer (here)

John Baldessari

Through December 30th
Billboard at 18th Street and 10th Avenue

Andrew Borowiec: Along the Ohio @Sasha Wolf

JTF (just the facts): A total of 28 black and white photographs, framed in grey and matted, and double hung in the single room gallery space. All of the prints are gelatin silver prints, taken between 1984 and 1998. The modern prints on display are each 16×20, in editions of 10. A monograph of this body of work was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2000 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Andrew Borowiec’s photographs of the industrial Midwest are deceptively understated; with just a quick, cursory glance over them, one could easily miss their complexity. Hovering in tones of middle grey, they document working class neighborhoods hemmed in by sprawling factories and power plants, the presence of the Ohio River never far from view. Their sober deadpan formality silences the landscape, leaving behind clusters of crowded houses and slowly decaying communities.

What makes these pictures exciting is the density and structural complexity of Borowiec’s compositions; they’re almost Friedlander-esque in their layers and details, albeit with a much more earnest severity. Nearly every image has something to discover: toys strewn across a front yard, fake raccoons decorating electric meters, a meandering street leading to a trestle bridge, a pair of ceramic poodles, a nest of overhead electric wires. White picket fences, abandoned cars, ATV tracks, overgrown greenery, and satellite dishes come together to tell a story of a worn down Midwestern existence, where flood waters overrun downtown streets and basketball courts, and smokestacks and cooling towers loom in the hazy distance.

Nearly every image in this show has robust front to back design, where foreground, middleground, and background are carefully modulated to create intricate juxtapositions and spatial overlaps. A kind of controlled chaos consistently emerges, where shapes and patterns interact under the guise of struggling lives. In the end, Borowiec’s pictures capture a sense of quiet, muddling through perseverance, with an eye for the subtle photographic arrangement that transforms the mundane into something new.

Collector’s POV: The prints on view are priced based on their place in the edition, starting at $2400 and rising to $3000. Borowiec’s work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Exhibit: Akron Art Museum, 2010 (here)

Andrew Borowiec: Along the Ohio
Through January 7th

Sasha Wolf Gallery
528 West 28th Street
New York, NY 10001

Robert Heinecken: Copywork @Petzel

JTF (just the facts): A total of 56 photographic works, variously framed and matted, and displayed in the entry area, the large main gallery space, and a smaller back room. The works were made using a dizzying variety of processes: 21 works made up of Polaroids, 10 repurposed magazines, 3 collages, 6 works made of film/transparencies, 3 using lithography, 2 gelatin silver prints, 1 emulsion on canvas, and 10 dye bleach prints mounted on foamcore. The images were made between 1963 and 1994, and with exception of the foamcore prints which were executed a few years after their negative dates, nearly all are vintage. No edition information was available on the checklist. Individual sizes range from roughly 10×8 (magazines) to 96×192 (collage). (Installation shots at right.)
 
Comments/Context: The long entry hallway at Friedrich Petzel is covered in framed grids of Polaroids, and as I came off the street and passed from work to work, it became clear that I was in the midst of a meticulous, often hilarious, anthropological study of stock advertising photography. Facial expressions, hands on hips poses, matching clothing, nightgown lengths, the way arms are folded, how multiple models are posed together, they’re all broken down, deconstructed, and exposed for both their identifiable patterns and puzzling ridiculousness. Photography that we normally breeze by and take for granted is proven to be carefully controlled and manipulated, this conclusion delivered with a tone of subtle, chuckle-inducing mockery. As a show opener, it’s a perfect prelude to this mini-retrospective of the work of Robert Heinecken.

Heinecken’s long career (as both an influential teacher and accomplished artist) is filled with rigorous explorations and deft parsings of the many meanings of photography. While often lumped in with other California conceptualists or associated with those at the beginnings of photographic appropriation, his path took him places few others have traveled: into the depths of consumerism, unpacking, mixing, and reusing nearly every known image reproduction process, combining hard core pornography, war imagery and comically empty advertising into a heady intellectual brew.

The best of the works in this show have a vital, bomb-throwing quality to them: a soldier gleefully holding two severed heads roughly printed over magazine ads brimming with love, porn collated into the pages of the New Yorker, jaunty life-sized cardboard cutouts undermined and made silly with guns, booze, and money (not to mention a claw hand for Andre Agassi in his 1980s mullet days). All of the works on display upend expectations in one way or another, from the weirdly trashy Tuxedo Striptease to the three dimensional collages made of crumpled but recognizable ads. While not every visual deconstruction is completely successful, there are plenty of robust underlying ideas, questions, and politics to keep the work engaging.

As a sampler, this show brings together light jokes and scathing critiques, understated beauty and explicit sexuality, brainy conceptualism and ironic juxtaposition. It’s smart, witty, and caustically brash. But what I like best about this gathering of work is Heinecken’s intense investigation of the medium, his willingness to disrespectfully rip into accepted truths and pull them apart, looking for the sometimes harsh effects and unplanned outcomes of an image saturated world.
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Collector’s POV: The works in this show range in price from $2000 to $250000, with plenty on intermediate prices ($8000, $15000, $20000, $25000, $30000, $50000, $60000, $65000, $120000, $150000). Heinecken’s work is not routinely available in the secondary markets for photography, with only a handful of lots coming up for sale in any given year. Prices have ranged from $1000 to nearly $100000 in recent years, with a few high end outcomes coming at the Polaroid collection sale in 2010.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: Village Voice (here), New Yorker (here), TimeOut New York (here), WNYC Gallerina (here)

Through December 22nd

Friedrich Petzel Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years @MCNY

JTF (just the facts): A total of 96 photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung against wallpapered and white walls in the entry area and a large gallery space with several interior dividers. The prints are a mix of gelatin silver, bromide and pigment ink prints, taken between 1924 and 1970, although most were taken in the 1930s. No physical dimensions or edition information was available. The exhibit also includes 27 watercolor/ink sketches and drawings, 6 full body costumes, 1 video, and 16 glass cases containing magazines, books, letters, contact sheets, programs, and other related ephemera. A catalog of the exhibition has been published by Skira Rizzoli (here) and is available from the book shop for $65. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: While there is certainly plenty of photography on display at the new Cecil Beaton show at the MCNY, I’m not sure it makes sense to call it a photography show in the narrow sense of the definition. Instead of limiting the scope to just his photographs, this flashy exhibit broadens out to tell the story of an artistic Renaissance man, society gadabout, and relentless self-promoter, including watercolor sketches of award-winning costume designs he made for Broadway shows, movies, and the opera, published volumes of his journals, and even his own wallpaper designs. These artistic threads are then woven together with his celebrity and society portraits (seemingly just as often of himself as of famous people) and his fashion work for Vogue, tying it all together in a sumptuous and elegant package.

As a photographer, Beaton was essentially a classicist. While his compositions show borrowings and sprinklings from the avant-garde and Surrealism, he returned again and again to overtly staged interior scenes, heavy on theatricality and dramatic romance. It didn’t matter if it was Greta Garbo, Mona Williams, Audrey Hepburn, or Marilyn Monroe, Beaton brought a refined sense of glamour to his portraits and commissions, following in the footsteps of De Meyer and adding a touch of more modern panache and sophistication. While he may not have been a wildly inventive visual innovator with his camera, the aura of his personality clearly became part of his productions, adding sparkle and excitement to mix.

This is a show brimming with visual stimuli, which in a way distracts from its ability to make an intimate or compelling case for the quality of the photographs. But the “going in all different directions” feel of this installation is tremendously effective in painting a picture of Beaton as a frenetic man about town, a multi-talented artist working a dozen projects at once while jamming in a few society portraits between cocktails. It’s not so much “Beaton the photographer” as it is “Beaton the force of nature”, whirling through New York in a tuxedo, hobnobbing with celebrities and society dames, multiplying the vibrancy of the artistic community with more than just his camera.

Collector’s POV: Given this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Beaton’s photographs are generally available in the secondary markets, with a decent number of prints coming up for sale each year. Recent prices have ranged from $500 to roughly $8000, mostly correlated to the fame of the sitter. Similarly, I’m sure there are Beaton images of now-unknown society figures that can be had for even less.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)


Transit Hub:

  • Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), T Magazine (here), Artnet (here)
  • Book Review: NY Times (here)

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years
Through February 20th

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Avenue
New York, NY 10029

The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans @Florence Griswold Museum

JTF (just the facts): A total of 185 photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung in a series of three connected gallery spaces. The prints are a mix of gelatin silver prints, archival pigment prints and Polaroids, taken between 1930 and 1975. While no dimensions or edition information was available on the wall labels, the prints range in size from small SX-70 instant prints to much larger posthumous enlargements. The exhibit also includes 5 Fortune spreads and 6 actual magazines (in glass cases), 1 exhibition poster, and a group of 20 signs, displayed either as actual artifacts or framed scans. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: While the level of scholarship applied to the work of master photographer Walker Evans has been exactingly high over the years, this sampler-style exhibit is a reminder that there are plenty of pleasures to be had in simply seeing (again) selected great works from an important artist’s career. It’s been over a decade since the Met’s last retrospective (not including the superlative postcard themed show a few years ago), so perhaps we are due for a refrain from Evans, if only as a reminder of his lasting originality and continuing influence.

The first room of this show is a parade of Evans’ Depression-era photography, mixing “normal” sized prints with eye-catching enlargements of some of his most famous images: Alabama tenant farmers, the penny picture studio, spare geometric churches and vernacular storefront architecture, painted murals and folk art signage, the auto graveyard. That every picture in the room was made between 1935 and 1936 is a testament to just how productive and innovative Evans was during that time.

The next room tries to wrap an “editor” label around a bunch of disparate work; I’m not sure this catch-all tells us much about nearly three decades of Evans’ output, but I don’t think it matters much. There are standout images from Cuba and the subway portrait series on display, as well as a number of spreads from Fortune. These are matched with some of Evans’ early color work from the late 1950s, his massive tool still lifes, and two portfolios of his “best” images produced in the 1970s, along with a handful of lesser known Connecticut themed pictures from his time living nearby and teaching at Yale.

The final room is dedicated to Evans’ well known love of American signage and his late exploration of the SX-70 Polaroid. A few actual signs are intermixed with digital scans of rusty relics and product advertising; these are then juxtaposed with Evans’ photographs capturing abstract fragments of lettering or documenting particularly quirky examples of American graphic history. Two nearby grids of close-up, flash-strewn facial portraits show Evans searching for the visual boundaries of this new camera.

While this show can’t claim to be comprehensive or to break new academic ground, I think it does provide a solid, viewer friendly round-up of many of Evans’ important bodies of work. It left me feeling like I wanted to dig deeper into his Fortune years and his last decade in color, both of which lie a bit outside the mainstream of the Evans narrative. All in, if you’re hankering for an authentic dose of Evans’ “lyric documentary” style, a quick trip up the road to Old Lyme will amply satisfy your cravings.
 
Collector’s POV: Given this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Evans’ prints are routinely available in the secondary markets, with dozens of prints coming up for auction every year. Recent prices have ranged from $1000 to nearly $200000, with vintage prints of his most iconic images at the top end of that range.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
   
Transit Hub:
  • Special exhibit companion site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Hartford Courant (here), The Day (here)

The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans
Through January 29th
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96 Lyme Street
Old Lyme, CT 06371

Mel Bochner, Photography Before the Age of Mechanical Reproduction @Freeman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 works in a variety of media, hung in the two room divided gallery space. 9 of the works are made up of photographic prints (broadly defined), ranging from silhouetted c-prints mounted on aluminum and color Polaroids to photographic negatives and a set of 6 images executed in different processes (gelatin silver, platinotype, collodio-chloride, albumen, cyanotype, and salt). The other works on view are drawings (8) and powder pigment directly on the wall (1). Most of the works are vintage to the period 1967-1969, or have recently been re-executed (dated 2011); there are two new works from 2010/2011. The six image set of photographs is made up of prints each 20×24, and has been executed in an edition of 11+7. The large Color Crumple works range in size from 96×46 to 95×62, and are available in editions of 3+1. The other photographic works range in size from 4×3 to 75×71. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Long before the debates over the definition of truth in photography brought about by the digital revolution, Conceptual Art (and its cousin conceptual photography) explored the boundaries of what a photograph was and wasn’t, what it could and could not represent, often with a mischievous sense of intellectual braininess. Mel Bochner has been a part of those discussions since the 1960s, and his newest works remind us that these thorny questions are far from completely answered.

The entry wall of the gallery contains a grid of six images, each a simple photograph of the same index card with the sentence “Photography Cannot Record Abstract Ideas” written on it, attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica (shown in the middle of the top installation shot). If a photograph was an objective record of reality, perhaps the phrase on the card might have the ring of truth. But Bochner has taken this image and printed it six different times with six different antique processes, resulting in prints that range from silver and beige to light blue and chocolate brown. While the only variation is the chemical process being used, the final “reality” we are presented varies widely from image to image, not only in color and tonality, but it sharpness and contrast. Which one might be the true “truth”? Of course, the answer is that Bochner has done exactly what the card said he could not: record an abstract idea using photography. It has the feel of a witty mathematical proof, complete with a clever QED.

Most of the rest of the works in the show push and pull on the ideas of flatness and three-dimensionality, starting with a rigidly geometric white on black, and iterating and exploring from there. Preparatory drawings and quick Polaroids show Bochner refining the ideas in oil and shaving cream, and various of the final works have an optical illusion quality, where a clearly crumpled surface turns out to be completely flat, the lines of the grid becoming twisted and distorted. While the graphics are a bit dated, the concepts that support the pieces remain fresh and perplexing.

I think this exhibit is a good reminder that the conceptual questions that surround photography are not somehow all answered or “done”; original visual and thought experimentation combined with definitional explication are still valid paths forward that continue to yield unexpected, new results. As the medium evolves, old questions are brought forth once again to be answered in new (perhaps contradictory) ways. I’d like to believe this kind of show will encourage others to revisit and reengage with the thinking that underlies conceptual photography, generating a renaissance of ideas tuned for 21st century photographic discourse.

Collector’s POV: Many of the works in this show are marked NFS. For those with stated prices, the Color Crumples are $225000 each, as is the Surface Dis/Tension (Recursion) work cut into 16 parts. A somewhat smaller gridded image is $75000 and the set of 6 photographic prints is $32000. The blue powder pigment on the wall is $350000. Bochner’s works are surprisingly absent from the secondary markets for photography; while there may be an auction history for his works in other media, there is little or no recent record in the stand alone photography sales we track. As such, gallery retail may be the only viable option for photography collectors at this point, even though Bochner has been exploring the boundaries of photography for decades.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)

Mel Bochner, Photography Before the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Through January 28th

Peter Freeman, Inc.
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

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