Larry Sultan Dies

Larry Sultan died this past weekend at the age of 63. At this point, it’s virtually impossible to talk about 1970s conceptual photography without mentioning Evidence, Sultan’s now famous book collaboration with Mike Mandel, where the two gathered together oddly memorable yet often inexplicable found black and white photographs from police departments and industrial labs. It remains a profoundly influential and resonant project, even decades later. Take the book down from your photo library shelf again today and remind yourself just how puzzling and remarkable these images continue to be.

In the past decade or so, Sultan has gone through a kind of resurgence, with two relatively recent projects bringing him back to the forefront of contemporary photography. Pictures From Home captured intimate images of the everyday lives of Sultan’s parents in rich color, while The Valley documented the backstage realities of suburban LA porno shoots. (My mother posing for me, 1984, at right, via Janet Borden.) Both examined the boundaries of truth and fiction in photography, subtly exploring the ideas of staging/set pieces and how they are used to construct complex, personal narratives.

Collector’s POV: Larry Sultan is represented by Janet Borden in New York (here) and Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco (here). Apart from first edition copies of Evidence, Sultan’s photographs have not been particularly available in the secondary markets. Only a few lots from his more recent projects have been sold in the past few years, most between $10000 and $25000.

Transit Hub:

  • Obituaries: NY Times (here), SFMOMA (here)
  • Interview: Big, Red & Shiny, 2008 (here)
  • The Valley @SFMOMA 2004 (here)

Massimo Vitali: Landscape with Figures 2 @Benrubi

JTF (just the facts): A total of 6 large scale works, mounted to dibond plexi and not framed, and hung in the entry and main gallery spaces. Each of the chromogenic prints is 72×86; 5 are single images and there is one diptych. All of the works in the show were made in 2008 and 2009. A monograph of this work is being published by Steidl (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Massimo Vitali’s recent images continue his signature combination of large scale photography and intricate detail, his locations once again covered by masses of people. Taken in Sicily and Turkey, these particular images depict the ruins of Ephesus, and various healing pools, sacred grottoes, and swimming locations.

What I like about Vitali’s work is that from afar, his images have a sense of immense grandeur, the huge scale creating engrossing, eye-catching scenes (sometimes blindingly lit); up close, I’ve always found the pictures to border on the ridiculous, the crazy density of humanity literally overrunning every setting, no matter how beautiful or pristine. Tourism and consumerism are skewered quite neatly.

These new works are no different: tourists crawl over the historic library and amphitheatre at Ephesus (mixed together with acres of dusty rubble and tumbledown rocks) and swimmers of all shapes and sizes plunge into various waters, cavorting and frolicking literally on top of each other in the washed out brightness. The works seem to bring together the extra large museum images of Thomas Struth with the ironic tourist pictures of Martin Parr, with a dash of the over the top crowds at Coney Island of Weegee.

The works in this particular show are so large that they crowd each other a bit too much, creating a visual overload in the gallery; the prints are outsized for the display space – shown in a bigger room, they’d have much more room to breathe. Overall, while these works don’t depart too far from Vitali’s successful formula or show us much that is radically different from his earlier work, they hold up a mirror to ourselves, a potent reminder that we are not necessarily as unique as we might think; perhaps we too are unknowingly part of the thundering herds looking for the same banal entertainments and “memorable” experiences.

Collector’s POV: The single images in this show are priced at 25000€ each; the diptych is 45000€. Vitali’s work has become more and more available in the secondary markets in recent years and his prices have remained strong, ranging from $7000 to $80000.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Interview: Lens Culture (here)
  • Foam exhibit, 2009 (here)
  • Review: Guardian (here), 1000 Words (here)

Massimo Vitali: Landscape with Figures 2
Through February 27th

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

Michael Wesely, Stilleben 2001-2007

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2007 by Schirmer/Mosel (here). 96 pages, with 42 color images. Includes an essay by Franz-W. Kaiser. (Cover shot at right, via Schirmer/Mosel.)

Comments/Context: Contemporary German photographer Michael Wesely has made a name for himself by expanding the idea of the photographic exposure to the point where time itself seems to be what is being captured. Using a large format camera with exposures measured in days, weeks, months, and in some cases even years, Wesely has drawn out the decisive moment into something altogether more cinematic, albeit still delivered within the confines of a single, static frame. This recent book gathers together a group of floral still lifes Wesley did over the last few years, showing how this approach can breathe new life into a classic subject.

If you’ve ever bought a bunch of tulips at the market, jammed them into a vase and left them on a table for a week or so, you’ll know that the straight stems quickly bend and bow over, and the flowers gradually open up and drop their petals. While other photographers have documented the end point decay of all kinds of flowers (often as withered, dried up, or dusty husks), Wesely is the first I have encountered to have effectively captured all of the intermediate steps; the photographs document the entire process of aging, not just the final result. (2.2-12.2.2007 (B2906) at right, via Fahnemann Projects.)

Given the simple construct of a week-long exposure combined with a nearly infinite variety of flower types and colors, Wesely has produced a surprisingly varied body of work. What sounds mundane is anything but; each bouquet performs a unique lyrical dance as the flowers slowly swoon and wilt. For pictures that claim to be “still”, there is an amazing amount of ghostly movement in these images, creating an impressionistic layering of blurred light and color. What I like about these works is that they can be read on one level as conceptual exercises, and on another, simply as floral still lifes of unexpected elegance and beauty.

Collector’s POV: Michael Wesely is represented by Fahnemann Projects in Berlin (here). The artist’s work has not appeared in the secondary markets with much frequency; the lots that have sold in the past few years have ranged in price between $4000 and $13000.

As admirers of floral photography, these images would fit right into one of our core collecting genres. Unfortunately, given their generally large size (the image above is printed approximately 50×50, but many are as large as 70×95), we likely would have a problem with finding a place to display these massive works.

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Open Shutter @MoMA, 2004 (here)

Ferenc Berko @Gitterman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 48 black and white images, framed primarily in black and matted (a few are framed in white), and hung in the main gallery, hallway and smaller side room on the first floor, and in the main gallery and hallway on the second floor. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, taken in the period between 1933 and 1951; most are vintage prints, with a handful of later prints mixed in. The images were taken in London, Paris, Budapest, various locations in India, Chicago and New York. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: As collectors of nudes, over the years, we have come across the work of Hungarian photographer Ferenc Berko from time to time and wondered whether one of his best images would make a good addition to our collection, without knowing much about his entire body of work or his history as an artist; for us, he has always seemed somewhat peripheral to the main action of his better known contemporaries. Having recently taken on the artist’s estate, Gitterman Gallery has put together a well-edited survey show of Berko’s surprisingly varied early work that makes a strong case for reconsidering the value of his artistic contributions.
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Chronologically, the show starts with Berko’s early street scenes of London (where he was a student), reminiscent of the work of his friend and mentor E.O. Hoppé. The photographer then moved to Paris, where a series of nudes were done in collaboration with his wife. Unlike the pared down nudes of the West coast American photographers of the same period (Weston, Cunningham et al), Berko’s nudes have a strong “European” feel to them (more similar to the concurrent nudes of Man Ray), many with avant–garde styling and dense wallpaper patterning. Also during this time, he makes a trip back to his native Hungary to make compelling portraits of Jews on the streets of Budapest.
To avoid the increasing Nazi influence in Europe, Berko then moves across the globe to India to become a filmmaker. His photographs from the early 1940s combine a more humanist view of daily life in India with an undertone of modernist sensibility, evident in the architecture of his compositions. Berko’s life and photography take another unexpected turn after the war, when his friend László Moholy-Nagy invites him to teach photography at the ID in Chicago. His work from this period shows the influence of the New Bauhaus and of the early ideas of Abstract Expressionism: pared down urban geometries of fire escapes and telephone wires (think Callahan), contrasty solarized nudes, and gestural graphical abstractions of paint chips and found objects (think Siskind).
As a whole, I think the show successfully argues that Berko was not a derivative chameleon in these years, switching his stripes to copy the fashions of the art world, but often an active participant in the leading edge evolution of important artistic approaches over time. When his specific works are carefully matched to the time lines of other more prominent photographers, it becomes obvious that Berko was experimenting with similar ideas during similar years, not merely riding their coattails later. As such, while he will likely remain a secondary figure in the history books, many of the images on display here certainly stand up well with the best of his better known contemporaries.

Collector’s POV: The images in this show are priced between $3500 and $7500. Berko’s work has not found its way into the secondary markets much in the past several years; only a few lots have been sold, ranging in price between $1000 and $2000. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for collectors interested in accessing his best work.

In the past, we have found many of Berko’s nudes a bit too obvious for us (perhaps even a bit cheesy in some cases), but seeing a well edited group of his pictures in person, I was convinced that we should reconsider some of these works once again. Berko’s late 1940s abstracted Chicago images would also clearly fit well with other city scenes we own from that same period.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Obituary: NY Times, 2000 (here)
  • Feature by Bill Jay (here)
Through January 23rd
Gitterman Gallery
170 East 75th Street
New York, NY 10021

Alfred Stieglitz Photographs in Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction @Whitney

JTF (just the facts): The main Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit contains over 125 paintings, drawings, and watercolors, spread across several large adjoining rooms and galleries. In a small side room, a total of 13 black and white photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, taken of O’Keeffe, are variously framed and matted and hung against medium brown walls. 9 of the images are gelatin silver prints; the other 4 are platinum prints. All of the works are from the period 1918 to 1922. A single glass case includes issues of Camera Work, 291, other books and related ephemera.

The Whitney does not allow photography in the galleries, so unfortunately, there are no installation shots of this show. The image at right, of O’Keeffe’s hands from 1918, is via the George Eastman House website, although a print from this same negative is on view in this show.

Comments/Context: The scandalous relationship between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz is a minor back story to the expansive abstraction show of O’Keeffe’s work now on view at the Whitney. While famously flaunting convention and living as lovers (out of wedlock) after WWI, the two passionate artists collaborated on a series of iconic photographic portraits and nudes of O’Keeffe that have been included in the show in a side gallery. The images have nothing to do with abstraction or O’Keeffe’s place in the pantheon of painters; they do however have something to say about O’Keeffe’s powerful and confident personality and about Stieglitz’ talents as a photographer.

All of the photographs in this small adjunct show come from the early part of their audacious relationship. Many of the images are close-up fragments of O’Keeffe’s strong body: her hands/fingers, breasts, and torso are willingly posed in a variety of artful compositions – arms swoop above her head, hands grip her own breasts, expressive bent fingers clutch and turn, the curve of her wiry torso stands silhouetted against a window. The other images are portraits in a more traditional sense – head and upper body shots of O’Keeffe, nearly always with a serious and penetrating glare on her face, directly confronting and overtly rejecting the implied criticisms of the surrounding world. For their times, these were pretty startling pictures, both radical in their content and lyrical in their execution; here was a woman laid bare to the camera, and yet defiantly beautiful in her own powerful sexuality.

It is a testament to both photographer and sitter that these images remain so potent after almost a century. Few nudes (particularly of hands) have reached this pinnacle of success in all of the intervening years. So while the main focus of this major exhibit is O’Keeffe’s abstract paintings, don’t fail to miss the side gallery of Stieglitz’ photographs of O’Keeffe, as they rightfully belong among the great works in the history of the medium.

Collector’s POV: Alfred Stieglitz’ portraits and nudes of Georgia O’Keeffe are among the most rare/valuable photographs ever made. Most of these works are safely housed in museum collections. From time to time, these images do however come into the secondary markets. In the past five years or so, a handful of these vintage works have come free, finding willing buyers between $250000 and $1500000.

Of course, many of these spectacular images would fit perfectly into our own collection of female nudes. The unfortunate reality is that they are far out of reach for us; we’ll just have to wistfully covet and enjoy them from afar.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

A few words on this particular rating: in general, the quality of the photography in this exhibit easily deserves three stars, hands down. But since this exhibit is primarily about O’Keeffe and her abstract paintings (with the photographs as a tangential afterthought), I can’t in good faith give the show a three star rating and recommend going out of your way to see it just for the photography. If the show was a separate entity, with more prominent credit to Stieglitz for the photographs, and some scholarly discussion of their history and importance in the context of both photography and their personal relationship, it would easily merit three stars. As it is, I can reluctantly only give it two.

Transit Hub:

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction
Through January 17th

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention @Jewish Museum

JTF (just the facts): A total of over 200 works, including photographs, paintings, sculpture, ink and pen drawings, watercolors, mixed media works, films, books, and newspapers, all variously framed and matted, and chronologically/thematically displayed through a winding series of adjoining gallery spaces. The artworks cover the period from approximately 1915 to the early 1970s, with a few early family photographs from the turn of the century as background. There are 83 photographs on view, spread throughout the exhibition; virtually all of them are gelatin silver prints. A catalogue of the show has been published by the Jewish Museum and the Yale University Press (here) and is available in the bookshop for $50. (The Jewish Museum does not allow photography in the galleries, so unfortunately, there are no installation shots for this exhibit.)

Comments/Context: The Man Ray retrospective now on view at the Jewish Museum is a show with a point of view. Rather than delivering a dispassionate survey of the artist’s work over a lifetime and allowing the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions about its significance, this exhibit opens with a hypothesis and then proceeds to use the works as supporting evidence. Given the venue, it is not at all surprising that the line of thinking here revolves around Man Ray’s Jewish heritage, and the central pivot for the show is his evasion/assimilation of this background throughout his life (including the changing of his famous name). And while this analysis likely has its points of validity, both tangible and psychological, I didn’t find the Jewish narrative compelling enough to be a definitive guide for all of the twists and turns of his life and art. Luckily, the breadth and depth of the work on view is such that an excellent portrait of Man Ray’s evolution over time comes through, regardless of the religious back story.

In his early years, Man Ray was a relentless filterer. The paintings and watercolors from the 1910s are forgettable Cubist variants, with figures transformed into colorful geometric planes and positive and negative space often interchanged. After meeting Marcel Duchamp, readymade objects started to find their way into his work; soon the Cubism was gone, and witty Dada puns (L’Homme as a hand mixer) and more spontaneous found sculptures came forth. In my view, the sculpture made of wooden coat hangers (Obstruction, 1920) is an important and transformative piece. The interconnected hangers (which foretell the work of Calder) go beyond being pared down objects and find a lyrical quality, especially the patterns of shadows that fall on the wall behind the sculpture when light is shown through it. This was an “aha!” moment for me, as I now saw the thread between his early Dada work and the Rayographs – he was starting to truly experiment with light and shadow.

Man Ray’s time in Paris between 1921 and 1940 was clearly the most productive of his career. While I might have vaguely understood this previously, the show really drives this point home. Although he continued to experiment with a variety of mediums, the weaker paintings fell away for the most part and Man Ray spent more time with photography, bridging (and reinventing) his Dada ideas and influences into Surrealism and the avant–garde. Out of this came iconic images like Le Violon D’Ingres, 1924, and Noir et Blacnhe, 1926, the entire series of stunning Rayographs, a large body of superlative nudes (including studies of Lee Miller), a group of solid still lifes, and a surprisingly inventive and original set of portraits and self-portraits. In these works, he’s diving into the process of photography, pushing the edges, using cropping, multiple exposure, solarization, positive and negative cameraless images, and other manipulations and techniques to achieve his desired results.

The level of quality across this period is astounding. I had forgotten about his wild portrait of Berenice Abbott (Harlequin Composition, 1922), the penetrating gaze of Lee Miller’s eye (1932), the intimacy of Retour a la Raison (a nude from 1923) and Anatomics (a neck, 1929), and the simple solarized Calla Lilies (1930). There are also a few early Rayographs on view that I hadn’t seen before, along with better known images of light bulbs, wires, combs, tops, film strips and other objects. The portraits of Joyce, Breton, Hemingway, Duchamp, and Cocteau (among many others) are all much stronger than I remembered; Man Ray’s portraits are perhaps under appreciated amidst this embarrassment of riches.

The end of this period however sees Man Ray start to spin his wheels; the mathematical models of the late 1930s are pretty mundane in comparison to what had come before. After he leaves Paris, and really throughout the rest of his career, he seems to have lost his touch. He goes back to painting, tries new things, goes against the grain, but is out of step with the prevailing trends (and seems to miss Abstract Expressionism entirely); his sculptures look like tired reworks of forgotten ideas. From my perspective, the last two periods (exile in Hollywood and Paris again) have very little of merit to recommend them; my reaction to the work in these final rooms was that it was all pretty sad, or perhaps just trying too hard to be relevant.

The comprehensive nature of this exhibit helps to tease out these overarching themes across his career. By seeing his work in all the mediums across all the decades hung together, the successes and failures stand out more, and the connection points and interrelationships become clearer. As an educational vehicle, this exhibit helped me to gain a larger perspective on Man Ray’s whole career and to put some of his most important works in a deeper context. While I’m not sure the Jewish heritage motif deserves such prominent placement in the overall narrative of his life, the idea that Man Ray was a restless experimenter and assimilater generally rings true I think. In his prime, his fluidity of ideas generated more top quality bodies of photography than most photographers could hope for in an entire lifetime. As such, this exhibit is one worth making a detour for, both for the highlights, and for the missteps along the way that help to tell Man Ray’s complicated story.

Collector’s POV: Man Ray’s photographs are routinely available at auction, with plenty of works on offer at nearly all price points. Vintage Rayographs and iconic works consistently fetch between $100000 and $450000, while lesser known works and later prints can be as inexpensive as $3000-5000; a majority of his middle of the road photographs range between $10000 and $40000.

For our particular collection, many of Man Ray’s nudes and florals would fit nicely into our existing groups. We actually already own one Man Ray flower (here), but could certainly imagine adding more standout works from either genre.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews and Features: NY Times (here), Huffington Post (here), Daily Beast (here), TimeOut (here), Vogue (here), FT (here), New York Social Diary (here)

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention
Through March 14th

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

Auction Preview: New York New York, December 12, 2009 @Phillips

The last of Phillips’ themed sales in 2009 is scheduled for later this week and covers New York, broadly defined. The photography included is predominantly black and white, with a heavy dose of street imagery and architectural views. Overall, there are a total of 134 lots of photography on offer, with a total High estimate of $907300. (Catalog cover at right, via Phillips.)

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 117
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $455300

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 15
Total Mid Estimate: $322000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $130000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 148, Edward Steichen, The Maypole, Empire State Building, 1932/1960 at $50000-70000.

Here’s a list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots on offer in parentheses):

Berenice Abbott (7)
Louis Faurer (6)
Ruth Orkin (6)
Leon Levinstein (5)
Vik Muniz (5)
Elliott Erwitt (4)
Walker Evans (4)
Andreas Feininger (4)
Maripol (4)
Garry Winogrand (4)

Since one of our collecting genres is city/industrial imagery, there are plenty of works that would fit well into our collection in this sale. A few we like include:

Lot 135 Hiroshi Sugimoto, Empire State Building, 1997
Lot 140 Berenice Abbott, City Arabesque, 1936 (we already have a later print of this image)
Lot 141 Harry Callahan, World Trade Center, 1974
Lot 148 Edward Steichen, The Maypole, Empire State Building, 1932/1960
Lot 182 Walker Evans, Untitled (Architectural, New York), 1929
Lot 190 Ted Croner, Taxi, New York, 1947/Later

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

New York New York
December 12th

Phillips De Pury & Company
450 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011

Ray K. Metzker, AutoMagic @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 52 black and white works, alternately framed in black and white and matted, and hung in the entry space and main gallery area. 32 of the images are 8x10s and were taken between 1958 and 1965; these prints are a mix of primarily vintage and a few later prints, in varying edition sizes (5, 20, 25). A small group of images (5) are printed slightly larger at 11×14, spanning a wider number of years (1960-1989); these are also printed in editions of 5 and 20. There are 3 composite works in the show: one from 1965, another from 1964/1984, and a third from 1965/2002; they are 32×24, 30×22, and 18×24 respectively. Finally, there are a group of 12 recent images printed 16×20 from 2004-2009; they are printed in editions of 10. A new limited edition book of this body of work (also entitled AutoMagic) has been published by Only Photography (here) and is available from the gallery for $200. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ray Metzker is clearly one the masters of photographic contrast. His careful control of the interplay of dark and light, and his understanding of the power of deep shadow and blackness to create drama in an image have made his work distinctive and original for more than 50 years. This terrific show brings together Metzker’s images of automobiles from across his long career. With this subject, Metzker uses the curves and lines of the cars to create exciting compositions and finds unexpected abstractions in the reflective surfaces of paint, glass and chrome.
The show is loosely divided into groups of common details: car fragments, snow covered cars, parking lots, cars on the street, people in cars, cars from the side, multiples of cars, architecture reflected in cars, etc. The early works from Chicago and Philadelphia are extremely dark (the night views are often noir–ish), punctuated by a few small lines of white, a simple silhouette, or small patches of glare from a street light. The thick blacks are velvety and enveloping, with only the highlights coming forth to define the pictures.
The more recent images (nicknamed Autowackies) stay in the middle grey tones a bit more, but explode with complex reflections and refractions; adjacent buildings become intersecting wallpapers of grids and windows, densely applied to windshields, hoods, and expanses of curved metal. The pared down simplicity of his earlier work has given way to more exuberant clashes and cacophony.

Metzker’s composites continue to be my favorite of his various projects. In two of the works on display in this show, the repetition of hundreds of tiny images (arrayed in strips) creates a fascinating all over patterning of black and white; only up close can the actual content of the variant images be grasped. The third composite uses multiple exposures to create layers of upside down geometries, ghostlike in their see-through overlaps.
Overall, the quality of the work in this show is consistently high. The installation effectively sets up sub themes and allows the work to show wide ranges of variation and experimentation within these constructs. They’re all cars, but as fodder for Metzker, this routine subject seems limitless.

Collector’s POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows. Most of the vintage 8x10s are priced at $6000, although there are a few in this size that range higher: $9500, $10000, $15000, $18000, and even $45000; the later prints are $4000. The 11x14s are priced between $4000 and $10000. The three composites are $75000, $48000, and $50000. The recent 16x20s are $5000 each.
Metzker’s work is not consistently available in the secondary markets, and as such, the price history is spotty. While a range for the past few years does exist (approximately $1000 to $8000), I don’t think it is particularly representative of the real market for his under appreciated work. This past fall, a Metzker composite was sold at Christie’s for $22500; this was the first quality Metzker I had seen at auction in quite a long time. We continue to consider Metzker a photographer that belongs in our collection, and there are plenty of works in this exhibit that could be made to fit into our collecting genres, given their level of abstraction.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Light Lines: DLK COLLECTION review (here), 5B4 review (here)

Ray K. Metzker, AutoMagic
Through January 9th

Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Auction Preview: Photographie, December 9, 2009 @Van Ham

The upcoming Photography sale at Van Ham in Cologne later this week has a wide range of generally lower end material, with a solid selection of German photography (as expected). Likely as an attempt to attract entry-level buyers, all of the lots that are priced below 1000€ are gathered together in a single section at the back of the catalogue. Overall, there are a total of 287 lots on offer in this sale, with a Total High Estimate of 395670€. (Catalog covers at right, via Van Ham.)

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 284
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 365670€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 3
Total Mid Estimate: 30000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 1092, Albert Renger–Patzsch, Das Bäumchen, 1929, at 10000-12000€.

Here’s a list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Albert Renger–Patzsch (15)
Chargesheimer (11)
Hugo Schmölz (10)
August Sander (9)
Peter Keetman (8)
Werner Mantz (7)
Thomas Struth (5)
Bernd and Hilla Becher (4)
Robert Bothner (4)
Ruth Hallensleben (4)
Rudolph Holtappel (4)
Jan Saudek (4)

There aren’t many images of specific interest for our collection in this sale. We did however like Lot 1035 Frank Gohlke, Grain Elevator (stave+hoop construction), 1973.

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographie
December 9th

Van Ham Kunstauktionen
Schönhauser Straße 10 – 16
D – 50968 Köln

A Few Frames: Photography and the Contact Sheet @Whitney

JTF (just the facts): A total of 38 black and white and color works, variously framed and matted, and hung in a single room gallery on the Mezzanine level of the museum (down the back stairs). A total of 15 photographers are represented in this group show, with works ranging from 1936 to 2007. In addition to the framed images on the walls, there is one glass case at the back of the room, with several contact sheets and books on display. The Whitney does not allow photography in the galleries, so unfortunately, there are no installation shots of this show.

The following photographers are included in the exhibit (with the number of works on view in parentheses):

Bernd and Hilla Becher (4)
Wallace Berman (1)
Harold Edgerton (4 as 1)
Robert Frank (2)
Ellen Gallagher (1)
Rachael Harrison (1)
Silvia Kolbowski (8 as 1)
Paul McCarthy (3)
Ray Metzker (2)
Duane Michals (9 as 1)
Ed Ruscha (10 mockups, 5 sheets, 2 books)
Collier Schorr (1)
Andy Warhol (4 as 1)
David Wojnarowicz (1)
Francesca Woodman (1)

Comments/Context: I think the title of this exhibit is a bit misleading; if you pay your $18 and come to this exhibit with the expectation that this will be a show of grease pencil covered photographic contact sheets (which I did), you will be somewhat disappointed. While there are a handful of actual contact sheets on view, the show reaches for a broader thematic construct, connecting the idea of working contact sheets to sequential images, typologies, photographic series, and the like. As such, it is less about hits and misses or the process of editing, and more about multiple related images seen together in various forms.

The works by Duane Michals, Harold Edgerton, Robert Frank and Paul McCarthy are all sequential stories, narratives taking place over the the elapsed time of the images. The Becher cooling towers, Silvia Kolbowski’s grid of appropriated faces and body fragments, Ray Metzker’s pair of positive and negative torso composites, and even the Warhol stitched photographs all consider repetition and the typology, working with multiples and the idea of comparison. Others take these ideas one step further, into areas of collage and rework.

From a pure process point of view, the Ed Ruscha materials in the back of the room are the most enlightening. They show his work on the book A Few Palm Trees, starting with the original contact sheets of photographs, complete with his grease pencil selections. Paper mock ups of several of the resulting pages are then shown, with his cropping and layout choices made clear. Final copies of the books are on display as evidence of the finished product.

Perhaps the over-arching point here is that even as the digital world slowly drives the old style contact sheet to extinction, many of the ideas embedded in that working process will continue to be reconsidered in new ways. Fair enough. Just don’t visit this show thinking you’re going to get a tutorial on the ways notable photographers made their images from frame to frame, or how they selected the best out of a sea of variants. This exhibit flies higher, choosing the longer term thematic ideas over the down and dirty details.

Collector’s POV: As direct matches for the genres in our particular collection, the works by the Bechers and Ray Metzker would be the best fits. I also continue to enjoy Warhol’s stitched photographs; we just need to find one with just the right subject matter (this one is bicycles).

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

Transit Hub:

  • Features: Slate (here), NPR blog (here)

A Few Frames: Photography and the Contact Sheet
Through January 3rd

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Angela Strassheim, Evidence @Marvelli

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 black and white works, framed in black with no mat, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller second room. All of prints are archival pigment prints, made in 2009. The works come in one of three sizes: 28×35, 46×58 or 58×73; all are printed in editions of 8. There are 3 works in the smallest size, 7 in the middle size, and 1 in the largest size in this show. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Angela Strassheim’s images of the hidden remnants of long ago crime scenes add a haunting sense of memory to otherwise ordinary interiors. Her crime scenes have none of the fresh gore of a flash lit Weegee photo or the puzzling conceptual randomness of Mandel and Sultan’s landmark project. Instead they uncover the violent past lurking within the everyday, invisible to the naked eye, but very much still present.
Strassheim uses a forensic chemical technique to highlight old blood stains that have been cleaned away, seen as a white powdery luminescence against the darkened rooms, vaguely similar to the effect in black light photographs. Her works depict kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms covered in glowing splotches, sprays, drips, and mists of blood, some bearing the marks of hands and fingers. The remains of these crimes are everywhere: on the back of a door, covering a dresser, sloshed over a wall molding, and in the corner of a tiled floor. Perhaps the creepiest of these images is of a living room, where two family portraits have been hung unknowingly on top of an entire wall of bloody smears.
.

While these images have a dramatic, almost cinematic feel, I think they successfully get beyond the detective science gimmick to the more interesting questions of history embedded in a place. New tenants are now living right on top of the remains of any number of violent crimes, likely totally unaware of the horrors that lie beneath the surface. The walls have not forgotten however, and still bear the marks of those past events, for those who take the time to look. Strassheim’s shadowy rooms filled with phosphorescence bring these untold stories to the surface, creating ironic juxtapositions and unsettling contrasts; in one image, a brightly lit TV, streaming light from the long exposure, sits directly adjacent to yet another bloody stain. Life has gone on, but there are ghosts of the past everywhere, hiding in plain view.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at $11000, $15000 or $18000 based on size. Strassheim’s work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the only option for interested collectors at this point.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Reviews: Vulture, 2009 (here), Artnet, 2006 (here)
  • Exhibition: Monterey Museum of Art, 2008 (here)
  • Whitney Biennial, 2006 (here)
Through December 31st
526 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Auction Preview: Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs, December 8, 2009 @Swann

Swann’s December sale is a combination of two effectively separate sales: one for photographic books and one for photographs. While the books will likely never reach parity in terms of dollars at risk, the breadth and quality of the photographic literature on offer in this sale seems for the first time to be roughly equivalent with the photographs; both halves of the sale have an eclectic mix of rarities and more mainstream pieces. Across the two sales, there are 423 lots on offer, with a total High estimate of $1810850. Since the two genres are so different, I’ve separated the statistical analysis of the sales into two parts below. (Catalog cover at right, via Swann.)

Photographic Literature

Here’s the breakdown (maybe we need different price categories/definitions for books?):

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 210
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $290700

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 0
Total Mid Estimate: NA

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate in the book section is lot 2 Francis Frith, Egypt Nubia and Ethiopia, Illustrated with One Hundred Stereoscopic Photographs, 1862, at $7000-10000.

Below is the list of photographers represented by at least 4 lots in the book portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Richard Avedon (5)
Brassai (5)
Walker Evans (5)
Camera Work (4)
Robert Frank (4)
Lee Friedlander (4)
Yasuhiro Ishimoto (4)
Andre Kertesz (4)
William Klein (4)
Bruce Weber (4)
Garry Winogrand (4)

Our favorites among the books were:

Lot 89 William Klein, Tokyo, 1964
Lot 93 Shomei Tomastu, Oo! Shinjuku, 1969
Lot 97 Eikoh Hosoe, Embrace, 1971
Lot 110 Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Chicago, Chicago, 1969
Lot 150 Ed Ruscha, Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, 1967
Lot 163 Lewis Baltz, San Quentin Point, 1986

Fine Photographs

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 202
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $835150

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 9
Total Mid Estimate: $175000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $510000

The top lot by High estimate in the photographs section is lot 350 Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941/1948, at $350000-450000.

Below is the list of photographers represented by at least 4 lots in the photographs portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Andre Kertesz (13)
Edward Weston (8)
Berenice Abbott (7)
Ansel Adams (7)
Ruth Bernhard (5)
Lewis Hine (5)
Harry Callahan (4)
Alfred Eisenstaedt (4)

Our favorites among the photographs were:

Lot 290 Florence Henri, Untitled, 1938
Lot 325 Art Sinsabaugh, Backyard of 750 Studio, Chicago, 1948

The complete lot by lot catalog (for both parts of the sale) can be found here. The 3D version is located here.

Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs
December 8

Swann Galleries
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010

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