A.D. Coleman, Tarnished Silver: After the Photo Boom

JTF (just the facts): Subtitled “Essays and Lectures 1979-1989”. Published by Midmarch Arts Press in 1996. 236 pages. Includes 27 essays and an introduction by James Enyart.

Comments/Context: This is the third book of photography criticism written by A.D. Coleman that I have read in recent years and I continue to find his voice a refreshing change from the dull monograph essays and clever newspaper blurbs that dominate my photography diet. Writing this blog has given me a significant appreciation for just how hard it is to develop a consistent voice like his, one that can be both open and familiar, while at the same time diving into meaty topics and asking hard analytical questions.
This particular volume forgoes much of Coleman’s “disposable” day to day writing about photography shows and books in favor of more reasoned arguments in the form of essays or lectures on specific and often abstract topics. These pieces have a heft to them that is slightly different than the other work of his I have read, and they have a stronger tone of dissent that runs throughout. I can imagine that over the years he became somewhat tired of the grind of staying current on every new trend in the medium, and instead opted to explore some topics that were less time sensitive, more personally interesting, and that required a broader, more step by step approach to logic and analysis.
Many of the essays here deconstruct the process of photography criticism itself; others touch on the state of photography education at the time and on the life of a free lance writer. Many others make an effort to get out of the weeds and up to more over arching themes that merit attention: the photography book as a distinct form, a framework for thinking about color photography, and in depth studies of the still life tradition, photo based art/photo hybrids, the autobiographical impulse and sexually explicit material. All of these writings are succinct, insightful, and well crafted.
For the first time in these essays, I also detected an undercurrent of frustration, a subtle feeling that Coleman had concluded that people weren’t thinking about the issues of photography in the right ways and that he needed to work harder to show that the emperor had no clothes. The dissent here is therefore a bit more acute, a little bit edgier than in previous collections I have read. Given Coleman’s biting wit, there are some succulent arrows slung in a variety of unexpected directions.
What I have come to appreciate most however, beyond his creation of a durable and unique voice, is that his essays fight the tendency to be overly clever and instead actually deliver a wealth of new ideas. I find myself coming back to certain essays again and again, finding real insights and applications related to the building of this Web-based collector’s community. It’s as though he went down this same road long ago, and left a detailed map with lots of landmarks and pitfalls to avoid for those of us that have chosen to travel this road again.

Ray K. Metzker, Light Lines

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2008 by Steidl in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition of Metzker’s work held at the Musée de l’Eysée, Lausanne. 288 pages, including 245 black and white images. With an essay by William Ewing, a transcript of Metzker in conversation with Nathalie Herschdorfer and a chronology.

Comments/Context: In the history of photography, there have been few artists who have photographed (and printed) black as well as Ray K. Metzker. This claim may sound ridiculous given the huge number of photographers who have worked in the medium of the gelatin silver print over the past century or so, but one look at this fine retrospective monograph of Metzker’s 50 year career as a photographer should be enough to make a persuasive argument that he took black places others could only dream about.

Almost from the very beginning, Metzker’s work has been defined by shadows and low light situations, where black becomes the dominant color, both the primary graphical element and the backdrop. His blacks have a richness and depth, a crisp inky darkness used to make powerful contrasts. They are not washed out, fuzzy, or grainy; they are executed with breathtaking perfection.

Metzker first pointed his camera at the urban surfaces of the Chicago Loop, taking formal pictures full of rhythm, repetition and pattern. Over the years that followed, in various locations from Europe and Philadelphia to Atlantic City and New Mexico, Metzker continued to deconstruct cities and their inhabitants. His images became increasingly complex, relying on meticulous darkroom manipulations (using multiple negatives) to create couplets, double frames, and dense composites. Fragments of pictures were seamlessly sewn together, juxtapositions creating surprising contrasts and interactions, all intensified by the ever present blacks. In the late 1970s, he added another layer of abstraction to these ideas, a fleeting glimpse of a blurred piece of white paper, in a series called Pictus Interruptus. Most recently, he has applied his aesthetic to more natural subjects, abstracted wispy trees and leaves, either unspoiled or placed in the context of the city.

This volume is a comprehensive, chronological look at an important photographer’s entire output. It does an excellent job of telling the broader story of his approach, and includes a variety of work made since the Unknown Territory retrospective in 1984.

Collector’s POV: Metzker is one of the artists we have wanted to add to our collection for a very long time. His work would fit perfectly into our city genre, and we are particularly fond of his multiple negative images and composites. While Callahan also did multiples, Metzker took this idea and transformed it into something altogether more complex and kinetic. In addition, Metzker’s darkroom craftsmanship (and the amazing blacks and shadows) make his images ones that stand the test of repeated viewing quite well in our view.

Surprisingly, Metzker’s work is not widely available in the secondary markets, and none of his best composites or double frames have come up for auction in several years, although we have seen a few in gallery group shows sprinkled here and there. So we’re still looking for just the right one that we both fall in love with and can afford. Metzker is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery in New York (site here).

Read another review of this book at 5B4 (here)

Auction Preview: Photographs, New York, March 31, 2009 @Christie’s

Christie’s Spring Photographs sale is further evidence of a truly brutal environment for enticing consignors to sell their collections. There are a total of 116 lots on offer in this sale, with a total estimate of $3340000, which on the face of it looks just fine.

But contrast this with the statistics from the Christie’s Photographs sale last fall and you get a rather different view: 258 lots on offer, for a total estimate of $7587000 in October – less than half the lots for less than half the estimate this time around, just a few months later. The first 20 lots of this sale are all Helmut Newtons, hold overs from the Constantiner Collection (making this a somewhat hidden Part III to that historic sale). If you take these lots out as committed quite a long time ago, a fairly dim picture of the consignment environment emerges. The age of the wrist breaker, door stop catalog seems to be emphatically over, so much so that Christie’s needs only one session to get through this entire sale.

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low lots (high estimate $10000 or below): 15
Total Low estimate (sum of high estimates): $123000

Total Mid lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 86
Total Mid estimate: $1707000

Total High lots (high estimate above $50000): 15
Total High estimate: $1510000

The top end is meaningfully lighter than the previous season, both in terms of lots and estimate value. Interestingly, there are significantly fewer Low lots as well, perhaps indicating a tightening window of what Christie’s will accept in terms of quality. There are also no 19th century lots in this sale.

Beyond the predominance of Newtons (22), the photographers with the most lots in the sale are the usual suspects: Ansel Adams (10), Irving Penn (10), Diane Arbus (8), and Henri Cartier-Bresson (7), making this a rather perfunctory offering overall I’m afraid, with few surprises.

For our particular collection, another Mapplethorpe flower, Calla Lily, 1988 (lot 38, image at right) would be the best fit, although again, it is almost certain to be priced higher than we’d like. Beyond this, unfortunately, there weren’t many images that jumped out at us.

The lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographs
March 31, 2009

Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Auction Preview: Photographs, New York, March 30, 2009 @Sotheby’s

With the arrival of the first Spring season auction catalogues, we’re now headed into a busy month of sales, AIPAD, and show openings, all timed to happen relatively simultaneously to take advantage of collector visits and focus. Sotheby’s is up first this season, with its Photography sale (in two sessions) on March 30.

There are a total of 186 lots in this sale, for a total estimate of $4488000. Here’s the breakdown:
Total Low lots (high estimate $10000 or lower): 55
Total Low estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $425000
Total Mid lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 114
Total Mid estimate: $2163000
Total High lots (high estimate over $50000): 17
Total High estimate: $1900000
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If we compare these statistics to the pre sale numbers for the October 2008 Sotheby’s sale, the freezing impact of the recession is obvious and the proof for the hypothesis that the high end work would become more scarce in these tough times is clear. Last fall, Sotheby’s had 249 lots on offer for a total estimate of over $10 million dollars; the total estimate here is less than half that much. The impact is most clearly seen on the high end lots, which ultimately drive the total proceeds for the house. In October, there were 39 High lots, with a total estimate of more than $6 million dollars; the estimate here is a third of that, on less than half as many lots.
The most talked about image in this sale is the anonymous Daguerreotype of New York from 1848 (lot 77), potentially one of the earliest images of New York ever captured as a photograph (image at right, top). I read several articles about whether this indeed was the first image of New York or not. The catalogue text is well researched but ultimately open ended in its conclusions.

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For our collection, the standout images in this sale are the four lots of Anna Atkins floral cyanotyopes from the 1850s (lots 82, 83, 84, and 85; lot 84 Cheilanthes Radiata at right, middle). There have been very few Atkins cyanotypes at auction in past few years, and we lost the last one that was available to another bidder. For flower collectors like ourselves, Atkins is really the first key figure in the medium (although Fox Talbot did make a handful of floral/botanical images of course). We’ll certainly take a closer look at these during the previews.
There is also a nice set of Edward Weston nudes of Sonya Nostowiak (lot 47, at right, bottom). We own another image from this series (here) and would normally be interested in these images if they were being sold individually. However, they are being sold as one lot (5 images), which makes them much less attractive to us. We’ll still take a look however. We also like the cover lot, Robert Mapplethorpe’s Calla Lily, 1986 (lot 162), although his Callas have certainly run up in price much further than images he made of other flower types.
The lot by lot catalogue (with online condition reports) can be found here.
March 30, 2009
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Ethical Issues for the Collector as Critic

As I wrote up our recent reviews of photography at the New York art fairs last week, I started thinking about a delicate topic. It all started with Vera Lutter’s Samar Hussein, a portfolio of bold color flowers that are a new direction for her work. In our post, we mentioned this work and generally praised what it had to offer. We also mentioned that we currently own a small camera obscura work by Lutter, which can be found on our collection site (here). Now we happen to be flower collectors, so Samar Hussein fits nicely into one of the other existing genres in our collection, and would therefore explain why we might find value in this new effort. But I started to think: I wonder if anyone out there thinks we like the new work just because we own one of the older pieces? A reasonable (and more skeptical) observer might just as well conclude that our goal was to pump up her work to increase the value of our existing holdings.

So the larger question that is then raised is: how do the works we own (and in which we have a financial interest) influence the things we write about? What are the standards that we have for how we will handle real or perceived conflicts of interest? I think our approach will combine increased awareness of these ethical questions, broader disclosure of how our holdings might be perceived to affect our opinions, and more vigilant avoidance of circumstances where the conflicts are real and meaningful.

First and foremost, we are collectors, and in general, we purchase the art that moves us; our writing on this site is a byproduct of that activity. We are not art speculators, but we do understand that our collection may increase in value over the years, that our children may not have the same interests that we do, and that perhaps these works will someday come back into the market or enter museums. But our primary goal is not the increase in the value of the “portfolio”, it is the enjoyment of the art itself.

So given that we own a number of Imogen Cunninghams, how can we successfully share our passion for her work with our readers without having the appearance of simply trying to inflate the value of our investment? I think the answer lies in that fact that when these conflicts arise, we need the trust of our audience, and I think we earn that trust by doing our best to explicitly outline our intentions when there is the potential for self serving behavior.

So in the spirit of full disclosure, we’ve tried to think through how our position as collectors might influence our activities with various constituents and how we write about them:

Museums: We are not currently “affiliated” with any museums large or small beyond being supporting members of quite a few. We are not trustees, or members of accessions committees, or large donors. We do have friends among the curatorial staff of many institutions and like to support them in their efforts. But I don’t believe that any of these relationships preclude us from being honest about the quality of exhibitions and shows we view in their institutions.

Auctions: We have in the past and will likely in the future continue to purchase at auction, from a wide variety of houses all over the world. When we preview an auction, we often highlight lots that we think are interesting. As an example, we own two Mapplethorpe flowers, and are interested to find others we like, and so may highlight other Mapplethorpe flowers that are found in auctions, whether we plan to bid or not. In this case, we are sharing our excitement for this artist, rather than trying to influence other collectors to buy Mapplethorpes (and thereby drive up prices). Since we are still buyers for his work, rising prices are both good and bad for us; good in the sense that the value of our existing works goes up, bad in that it becomes harder for us to acquire others.

In general, it seems actually to be counterproductive (in a financial sense) to tell our readers what we’re interested in prior to the auctions, as perhaps we will influence others to be bidders on the same lots we want (thereby driving up the ultimate price we would pay as winners). To date, however, we not observed that our selections have moved the needle at all (up or down) on lots we have highlighted. On the sell side, in the event we are consignors to an auction, we will refrain from discussing the lots that we have up for sale in any way (positive or negative). Overall, given that our entire collection is online, readers can always see what we own and consider how our holdings might be influencing our impressions of certain lots, and most importantly, we will do our best to be upfront with our disclosures.

Galleries: We have friendly relations with a large number of galleries all over the world. It is altogether possible that a string of good reviews by us could theoretically make it easier to get lower prices or larger discounts as we buy photographs in the future; a string of less than glowing reviews might make that flexibility disappear. I think however that the reality is that prices and “access” are what they are, and are unlikely to be meaningfully affected by our writings in either direction. So I am confident we can remain objective and truthful in our opinions about what we see in gallery shows. Again, we didn’t like the recent Siskind show at Silverstein because we want our Siskinds to be more valuable or we want Bruce to give us a discount in the future; we liked it because it was a terrific show that highlighted some under appreciated work of a master photographer.

Books: The only way that our book reviews impact anything is when they feed back into the gallery or auction worlds, via positive or negative reviews of artists who are either in our collection or who might be in the future. From time to time, we also receive free books from galleries, publishers or artists, but this doesn’t impact what we review or how we review them. We do try to disclose when we have received a free book to ensure our readers have the full story.

Perhaps many of you will find this post to be a “tempest in a teapot”, an exaggeration of effects that aren’t very large or important. But in the Wild West of the Internet, where there is a lot of back scratching and self promotion, and where people often wear multiple conflicting hats simultaneously, I want to ensure that our readers know that we are fully aware of these issues, are trying to approach them as objectively as possible, and welcome direct and loud feedback if even a hint of potential conflict is making you wonder about our intentions. As always, if we’ve missed something important or you have other thoughts and opinions, your comments and/or email on this topic are welcome.

Photography at Pulse New York 2009

Last Friday, we were able to spend some time at the Pulse New York fair at Pier 40. As always, we were focused entirely on the photography on view, and below you’ll find a summary of what we saw in the galleries there. We were a bit tighter on time during our visit to Pulse (compared to the Armory), and so our review is a little less comprehensive (capturing perhaps 80% of the photography shown) and our notes a little less detailed (fewer image titles etc.), but I took a few more pictures, so perhaps it all evens out in the end.

One of the things I liked about Pulse was it seemed a lot less prepackaged. Booths were filled with gallery owners and principals (rather than perfectly dressed “handlers”) who were eager to talk about the works on display. The casual atmosphere was altogether more lively and authentic (there is something reassuring about artist labels scrawled in pencil directly on the walls). There was also much more quality photography than I had expected going in, and the work had more energy and life (more unexpected Wows) than the work at the Armory.
For those of you who didn’t read the Armory posts, this summary is organized by gallery, with lists of photographers found there, numbers of images in parentheses. Often there will be some additional commentary and pictures nearby. So let’s get started…
Ru Arts Gallery: Anna and Jeff Bliumis (4, below). These were images of colorful fake books, placed as walls into various different landscapes and environments, called “Language Barrier”. Quite a clever title, and generally memorable pictures. Also Slava Filippov (3).


Space: Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova (6). Farcical satires of porn, reenacted by two clothed women.

Silverlens Gallery: Steve Tirona (5, below) Wacky and playful digital collages of Imelda Marcos.

Galerie Senda: Jordi Bernardo (8), Taj Forer (3), Aitor Ortiz (3), Ola Kolehmainen (1).
Kopeikin Gallery: John Bennett Fitts (6, below). These color images of trees stranded in commercial developments reminded me of some of Lewis Baltz’ pictures from New Industrial Parks (which I like, so I liked these). Also Chris Jordan (2) and Lisbeth Eva Rossof (6).

Birch Libralto: Toni Hafkenscheid (4)
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery: Xu Changchang (3, below). Images of crumpled up and flattened out photographs of famous artworks, taking reappropriation in a different direction.


TZR Galerie Kai Bruckner: Jasper de Beijed (8), Ruud van Empel (3)

Jenkins Johnson Gallery: Jeong Mee Yoon (2, below). These are from her Pink and Blue Project, where kids are surrounded by all of their objects of a gender specific color. Since we have a young daughter obsessed with everything pink, these hit home. Also Shelia Pree Bright (4), Lynn Goldsmith (3), and Felicia Meeginson (4).

Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts: Carlos Bettancourt (1)
Davidson Contemporary: Neil Hamon (4, below). Black and white reenactments of historical soldiers.


Light & Sie: Wouter de Ruytter (30). A mini retrospective of the artist’s work.

Magnan Projects: Ariana Page Russell (2, below). The artist’s skin condition allows her to draw elaborate and striking patterns on her body.


Sollertis: Phillipe Perrin and Pierre Joseph (5). Murder scenes.

Randall Scott Gallery: Julia Fullerton-Batten (10, below first). Teenage girls jumping and flying through various interiors. I thought these images captured the chaos of adolescence quite well. Also, Penelope Umbrico (huge wall array, below second). An eye-catching grid of sunsets.

Morgan Lehman: Alix Smith (2)
Rena Bransten Gallery: Uta Barth (4, below). I’ve always liked Barth’s ethereal still lifes. Also Vik Muniz (2).


Gaain Gallery: Vik Muniz (1), Kyungwoo Chun (2) Seton Smith (1)

Richard Levy Gallery: Saara Ekstrom (4, below). Complex floral still lifes. Also Scott Peterman (1).


P.P.O.W. Gallery: Carollee Scheeman (4)

DNA: Tatsumi Orimoto (5). Portraits of the artist’s mother (suffering from Alzheimer’s) in a wide variety of odd poses. Unsettling, but very good.

Perugi Artecontemporanea: Daimano Nava (cluster of Polaroids and other photographs), Kensuke Koike (12).
Yancey Richardson Gallery: Sharon Core (3, below). A nice Thiebaud cake study, among others. Also Masao Seto (3), Andrew Moore (1) Pello Irazu (6), and Alex Prager (2).

Galerie Ernst Hilger: Massimo Vitali (2), Anastasia Khoposhilova (2), Spencer Tunick (1)
FTC: Frank Breuer (4, below first). I like Breuer’s work, but these seem too similar to images we saw recently by Josef Schulz. Heidi Specker (20, below second). Specker’s work focuses on abstract fragments of walls and buildings. Also Sonja Braas (1), Claus Goedicke (1), Dionisio Gonzalez (3), Dunja Evers (3).

Galerie Anita Beckers: Vee Speers (3). Portraits of children, some toting guns.
Nicholas Metivier Gallery: Edward Burtynsky (2). From his series of Australian minescapes.


Stefan Roepke: Robert Mapplethorpe (2)

Witzenhausen Gallery: Hendrik Kerstens (6, below). Larger than life size portraits in the tradition of Dutch painting.


Jen Bekman Gallery: Beth Dow (10). Platinum landscapes.

Curator’s Office: Nicholas and Sheila Pye (5, plus 3 video screens, below). Large portraits of women covered in greens. Reminded me of Archimboldo.

Winkleman Gallery: Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation (installation of stills, video, and work table, below). Sussman is working on a new film, using the failed utpoias in Kazakhstan as a backdrop. Stand alone photographs of Yuri Gagarin’s office and an eerie landscape covered with ravens are also available.

While we didn’t find anything for our particular collection at Pulse, I came away impressed with the quality and variety of contemporary photography being supported by galleries and collectors around the world. It was a show well worth a visit, perhaps in the end even more satisfying than the sprawling Armory.

Photography at the Armory Show: Part 2, Pier 92

Part 1 of this post, covering the photography in the galleries at Pier 94 of the Armory Show can be found here. The first post also gives some background on the format I’m using for the booth reports, so it’s probably best to start there if you haven’t read it already.

This year, the Armory Show added a second area for galleries at Pier 92, and grouped dealers specializing in “Modern and historically significant contemporary art” over in this section. Most of the major photography galleries ended up here, mixed in with dealers showing Calder, Picasso, Miro etc. The ceilings were much lower and the space seemed tighter as a result. Overall, the area had a slightly more tired feel. But on to the photography:
Howard Greenberg Gallery: This booth is packed to the gills with world class images. Frank Gohlke (5) (below first) four small vintage images and one large recent print; these Gohlke grain elevators are tremendous; we have two and would like to own several more; prices have risen to $9000 each for the vintage ones. Edward Steichen (3) including a vintage Gloria Swanson ($375000) which is great to see close up. Diane Arbus (4, priced $38000 to $85000), Saul Leiter (3) color images, Bill Owens (6), William Eggleston (1) the famous “red ceiling”, priced at $275000, Helmut Newton (6), Miroslav Tichy (5), William Klein (2), Edward Weston (1, below second, a small print of Tina Modotti, for $95000), Man Ray (1) a vintage rayograph at $265000, Sarah Moon (2), Rudy Burckhardt (1), Annie Liebovitz (1) John and Yoko at $55000, Bruce Davidson (9). The density of superlative imagery in this small booth is spectacular.



Daniel Templon: Hiroshi Sugimoto (2) mechanical forms.

Leonard Hutton Galleries: Taiji Matsue (4). I liked this array of abstract Matsue landscapes; they reminded me of Sommer’s desert studies.


Springer & Winkler Gallery: Andy Goldsworthy (3 sets of works). We like Goldsworthy, and all of the images here are good ones: ice, snow, and stones.
Laurence Miller Gallery: Stephane Couturier (2), Fan Ho (3), Yasumisa Morimura (8), Burk Uzzle (1), Sanne Sannes (6), Ray Metzker (6, below), Bruce Wrighton (10). This booth has a grab bag of random work, but the Metzkers are definitely worth a look.

Studio La Citta: Gabriele Basilico (4), Vincenzo Castella (5). The Basilicos are terrific, a pair of black and white abstract cityscapes, and 2 wider shots from his color San Francisco series.
Robert Koch Gallery: Koch has gone for the “one of each” method in this booth: Jaromir Funke (1), Frantisek Drtikol (1, below), Dora Maar (1), Irving Penn (1), Michael Wolf (2), Any Stein (1), Nadav Kander (1), Shai Kremer (1), Florence Henri (1), Aleksandr Rodchenko (3), Josef Koudelka (2), Brothers Bragaglia (1). I very much like the Drtikol; it looks like one he showed us a few years ago. Perhaps it is the same one or another similar print. I like this particular image, as the nude is less Art Deco crazy than many of his other nudes.

Julie Saul Gallery: I didn’t count all the images in Julie Saul’s booth, because it is a tiny booth, packed floor to ceiling with images, many from her color show last summer.
Keith De Lellis Gallery: I also didn’t count all the images in Keith De Lellis’ maze of a booth (below). With all the extra wall surfaces, there are pictures everywhere. A few of the artists represented are: Paul Himmel, Weegee, Nino Migliori, George Platt-Lynes, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Paul Wolff, Willy Zielke, Hein Gorny, Rudy Burckhardt, Herbert Matter, Marcelo Gepetti, Mottke Weisman.

Alan Koppel Gallery: This booth had a small but well edited group of pictures: Vera Lutter (1) Rockefeller Center, Dorothea Lange (2) Migrant Mother, and an oversized Road West, Walker Evans (1) vintage Penny Picture Gallery, Robert Frank (1), Diane Arbus (2), Robert Mapplethorpe (1) black and white flower.
Bruce Silverstein Gallery: This booth had many attractions. First, there was the large wall of John Coplans nudes (below, first). These big works were great to see all in one place together. Second, there was an array of excellent Andre Kertesz color Polaroids (below, second). Other highlights included a small Aaron Siskind room (mostly tar pictures), a wall of Frank Paulin images, and a terrific Andy Warhol stitched photograph. Beyond these, there were: Diane Arbus (1), Robert Frank (5), Shinichi Maruyama (2), Maria Antoinetta Mameli (5), Joel-Peter Witkin (4), Todd Hido (3) and a room of vintage work including Man Ray, Outerbridge, Mapplethorpe, Hoppe, Weston, Doisneau, Lange, Lartigue, Drtikol, Weegee, and Henry Moore.

Bonni Benrubi Gallery: Josef Hoflehner (2), Abelardo Morell (2), Simon Norfolk (1), Matthew Pillsbury (3), LeRoy Grannis (2) Massimo Vitali (1) a huge pulsing picture, and a grid of 9 black and white fashion images.
Yancey Richardson Gallery: Sharon Core (3), Kenneth Josephson (7, below), Eve Sussman (1), Andrew Moore (1), Hellen van Meene (3) portraits, Victor Sambymaris (1). It was nice to see a group of solid Josephsons all hung together.

Yossi Milo Gallery: Loretta Lux (2) portraits, Pieter Hugo (1) from Hyena Men, Sze Tsung Leong (3) cities, Simen Johan (1), Kohei Yoshiyuki (6), Myong Ho Lee (3). If you have never seen one of Hugo’s massive, startling portraits of men with their hyenas, make a detour to this booth to check this one out.

Ben Brown Fine Arts: Candida Hofer (2), Matthais Schaller (3). Schaller’s dark interiors seem closely related to Hofers.

ROSE Gallery: Adam Bartos (2), Chris Killip (2), William Eggleston (7), Tomoko Sawada (3 sets, below), Elger Esser (3), Evelyn Hofer (7), Andrew Bush (2), Mark Cohen (5), Pablo Lopez (1), Todd Hido (2), Steve Galloway (1). The Sawada images are haunting and thought provoking. I liked these even better than the huge class portraits of hers we have seen previously.

While this adjunct area didn’t have the same energy as the main hall, there are some stand out photographs to be seen in this portion of the show. (I’m sure many of them will reappear at AIPAD if they are not sold this weekend.) And with approximately a dozen photography galleries to see on this side, it’s a pretty self contained area to leisurely explore.
Again, Part 1 of this review, with the photography found in the galleries at Pier 94 is here.

Photography at the Armory Show: Part 1, Pier 94

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon at the Armory Show in New York (site here), in search of interesting photography. Today’s coverage (in two parts) chronicles our systematic, back and forth visit to every booth in the show (at both piers), and tries to capture the important photography that can be found there. While we don’t consider this summary to be comprehensive (as we haven’t included each and every photograph on view), I think we have listed at least 90% of the photography to be seen and highlighted nearly all of the major works on the walls.

These posts are organized by gallery, with the photographers and number of images on view in parentheses. Often we took a marginal picture of what we saw (posted larger than usual so you can see the detail better), which you’ll find nearby. We didn’t spend a ton of time digging into prices with dealers, especially when we didn’t know the people personally or when there were only one or two photographs in the booth. With these caveats and assumptions, let’s get started with two aerial shots of the overall scene, taken from the stairs (one of the booths, another above the VIP area):


Now to the galleries (in no particular order):

White Cube: Diane Arbus (2), one Twins and one Jewish Giant, San Taylor-Wood (1), Gilbert & George (1), Robin Rhode (1), installation made up of 21 images, and Darren Almond (1).

Goodman Gallery: Mikhael Subotzky (8), 7 large prints from the Beaufort West series (below, first) and one large panorama covering an entire wall. The Beaufort images were much more impressive on this wall than when we saw them at the MoMA. Also at this booth, Nontsikeleo Veleko (2) portraits (below, second) which while covering ground we have seen before, were still striking.

303 Gallery: Stephen Shore (6), 5x7s from American Surfaces, Thomas Demand (1) of garage doors.

Galleria Raffaella Cortese: Zoe Leonard (6) aerials. (below) These are better than this picture would lead you to believe. The dense patterning is engrossing.

Mai 36 Galerie: Robert Mapplethorpe (4) black and whites, Thomas Ruff (2), one pixelated nude, one big interior architectural image.
Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art: As we walked by this booth, there was an arresting set of bright pink florals (hibiscus) on one wall (below). We went closer to get a better look and find out who had made them. The answer: Vera Lutter. What? I thought there must be some mistake; she makes black and white camera obscura images (we own one). But no, the wall label was correct. The images are a portfolio commemorating the civilian deaths in Iraq, and is called Samar Hussein (names of some of the dead are faintly visible in the bottom of the images and are arrayed on pages in the portfolio). The price is $10000. Quite a surprise, but I liked them overall. Also in the booth, Peter Fischli-David Weiss (1).

Murray Guy: An-My Le (2), Barbara Probst (3), Noriko Furunishi (1).

Pace Wildenstein: Harry Callahan (6) collages (below). Not exactly contemporary, but still terrific.


Andrehn-Schiptjenko: Marilyn Minter (1).

David Zwirner: Stan Douglas (1) a cinematic, Crewdson-like mural sized image Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971, 2008 (below), Thomas Ruff (3) Cassini series.

Galerie Thomas Schulte: Robert Mapplethorpe (2) black and white florals.

Galerie Krinzinger: Frank Thiel (1) (Untitled, Palast der Republik #35, 2007 below) I wasn’t that familiar with Thiel’s work prior to this show, but liked what I saw here and in another booth (Sean Kelly). Big images full of pattern.

Georg Kargl Fine Arts: Thomas Lochner (2) pictures of pictures.

Galerie Mehdi Chouakri: Hans-Peter Feldman (3) florals (below). Since we’re floral collectors, we like to see everything related to flowers. These seemed more like commercial stills, printed extra huge.


Jack Shainman Gallery: Hank Willis Thomas (1), Richard Mosse (1).

Galleria Lia Rumma: Thomas Ruff (3), one pixelated rocket, two architectural, Alfredo Jaar (1) clouds, and Vanessa Beecroft (3). I very much liked the Beecroft white sculptural forms (VB62 003 NT, 2008 below)

Kukje Gallery: Candida Hofer (1) an interior staircase, Hein-Kuhn Oh (2) intriguing black and white schoolgirl portraits, Yeondoo Jung (1) a nude.
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery: Paul Graham (2) same series as in the MoMA show, Katy Grannan (2) large portraits of women, Tim Davis (2) (Shoe Shop, 2008 below – colorful and decorative).

Sean Kelly Gallery: James Casebere (2) constructions, Frank Thiel (2) white peeling paint and an orange curtain, Robert Mapplethorpe (7) 3 black and white flowers and 4 black and white Polaroids, and Yves Klein (1) Leap into the Void.
Cheim & Read: Adam Fuss (2) smoky and watery black and white photograms (below), William Eggleston (1).


Galerie Thaddeus Ropac: Elger Esser (1), Robert Mapplethorpe (4) black and white nudes.

Jane Corkin Gallery: Barbara Astman (11) four large wide images (below), 6 arrays of color Polaroids, and one mural sized image. I wasn’t familiar with Astman prior to the show, but I liked these panoramic newspaper images, dense with lines.


Alison Jacques Gallery: Robert Mapplethorpe (9) black and white Polaroids.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.: Mitch Epstein (1) power plant, Vik Muniz (1) pictures of paper (below). This Berenice Abbott tribute is great to see close up, so you can examine the tiny scaps of paper used to make the image.

Victoria Miro: William Eggleston (1), Alex Hartley (1).

Niels Borch Jensen Gallery: Tacita Dean (8) images of burlap (below) These were somehow quite memorable for me, even though the subject matter is mundane.

Monica De Cardenas: Thomas Struth (1) from the Paradise series, Barbara Probst (2).
In Situ Fabienne Leclerc: Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil (8) portraits of politicians using mirrors to make them disappear (below).

Jiri Svestka Gallery: Miroslav Tichy (10).

PKM Gallery: Sangbin Im (4) Something about these antique/fabricated looking city scenes and cathedrals is eerie.

Michael Stevenson: Youssef Nabil (15) portraits with tinting, David Goldblatt (6) three pair of images, Guy Tillim (11) pinned directly to the wall.
Kamel Mennour: Zineb Sedira (1) (The Lovers III, 2008, below) My first thought was that this was another Burtynsky ship dismantling scene; it isn’t but it still made me smile.


Galerie Laurent Godin: Aleksandra Mir (2) images of a blow up plane landing in Paris (below). These two images are unexpected/paradoxical and therefore intriguing.

And finally, one painting by Adam McEwen at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery. While there were many witty remarks on the state of the art world, I liked this one the best:

While there were plenty of photographs to be seen, I didn’t come away with any overarching theme concerning the state of contemporary photography from this set of galleries, nor did I find any new hit stars to shower with glory (although I enjoyed seeing the work of Frank Thiel for the first time.) Perhaps we should think of this as a time of retrenching it seems. Part 2 of this crazy and hopefully helpful summary (the galleries at Pier 92) can be found here.

Artists Making Photographs @Whitney

JTF (just the facts): 5 sets of works by John Chamberlain, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucas Samaras, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol, displayed in the small Gilman Gallery on the mezzanine level of the museum. (No photography is allowed at the Whitney, so there are no installation shots.) Here’s the breakdown:

Chamberlain: 1 sculpture and 1 color photograph
Rauschenberg: 1 large painting and 3 black and white silver prints
Samaras: 1 sculpture, 1 mixed media piece, and 6 Polaroids
Ruscha: 1 drawing and 2 black and white photographs
Warhol: 1 painting and 6 black and white photo booth strips

Comments/Context: While most artists confine their exploration to mastering the nuances one medium, a growing number use a variety of different tools and approaches (often intermixed) to make their art. The current show at the Whitney steps back into the historical record of the 20th century to look at how artists who were best know as painters or sculptors also used photography to examine their ideas.

The pairing of a 1963 John Chamberlain twisted sculpture made of car parts with a 1989 photograph of swirling, distorted, blurred swaths of color was the most surprising and enlightening section of the show for us. We didn’t know that Chamberlain was also a photographer, and the works showed a clear commonality in their approach to form and color.

The other four artists (Rauschenberg, Samaras, Ruscha and Warhol) were all more widely known to have been using photography as part of their artistic process, so their inclusion here was more expected. The group of Samaras works seemed most connected by the artist’s interest in manipulating and controlling the processes for making the art, to extend the normal boundaries of those mediums. The Warhol grouping of a large multi-panel Jackie painting with several photo booth images was perhaps the most obvious of the pairings, since it is so widely known that Warhol used photographs as the basis for most of his portraits.

The Rauschenberg and Ruscha combinations were the most obscure to our eyes. While both artists had clearly been active photographers, the specific images selected to go with the paintings and drawings were harder to reconcile. We were unable to connect the dots to draw much meaning from these pairings.

So while the concept of this exhibition is an excellent one, the execution is a little uneven. I would have liked to have seen more interrelationships and back and forth between the mediums and more explanation for how photography was used by each of these artists (particularly for Rauschenberg). That said, the Chamberlain alone is worth a short detour.

Collector’s POV: Warhol, Ruscha and Samaras photographs are all generally readily available in the secondary markets. Rauschenberg’s photography is more scarce at auction. This was the first time I had ever seen a photograph by John Chamberlain, so his photographic work is likely even more hard to come by.

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

Artists Making Photographs
Through Spring 2009

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

Peter Bialobrzeski, Lost in Transition

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2007 by Hatje Cantz. Includes 53 color images, taken in 28 cities around the world, with an essay by Michael Glasmeier. (Cover image at right.)

Comments/Context: There is an old song by the Band called Twilight that has a chorus that goes something like this:
Don’t send me no distant salutations
Or silly souvenirs from far away
Don’t leave me alone in the twilight,
Cause twilight is the loneliest time of day
.
German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski’s newest pictures are all taken at this fleeting moment in the day, when dusk is falling, the lights have just come on, and the cooler breeze gives you a shiver. His subjects are the futuristic mega-constructions that are multiplying all over the world, rapidly gobbling up the old and remaking the world in their own distinct science fiction aesthetic. His pictures have no people, no identifiers of place, no signs or landmarks to give away their locations; whether we are in Abu Dhabi or Bremen, Jakarta or Zurich, it just doesn’t seem to matter. When small towns are overrun by chain stores, we bemoan the “Starbucksification” of the neighborhood; Bialobrzeski’s images remind us that this homogenization is happening on a much larger scale, as cities across the globe make the transition from old to new.
While most photographs of great buildings from the 1920s and 1930s had a romantic aura, these pictures seem to have a more complex set of emotions mixed together. Some of the darker images seem to be precursors to a Metropolis or Blade Runner style world, a neo–noir movie in the making. Others are more mundane, with grubby construction sites encroaching on older warehouses and worn out factories.
This is not to say that these are not beautiful images; indeed they are. One of my favorite pastimes with this book has been to flip through the images slowly, simply looking at the sublime palette of sky colors that Bialobrzeski has captured in this series: greys and soft blacks, mauves and deep purples, and a nuanced spectrum of blues, all carefully sequenced. Due to the stark fluorescent lights that inhabit nearly every locale, the images seem to radiate a silent and lonely brightness.
Overall, this is a book that provokes some complicated thinking: about architecture and cities, about the “modern world”, and about how our collective society is evolving around us.

The artist’s website can be found here.

Collector’s POV: There was an exhibition of Bialobrzeski’s images from this series (printed 40×50) at the Laurence Miller Gallery last fall (here), which we somehow missed. His previous books, particularly Neon Tigers, have been well received.

For more on Bialobrzeski, see an interview (here) and another review of the book (here) at Conscientious.

Dancers, Photographs by Philip Trager

JTF (just the facts): Published in 1992 by Bullfinch Press. Includes 81 black and white images, with essays by Bill T. Jones, Joan Acocella, David Freedberg and Mark Morris. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: While New York is indeed a great place to see photography, it is also an amazing melting pot of modern dance. This past weekend, we took the whole family (including our elementary school aged kids) to see a performance by Pilobolus (site here), a dance company known for its jaw dropping athleticism. We enjoy a wide variety of modern dance, and try to take advantage of the broad array of styles that are regularly performed all over New York. My particular favorite is Mark Morris (site here); my wife’s is Paul Taylor (site here), and we often catch any number of other companies at the Joyce Theater (site here), one of the great venues for modern dance in America.

The reason for this preamble is that I have been wanting to write about Philip Trager’s spectacular book, Dancers, for several weeks now, but it somehow hadn’t found its way to the top of the pile. Unlike the carefully lit, interior dance photography most collectors are familiar with (Barbara Morgan’s iconic images of Martha Graham being perhaps the most easily recognizable), Trager made his pictures in natural light, out in the open air, on grassy hillsides and in wooded glades. The resulting images of over 35 different dance companies/choreographers take us beyond dance as a “production” and back to a more primal quality, of dance as an exuberant, living, emotional response to being human.

The book offers a glimpse of a wide spectrum of modern dance styles, from quiet and intimate solo dances, to the high energy, expressionistic movements of larger groups and ensembles, from classical beauty to unsettling avant garde. In these large pictures, Trager has captured the individuality of the various dancers, dramatically singling out particular gestures and movements that epitomize varying approaches to their collective craft. There are a great many truly beautiful photographs in this book; if you plan to own only one book of dance photography, this is the one you should have in your library. And by the way, you’ll have to make room for it, as the book itself is nearly 16 inches high.

Collector’s POV: Philip Trager’s work is not particularly available in the secondary markets, and his longtime dealer, John Stevenson, recently closed up his retail presence, so I’m not at all certain who is representing Trager at this point or where to find prints if collectors are interested in following up. There are also several additional books by Trager which chronicle his well made photographs of the villas of Palladio and the architecture of Connecticut and New York.

Auction Preview: First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art, March 11, 2009 @Christie’s

Christie’s is offering a solid mix of well known and emerging photography (including 4 images by Vik Muniz) in its First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art sale on March 11. (Catalog cover at right.) There are a total of 24 photo lots on offer, with a total high estimate of $646000. Here are the statistics for the auction:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below $10000): 3
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $20000
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 19
Total Mid Estimate: $496000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $130000
Here are the photographers represented in the sale as background:
Matthew Barney
Maurizio Cattelan
Sharon Core
Gardar Eide Einarsson
Elger Esser
Robert Gober
Craigie Horsfield
Huang Yan
Vik Muniz
Gabriel Orozco
Pierre et Gilles
Richard Prince
Lucas Samaras
Cindy Sherman
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Wang Qingsong
Zhang Huan
Given our recent discussions of Chinese contemporary photography, we were interested to see strong works by Huang Yan, Wang Qingsong, and Zhang Huan all included in this sale.
March 11
Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

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