Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard @Met

JTF (just the facts): A total of 21 black and white photographs (10 approximately 8×10 or reverse, the other 11 in post card format 3 1/2×5 1/2), all from 1935-1936, displayed in the entry and two small rooms. There are also 10 wall cases of arrayed post cards (1 large case in the entry and 9 smaller one in the other rooms), 4 glass cases of magazines and post cards, an antique post card rack, and one wall case containing leather suitcases, boxes, printed signs, bottle caps, pull tabs and other collectibles. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If you were to look in our library at home, or in that of most other photography collectors, you’d be sure to find an armload of books about Walker Evans. You might find American Photographs, or Many Are Called, or any of literally dozens of monographs and exhibition catalogues that have been published over the years. In these volumes, you’d find lengthy discussions of all the periods of his work, from the early New York images, to Cuba, to FSA shots, African still lifes, Fortune commissions, and even his late color Polaroids. The words and pictures weigh down half a shelf at our house. Given Evans’ 50 years of taking pictures, and his universal regard as one of the masters of the medium, I wondered to myself what on earth could possibly be said by the new show at the Met that hadn’t already been covered at length (ad nauseum) someplace else.
In 1994, the Evans estate gave the Met a treasure trove of material, including Evans’ vast collection of American picture post cards and other ephemera, collected over sixty years. Evans was clearly a dedicated and meticulous collector (there are 9000 cards in the collection, carefully and systematically organized and categorized by subject and maker), and the selection of cards on display makes a compelling case that these cards merit attention as a true American folk art, rather than junk gathering dust at flea markets and yard sales across the nation. All of the cards in the show come from the period of 1905-1920, and most are color lithographs that have an antique, hand colored feel. The display cases show groups of cards with common subjects: factories, railroad stations, boats, state capitols, lighthouses, hotels, and other city buildings and architecture. All of the pictures have a simple, straightforward style, an anonymous “American realism” stripped of emotion and pretense.
Seeing these post cards intermingled with Evans’ own images is nothing short of a revelation. Evans was clearly fascinated by these cards, so much so that he cropped many of his negatives to fit onto post card sized paper. The before and after comparisons of cropped and uncropped images captivatingly show Evans at work, drawing on the wellspring of ideas found in his collection and applying them to his art. Surprisingly, I found the framing of the smaller post card pictures to be even better than the originals.
Another case shows a group of cards Evans used for a 1963 lecture at Yale which he entitled “Lyric Documentary”, a handy moniker for both the overall style of the cards and for his own approach to picture making. While the images have a deadpan compositional style (often pointed straight down the center of the street), there is something aspirational about the cards, and about the ideas behind these buildings and monuments all over the country.
There are also a few other hidden gems buried in the displays. There is one case devoted to cards sent by other photographers to Evans, ranging from Diane Arbus to Lee Friedlander, penned in their own hands and reinforcing a sense of community amongst the artists. There is also one image (a straight city scene from Morgan City, LA) that is dead ringer for one of the cards.
Great shows make us think about important artists in new ways, and this exhibit completely redefined our image of Evans and his work. Met curator Jeff Rosenheim has done a superlative job of building a small, tight show that places Evans in a new and enlightening context. Go out of your way to see this show, as it will meaningfully increase your understanding of Evans’ art.
There is also a wrist breaking catalogue of the show available.
Collector’s POV: Evans’ work is widely available in the secondary market. Prices are all over the lot, based on subject matter and rarity. Later prints (some in large editions) can reliably be found under $10000, while vintage prints generally start at that number and range well into six figures. While we don’t have any images by Walker Evans in our collection at the moment, we have been looking for a terrific example from his early New York period (late 1920s/early 1930s) for quite a while. We could also imagine finding a graphic heavy image from the 30s that would fit nicely. And we have always thought a grid of four his late Polaroids would be a fun addition.
Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)
Through May 25
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
Another review of the show can be found at Bint Photobooks (here).

Administrative Notes

Next week, the kids are off from school, so we will be taking a hiatus from posting. There will be no new posts at all from now until Monday, February 23rd.

A couple of other general notes for those of you who do not follow us via an RSS reader, but visit the site daily or occasionally (given in the spirit of optimizing your time):

1.) Monday through Friday you can expect a minimum of one new post, sometimes two or three, based on what’s going on in the world of photography.

2.) There are never any new posts on the weekends. Period. So feel free to come by and catch up on posts you’ve missed or to dig through the archives, but there won’t be anything new, we promise.

We have plenty of terrific shows and books backlogged for when we return (including our second three star show of the year), so we look forward to continuing the conversation then.

Collector Classifieds

This is the listing page for our Collector Classifieds. General information about how this process works, how to follow up on an item, how to list your items etc. can be found here.

No items currently listed. Previous items were either sold or have expired.

Another Experiment: Collector Classifieds

Like many collectors, from time to time, we get a note from a fellow collector who has some photographs they want to sell. More often than not, these aren’t a fit for our particular collection, so we send along a friendly but negative reply. This scenario occurred again for us earlier this week. But it got us thinking. What if we were to offer up these photographs to our readers on the blog? Perhaps we could assist in finding a collector to collector match and everyone would be better off.

So given our penchant for experimentation, we going to try out the concept of Collector Classifieds with these images we were recently offered (the seller has agreed as well). In the event we find that there is interest beyond this one-time listing, here’s how we think it will work, along with some general ground rules:

1.) A collector sends us the standard information about the photographs that are for sale (artist, title, date, edition, signature, dimensions etc.), including the price (email to classifieds@dlkcollection.com). No images will be published, nor will any comments or sales pitches. Think of this as the no-frills two line classifieds from your local newspaper or PennySaver, just with a much more targeted group of readers. We will post them on a Collector Classifieds page on the blog, for one month (or until they are sold).

2.) There will be no charges or fees for the listing or on the transaction if one occurs. This is a courtesy matching service for our readers, from one collector to another.

3.) Discretion is critical. Sellers will be always be anonymous on the blog. Prospective buyers will send an email, with the item number they are interested in as the subject of the message, to classifieds@dlkcollection.com. We will blindly forward this email directly to the seller and then get out of the way. The seller will then contact the prospective buyer directly so the two parties can negotiate the transaction, share scans of the works, figure out shipping etc. The only requirement we have of sellers is that they respond to each and every email from prospective buyers in a timely manner.

4.) We are not a reputable specialist auction house or even Ebay. We will not authenticate any of the images offered, vouch for the sellers or buyers, or help resolve any scams or disputes. We won’t comment on whether we think the prices listed are fair or not. In general, these are private transactions, and we’re not interested in knowing anything about them (good or bad). This is the Internet, so buyer and seller beware. We are not responsible for how you conduct yourselves.

5.) We will only list those items that meet our standards of high quality, collector appropriate material. We realize that that our decisions about what is listed may be subjective, random, or arbitrary, and that some sellers may be disappointed if we reject their material. Too bad. We feel it is up to us to provide some quality control so we don’t waste the time of our readers.

Will anyone want to do this beyond the first listing, which we’ll post soon? Will it work or scale this way? Will we need to improve the system later if we get more interest? Have we missed something important? Who knows. But it seems to us that helping collectors connect to each other is what this blog is about, so let’s give it a try. If you have ideas for how to improve this concept, leave them in the comments or send us an email.

Figure Studies @Deborah Bell

JTF (just the facts): A total of 21 black and white images, framed and matted in various ways and hung throughout the one room gallery space. Negatives range from 1887 to 2006. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers are included in the group show (with the number of works on display in parentheses):

Vito Acconci (1)
Erwin Blumenfeld (6)
Bill Brandt (1)
Harry Callahan (1)
Mariana Cook (2)
Louis Faurer (2)
Gerard Petrus Fieret (2)
Peter Hujar (1)
Andre Kertesz (1)
Dora Maar (1)
Daido Moriyama (1)
Eadward Muybridge (1)
Susan Paulsen (1)
.
Comments/Context: The fascinating thing about group shows, regardless of their theme or subject, is that they are nearly always less about the works that have been included and more about the editorial eye of the person who curated the show. Why were some works included and others left out? What was the curator thinking when he/she selected these pictures and sequenced them in this particular way?
The group show of nudes now on view at Deborah Bell feels less like a show with a strident viewpoint but more a collection of images carefully chosen by a connoisseur. The nude form is a subject that has challenged photographers since the very invention of the medium, and one that has left many lost in a fog of repetition and cliche. The overriding thought I had as I wandered through this exhibit is that her choices were not obvious; there are no greatest hits here, but instead an unusual mix of images (many that I had not seen before) that approach the subject in surprising ways. Each picture requires some thinking, and the show merits investing a bit of time to inspect every image carefully. Overall, it is an understated yet well crafted show that offers some new perspectives on a common form.
.
Collector’s POV: Since nudes are one of the three main genres in our collection, there were many images in this show to tempt us. Prices range from $1200 up to $50000, with one image not for sale and one “price on request”. There are a series of three amorphous solarized nudes by Erwin Blumenfeld that caught our eye, but our favorite piece was Louis Faurer’s Untitled, 1962, from Harper’s Bazaar (a woman’s back). Of course, this is the one image in the show that wasn’t for sale.
.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Figure Studies
Through February 28

511 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

More on this show from Fugitive Vision here.

Ed van der Elsken, My Amsterdam @Mireille Mosler

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 images (8 black and white and 6 color), along with a short 16mm black and white film from 1965. The black and white prints are vintage from the 1950s and 1960s and are approximately 9×12. The color prints are from the late 1960s and early 1970s and are posthumous prints, approximately 16×24 in size. There is also a portfolio of 12 color prints, entitled My Amsterdam, edited by Martin Parr in 2005, available for viewing. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: While the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken took pictures all over the world in his 40 year career, it is his pictures of his home city of Amsterdam that are perhaps his most well known. They capture the everyday life in the streets of the city in all its eccentric glory, full of energy and exuberance, spontaneous and happily nonconformist. The black and white images in this small show capture kids playing in grimy streets, climbing on burned out cars and wearing cardboard boxes, and yet, these are somehow positive pictures, documenting that life does go on amidst the chaos.

The color prints have a more 70s time capsule feel showing store fronts and people in the streets in saturated, dated colors. These images also have the signature van der Elsken spirit, and Parr has made some excellent selections for the portfolio; it is well worth looking through if you have the time.

The artist’s website is located here.

Collector’s POV: The vintage black and white images in the show are priced at 5500 Euros each. The color prints range from 2000 Euros to 12000 Euros based on their place in the edition, and the portfolio is available for 5000 Euros. There have been a small number of van der Elsken’s prints available in the secondary markets over the past few years, selling for affordable prices, usually under $5000. The Ed van der Elsken estate is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam (here) and Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York (here).

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

Ed van der Elsken, My Amsterdam
Through February 21

Mireille Mosler Ltd.
33 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10021

Comment, Curate and Promote: The Art Blog Triangle

Rather than post a second book review this afternoon (which would be normal for us on a Wednesday), I thought it might be worthwhile to get a little abstract, with a blog post about blogs (particularly photography and art blogs).

Recently I’ve spent some time reflecting on what we are doing with this blog and how to make it better and more relevant for our particular readers. As background to this thought process, I have been diligently reading the blogs listed on our sidebar (via an RSS reader), as well as adding another 15 to 20 that I found via blog rolls and have been trialing for a month or so in the hopes of finding additional voices of interest. What has become apparent to me during this process is that all photography blogs (and likely all art blogs in general) seem to be made up of some combination of three primal instincts: to comment, to curate, and to promote. Here’s what I mean by each:

COMMENT: This represents the process of reacting and responding to the art and photography that we encounter. It includes everything from raw journalistic reportage to reviews, commentaries, essays and criticism. This is generally a text heavy approach, driven largely by a blogger’s ideas and opinions.

CURATE: This represents a need to make sense of the polyvalent, multivariate mix that is the both the art world and the Internet. Here bloggers are selecting what they find of interest from the overwhelming wave of information floating around and presenting a neat package for viewers to digest more easily. Most often, this is a link or image list, but sometimes the links include a short snippet of background or context.

PROMOTE: This represents the need to get the word out about what a blogger thinks is important. Most often, this is his/her own work (if they are photographers or artists), but this approach is regularly used by galleries, museums, book publishers and others who want to put their stuff front and center.

So thus the simple diagram below which began on a scratch pad and tries to provide a “map” for understanding where blogs fit in relation to each other. (Sorry for the bad screen captures.)

Imagine that there are three strong magnets at each vertex of the triangle, pulling blogs toward the three poles. Each author then makes conscious or unconscious choices about how to balance these three forces as they make their posts day after day.

And now for the death defying part. At the risk of alienating a number of writers and artists whose work I enjoy and respect, I have taken the liberty of placing all of the blogs from our sidebar into this framework, based on my own personal view of how they approach their craft. I think the results are quite intriguing.

So before you start asking questions, let me make a few explanatory remarks. Let’s start with the cluster of blogs near the COMMENT corner. Edward Winkleman is the purest player here, with a consistent stream of well crafted thoughts and ideas about the art world. The blog is placed just to the right of center, as he does post a promotional message about his gallery’s offerings from time to time, but this is generally not his focus. 5B4 is also a pure player, offering critical reviews and essays about photo books, with a scholar’s eye for publishing details. There is virtually no promotion in this blog, and only a minute dose of curating, in the overall concept that some books are chosen to be reviewed and others are not. Our blog, DLK COLLECTION, and Fugitive Vision are nearly right on top of each other in terms of our criticism heavy approaches, although our rating system is a kind of sideways promotional system (thus putting us nearer PROMOTE, while Fugitive Vision is marginally closer to CURATE). Modern Art Notes is also drawn closest to COMMENT, with a strong daily dose of art reporting and insightful commentary. I have placed it somewhat nearer to CURATE than the others, as link lists are also an important part of what is done on this blog.

In the CURATE corner, C-Monster is the purest player, with a significant emphasis on eclectic link lists. Conscientious is also near to this corner, consistently unearthing new photographers of merit and other interesting photo tidbits, with an evenhanded but light dose of commentary and a minimum of promotion. The Year in Pictures and Mrs. Deane are also in close proximity with Conscientious, The Year in Pictures having a slightly heavier hand with publicity.

Near the PROMOTE corner, we have Aperture’s Exposures blog, which is basically a recasting of press releases about books and events. Most artist blogs are centered near this pole, as are the majority of museum blogs (three blogs I have been trialing from SFMOMA, LACMA, and the Walker Art Center all would live in this neighborhood.) Amy Stein’s blog can be a proxy for many artist sites where promotion of the photographer’s work is placed into a mix of other recommendations and items of personal interest (her blog is thus placed between PROMOTE and CURATE). Given the unspoken rule that all artists promote each other, there is virtually no criticism in any of the blogs in this area of the map.

The two remaining blogs, Magnum’s blog and Modern Art Obsession, are outliers. Magnum is doing something quite unusual, in that they are putting forth complex ideas and commentary, within the underlying framework of promoting their artists. And MAO is the only blog I have read that successfully balances all three forces. I believe this is due to the strong and distinctive voice that the blog has, regardless of whether it is reviewing a show, linking to something of interest, or promoting someone. Most blogs can’t survive in the no-man’s land of the middle.

So while no framework is perfect, I hope that this little map can provide some insight into what we are all doing and how we are approaching the task of writing about photography (and art more generally). I offer it with only the best of intentions and respect for all of the other bloggers, and without judgments about the relative values of any particular location on the diagram. For subscribers and readers out there, it is my strong conclusion that to get a full picture of the world of photography (or the larger art world), we will all be required to read from a mix of blog styles, with representatives from each corner (and those in between) bringing different (and sometimes conflicting) viewpoints to help paint the complete picture.

One other aside. I believe that those near CURATE (those who gather up content from a variety of places, sift it and aggregate it) tend to dominate in terms of traffic volume, thus making them powerful middlemen for those in other locations on the diagram. While I think the art/photo blogosphere is mostly driven by a sense of camaraderie, I think these forces and a blog’s spatial relationships to other blogs in the diagram may also tell us something about likely “collaborators” and “competitors”.

I very much like the idea of opening up conversations with other blogs, so I hope this post will catalyze some new thinking.

UPDATE: Some additonal thoughts on this triangle can be found here.

Iwao Yamawaki

JTF (just the facts): Published in 1999 by Edition 7L at Steidl. Unpaginated, with 62 black and white plates, a short essay by Ingrid Sischy, and a biography. Slip covered in cardboard, with a partially transparent dust jacket. (Poor cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: The odds are pretty good that most collectors don’t recognize the name of Japanese photographer Iwao Yamawaki. Yamawaki was an architect by training and profession who made up his mind that he wanted to study at the Bauhaus. So in 1930, he took a leave of absence from his job, packed up his wife, and moved to Dessau, where he took classes from Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Walter Peterhans and Kurt Kranz among others, and developed a strong interest in making photographs.
During the period from 1930 to about 1933, Yamawaki focused his camera on architectural studies (both interior and exterior), portraits, and still lifes, making straight images, dominated by contrasts of line and form, often taken from unexpected steep angles and viewpoints (reminiscent of Moholy-Nagy or Rodchenko). His work is perfectly representative of the theories being taught at the Bauhaus, emphasizing simple, sculptural forms. The pictures themselves are well composed, stylish and elegant, brimming with the confidence of modernism. After his time in Germany, Yamawaki returned to Japan and restarted his career as an architect, and while he continued his interest in the teachings of the Bauhaus, his work as a photographer came to an end. That said, his short career with a camera produced some superior images.
This monograph was made with attention to detail, with excellent reproductions on luxurious paper, exquisitely matched to the richness and refinement of the pictures.
Collector’s POV: We were first introduced to Yamawaki’s work last year, when several of his images came up at various auctions. (We know, we’re a decade behind most of you.) While we didn’t know much about the photographer, we were drawn to the prints we saw, given they were strong, vintage Bauhaus images, offered at reasonable prices. Going back into the auction records, very few Yamawaki images have come up for sale in the past few years, most selling in a range between $3000 and $7000. At retail, Howard Greenberg Gallery (here) appears to have a good selection of Yamawaki inventory on its website.

Huachen Auctions, Beijing

I’ve gotten quite a bit of good information about Chinese photography via email as a result of some of the posts from the past few weeks.

One email of particular interest included a pointer to the photography auctions being held by Huachen Auctions in Beijing, which were entirely unknown to us. This house is offering twice a year sales of Chinese photography, with lots of images from all periods.

The site is a hybrid of English and Chinese, so you’ll have to do a little work to find images that fit your collection (unless you read Mandarin), and I have no idea what might be required to actually be a foreign buyer at one of their sales. That said, the lists of images are great as an educational resource.

The site is here. Go to Auction Results to find the catalogues from the past few sales and dig around.

Huachen Auctions
Flat A 23
North Ring Centre
No.18 Yumin Road
Xicheng District
Beijing 100029

Auction Previews: London Contemporary Art Roundup

The Contemporary Art auction season in London began last week and continues this week, with day and evening sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. Since there are so few photographs up for sale across the board, it seemed better to put them all together into one larger post covering all six sales. Taken as one group, a total of 78 lots are on offer, with a total high estimate of £4038000.

Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s sales actually occurred last week, February 5 and 6, so we’re a little bit late in reviewing what’s available. In the evening sale, there are 5 lots of photography (broadly defined): 2 by Gilbert & George, and 1 each by John Baldessari, Andreas Gursky, and Rashid Rana (an artist we are not familiar with). The day sale includes 24 photographs, with a sampling of the usual suspects: Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Thomas Ruff, Vik Muniz, Andreas Gursky, and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia among others. Some of the more unexpected names include Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gregor Schneider, Wim Delvoye, and Roni Horn.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art London evening sale here.
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art London day sale here.

Christie’s

Christie’s has its Contemporary Art sales on February 11 and 12. There are only two photographs in the evening sale, one by Richard Prince and the other by Andreas Gursky. It is also a thin showing in the day sale, with only 8 photographs up for auction: 3 Hiroshi Sugimotos, and 1 each from Andres Serrano, Richard Prince, Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari and Vanessa Beecroft.

Christie’s Contemporary Art King Street evening sale here.
Christie’s Contemporary Art King Street day sale here.

Phillips De Pury and Company

Phillips has its two sales on February 12 and 13. There are 9 lots of photography in the evening sale, a broad spectrum from the standbys (Sherman, Prince, Gilbert & George, Gursky, Struth, Crewdson, Tillmans) to a few surprises (Rashid Rana and Florian Maier–Aichen). The day sale has 30 photographs up for sale, from 27 different artists. It’s truly an international crowd, a bit more on the edge, as is Phillips’ style. While there are a handful of familiar names, there are quite a few unusual inclusions and lesser known photographers; the list is below for your entertainment:

Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Halim Al-Karim
Darren Almond
Sergey Bratkov
Balthasar Burkhard
Sophie Calle
Edgar Cleijne
Gregory Crewdson
Wim Delvoye
Lalla Essaydi
Elger Esser
Roland Fischer
Ilkka Halso
Mustafa Hulusi
Vera Lutter
Florian Maier–Aichen
Miao Xiaochun
Youssef Nabil
Ugo Rondinone
Alfred Seiland
Jalal Sepehr
Eliezer Sonnenschein
San Taylor-Wood
Xing Danwen
Catherine Yass
Zhang Huan (his Family Tree which we talked about recently here is up for sale)
Zhang Peng

Phillips’ Contemporary Art London evening sale here.
Phillips’ Contemporary Art London day sale here.

In general, given that the estimates seem more realistic across the board and the offerings are more tightly edited, I think many of these works will perform just fine, with the caveat that the more adventurous work at Phillips is less predictable.

Auction House Lineup Changes

Given that the season is just getting started, we haven’t been paying too much attention to the auction houses during the past few months. In gathering some information for a roundup of the photography being offered in the London Contemporary Art sales (which we’ll post later today), we saw that both Christie’s and Phillips had made some changes to their specialist teams (there have been no changes at Sotheby’s or Swann that we can discern). These kinds of changes don’t tend to be trumpeted in press releases, but are actually meaningful for collectors.

At Christie’s, Matthieu Humery is no longer on the team. (UPDATE: according to Christie’s, apparently I was wrong about this; Humery is still on the team but somehow fell off the website, which will be fixed soon. My apologies for the confusion.) Jamie Krass appears to have slid over and joined the Photographs department, with a dual title including 20th Century Art (which isn’t actually a department, so I’m not entirely sure what that means). This leaves the Christie’s Photography department as follows:

London
Phillippe Garner
Yuka Yamaji
Penelope Malakates

New York
Joshua Holdeman
Jamie Krass
Matthieu Humery
Stuart Alexander
Laura Paterson
Sarah Shepard

At Phillips, both New York director Joseph Kraeutler and London director Genevieve Janvrin are gone. Kelly Padden is a new addition to the London team. Charlie Scheips is now in charge of the entire department. The smaller Phillips Photography team is therefore the following:

Charlie Scheips
Vanessa Kramer
Kelly Padden

As collectors, continuity of the specialists at an auction house means we can develop more personal relationships, making it easier and more fun to benefit from their knowledge and expertise. While we didn’t have interaction with everyone who is now gone, we are particularly sorry to see Genny Janvrin go, as she helped us many times over the years, was friendly and responsive to our questions and requests for condition reports, and was an early supporter of our efforts on this blog. We wish her well in whatever her next steps may be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I have been reminded that for the sake of completeness, I should probably note that Andra Russek left Sotheby’s last year to work freelance and to collaborate with her parents, the dealers Scheinbaum & Russek in New Mexico. Since then, Lauren Mang has joined the Sotheby’s team, and she actually helped me look at some prints last season.

Alec Soth, The Last Days of W. @Gagosian

JTF (just the facts): A total of 42 color images, taken between 2000 and 2008, framed in blond wood frames, and displayed in a chopped up maze of five galleries, a hallway, and a reception area. Prints are either chromogenic or archival pigment prints, and come in a range of sizes from 16×20 to 50×40, with several intermediate formats as well. Most are in editions of eight, with a few in smaller (5) or larger (15) edition sizes. Gagosian Gallery does not allow photography in the exhibit rooms, so we have no installation shots for this review.

Comments/Context: Satirizing the now former President Bush has become so widespread, so common, and in some cases, so virulent over the past several years that it has almost become a cliche, the exaggerated jokes and astonishing truths mixing together to make a potent cocktail. Alec Soth has bypassed the easy potshots and obvious put downs in chronicling the last eight years, and has focused his lens on the more subtle and tenuous moments of recent history where the legacy of the Bush administration has spread like a dusty film over the lives of everyday Americans.

Soth burst onto the photography scene in 2004 with his book, Sleeping by the Mississippi, and has since published several more bodies of work and mixed in a full plate of commissioned projects as a member of Magnum. To our eye, Soth has successfully resisted categorization by pointing his camera at a wide variety of subjects (interiors, exteriors, portraits, still lifes, landscapes etc.) and by working in a style that is neither pure documentary nor overtly personal, but wandering between the two poles based on the demands of any particular picture. Some pictures are a generally straight look at an unexpected moment he has discovered; others have a stronger undercurrent of emotion or irony, suggesting he is drawn to subjects which have more of a specific story to tell.
The pictures in this show turn on a few common themes: the militarization of our world, a heavier sense of loneliness and exhaustion, the neglect and decay that have become commonplace, and the overall melancholy that has pervaded our society as a result of the changes around us. Home Environment, Billings, MT, 2008, (at right, above) with its toy Humvee winning first prize shows just how far these new behaviors have invaded our daily lives.
Soth also picks up on the remnants of fear, a turning inward and building up of defenses against all comers, including our friends and neighbors. Not only are we not triumphant conquerors, we have become more afraid of each other, closed and tired. His image of an empty room, with the shades drawn (Northfield, Minnesota, 2001 at right, middle) seems entirely emblematic of an entirely too common worldview now among us.
Soth’s Avenue Theater, Dallas, TX, 2006 (at right, bottom) was particularly prescient about the coming economic troubles, showing a theater converted into a pawn shop, with plenty of worn out lawn mowers and bicycles arrayed out front, ready for an offer. While I have selected three images that perhaps highlight the unwanted lingering effects of these past years, there are also plenty of moments of wry humor and irony in this show, spotlights placed on situations that contains a mix of emotions. In some ways, it is hard not to think about Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Joel Sternfeld when walking though this exhibit; there are pieces of each to be found here, from Frank’s incisive commentary, to Eggleston’s play with color, to Sternfeld’s deadpan wit. Soth seems to have channelled them all and added his own perspective to the mix to generate these memorable images.
Overall, I very much appreciate Soth’s ability to wade into the public discourse on a controversial topic and come out having added something to the discussion rather than just piling on. There are many outstanding images here, and each has mysteries to unfold if given the chance. In some ways, this show is an exercise in depression and disillusionment, but I came away surprisingly excited by the potential of art to make us see the world around us with new eyes.
The artist’s website can be found here. His page at Magnum Photos can be found here. There is a also self published, tabloid style newspaper produced in conjunction with the exhibit available.
Collector’s POV: The images in this show are priced between $3500 and $13000. Soth’s work began to appear in the secondary markets in 2006, and the number of images up for sale has been growing slowly but steadily. Auction prices have ranged from approximately $4000 on the low end to nearly $20000 at the top. This is an artist with a bright future, so perhaps now is the time to add one his images to your collection, before his work vaults into the stratosphere.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter

This field is required.