Urban Abstractions, Photographs from the Collection @MCNY

JTF (just the facts): A total of 36 images from 19 different photographers, primarily in black and white (only 3 color prints), hung in a single hallway gallery on the second floor of the museum. Most of the works are displayed in brushed gray metal frames with white mats, against light grey walls. The images were taken between 1910 and 1998, the majority coming from the 1930s. (Blurry installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included in the exhibit, with the number of images on display in parentheses:

Berenice Abbott (2)
Andreas Feininger (3)
Sigurd Fischer (2)
Samuel Gotscho (5)
Karen Halverson (1)
Stephen Harmon (1)
Andrew Herman (1)
Steve Martin (1)
Benn Mitchell (2)
Arnold Murai (1)
Aaron Rose (2)
Arthur Rothstein (2)
Sherril Schell (5)
Robert Sherwin (1)
Rudolph Simmon (1)
Aaron Siskind (2)
Edward Steichen (2)
Christian Truempling (1)
Unknown (1)

Comments/Context: Since much of the city/industrial genre of our collection could easily be loosely recategorized as “urban abstraction”, this was an exhibit that matched our natural affinities quite well. Using the bridges, buildings, night time lights, and city streets as fragments of line and form, the eclectic group of photographers included in this small show have all found ways to play with angles and edges, squares and curves, to create geometric patterns and circular designs, some dense with reflection and refraction.

While the Steichens, Siskinds, and Abbotts are all excellent, the stand out images of this show were those taken by the under appreciated Sherril Schell. Schell made a strong body of Modernist city images in the 1930s, but has somehow not gotten the same level of attention as many of his more well regarded contemporaries. The works on view here show Schell at his best: jagged edges, patterned shadows, and flattened planes of intersecting lines. (Blurry image at right of three Schells hung together.)

Given the venue, this story of urban abstraction is by definition a limited one (only New York), and therefore many spectacular works from other locations have not been included, leaving the show slightly uneven and particularly soft in its later years. That said, there are a handful of terrific images on view, certainly worth a quick detour after visiting Dutch Seen on the first floor.

Collector’s POV: There were quite a few tempting images in this show that would fit well into our collection. I liked the anonymous Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the variant Steichen of the George Washington Bridge and Feininger’s car hood reflection. One of the Siskinds on view is already in our collection (here). The Schells were a strong reminder that we certainly would like to add one of his images to our collection at some point. Unfortunately, his work is not much available, and only a few images have come up at auction in the past several years (generally selling in a range between $9000 and $15000).

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

Transit Hub:

Sherril Schell: Unknown Modernist, 2006 @MCNY (here)

Urban Abstractions: Photographs from the Collection
Through August 2nd

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

Avedon, Fashion Photographs @Staley-Wise

JTF (just the facts): A total of 43 images, both black and white and color, hung in the entry, two small gallery rooms, and one of the back viewing rooms. 24 of the images come from the series In Memory of the Late Mr. & Mrs. Comfort: A Fable in 24 Images, made for the New Yorker in 1995. These works are Iris prints, all 17×24.5 or reverse, in editions of 16.

The other 19 images are gelatin silver prints or RC prints, mostly from the period 1948-1968, with a few more recent outliers. These works are framed in black wood with mats. They range in size from 8×10 to 20×24, and were printed in editions of 25, 50 or 75. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This small show at Staley-Wise can be thought of as a companion piece to the large Avedon fashion retrospective now on view at the ICP (here); it contains some choice vintage gems, as well as an unexpected later color portfolio.

The black and white work combines a solid group of Avedon’s early elegant images, with a few more recent glamour shots. In the 1950s and 1960s works, Carmen jumps over curb with an umbrella, Dovima poses with elephants, Suzy Parker dons a huge flowing dress and cape, and Jean Shrimpton shows us her back and swirling hair wearing a slinky black evening gown. The later works have Lauren Hutton and Stephanie Seymour showing a bit more skin. A few of these prints have a wonderful soft patina, in contrast to the cool greyscale of the more recent ones.

The 1990s color portfolio seems less obviously Avedon, and more reminiscent of a more generic and dated brand of staged fashion photography. In a series of images, a model (Mrs. Comfort, wearing a dizzying variety of designer outfits) interacts with a skeleton (Mr. Comfort, also decked out in runway clothes). While a skeleton might normally be a sign of horror or terror, these images have a surreal domestic quality to them; not scary, just odd.

So if you didn’t get your Avedon fix at the ICP exhibit and find yourself wanting more, this show has a handful of surprises to help round out the story.

Collector’s POV: The images from the Mr. & Mrs. Comfort series are priced at $20000 each. Many of the vintage gelatin silver prints are not for sale. The ones that are available for purchase range in price from $15000 to $125000, with most between $20000 and $50000. I couldn’t find any auction history for the color portfolio; on the flip side, there are plenty of examples of Avedon’s fashion images in the secondary markets, mainly because the most well known prints were made in relatively large editions, and as such, come up for sale rather regularly. For the black and white works that are for sale, given recent sales outcomes, the prices seem appropriate for gallery retail.

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

Transit Hub:

Richard Avedon Foundation (here)
New Yorker, November 6, 1995 (here)

Avedon, Fashion Photographs
Through August 28th

Staley-Wise Gallery
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

Photography Collectors in the 2009 ARTnews 200

ARTnews has published its annual roundup of the largest, most active art collectors in the world (here, magazine cover at right, via ARTnews), and it’s pretty near impossible to use it as any kind of map of the photography market, except in the broadest sense. Each of the collectors is designated by their geographic location(s), how they came into their money, and the general categories of their often varied collections.

There are a total of 10 collectors who have the word “photography” in their bio:

Cristina and Thomas W. Bechtler–Lanfranconi
Leonora and Jimmy Belilty
Joop van Caldenborgh
Danielle and David Ganek
Ydessa Hendeles
Martin Z. Margulies
Lisa S. and John A. Pritzker
Aby J. Rosen
Chara Schreyer
Sheikh Saud bin Mohammad bin Ali al–Thani

This is certainly a good list as a starter. What’s hard to reconcile is that better than 3/4s of the names on the overall list are designated by “modern” or “contemporary” art, so nearly all of them could (and likely do) collect photography as a subset of their larger efforts, often writing big checks. There are also quite a few notable pure play photography collectors who are not on the list, but who certainly have the power to move the market when they want.

So I suppose this kind of list brings with it a combination of congratulations and condolences, depending on your perspective. If you wanted to be on the list and were, or didn’t want to be on the list and weren’t (likely for privacy reasons), congratulations are in order. If on the other hand, you wanted to be included and weren’t, or didn’t want to be listed but somehow ended up there, you have our deepest sympathies.

Sean Scully, Walls of Aran

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2007 by Thames & Hudson (here). 128 Pages, with 73 images, primarily in black and white. Includes a three part essay by Colm Tóibín and an afterword by the artist. (Cover shot at right, via Thames & Hudson.)

Comments/Context: The Irish painter Sean Scully is probably best known for his earthy abstractions: checkerboards, blocks and stripes of alternating color, fit together with soft painterly edges. What is less well known is that Scully is also an accomplished photographer, and this book gathers together a series of black and white images he made of the miles of limestone walls on the remote Aran Islands, west of Galway.

While I imagine most visitors to these rugged islands take “travel” photos of the amazing walls, Scully has made images that clearly feed off his own aesthetic. The best of the pictures are those that select fragments of the intricate dry stacked walls and highlight their startling patterns: layers of flat rocks built up, interspersed with sea worn rounded stones piled in haphazard groups, mixed with flat rocks inserted vertically into the walls for stability, crackled with dark shadows. Often the images are made from a bit further back, using the sky and the grassy meadows as additional stripes of contrasting color and texture.

Of course, all of the photographs bear a striking resemblance to Scully’s paintings. It is as if he has found a real place in this world that matches what he sees in his mind’s eye; I can certainly imagine him wandering through these stark landscapes for days on end, following the lines and patterns of the ancient stones. This is a fine group of well made photographs, and an unexpectedly resonant book worth adding to your library.

Collector’s POV: Sean Scully is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York (here) and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin (here). His photographs have not yet made any consistent appearance in the secondary markets, so no pricing pattern is readily discernible. While these images reminded me tangentially of Aaron Siskind’s images of rocks on Martha’s Vineyard and of Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptured walls, the photographs themselves eerily echo Scully’s paintings and his fascination with the interplay of line, tonality and form.

Transit Hub:

Walls of Aran exhibit, Kerlin Gallery, 2007 (here)
Wall of Light exhibit, Met, 2006 (here)
The Art of the Stripe, Hood, 2008 (here)
Interview: Journal of Contemporary Art (here)
Aran Islands (here)

More on Edgar Martins

A couple of updates on Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins:

In our recent review of his book, Topologies (review here), we suggested that his series of images of airport runways would make a fine book on its own. Well, according to the folks at the Moth House in the UK (here), this is actually happening. The book will supposedly be entitled When Light Casts No Shadow and will be published in September by Dewi Lewis. Exhibitions to follow.
In this past weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Martins was commissioned to take images of the real estate collapse in the US. A slide show/photo essay of the work he produced can be seen here. I particularly like the one of the unfinished brown and yellow house, with the overturned recliners and trash in front.

UPDATE: As is noted/linked by an anonymous reader in the comments below, the Edgar Martins essay referenced above has been removed from the NY Times website due to questions about whether the images had been manipulated (follow the link above to the now empty placeholder). The article had gone out of its way to say that the images had not been Photoshopped, so if they were altered, it would indeed be an embarassing problem. While artistically we are all used to manipulated and staged images at this point, when they are called out as “documentary” and turn out to be edited, this is where the line gets crossed. We’ll add more to this story as the information gets clearer.

UPDATE: A Photo Editor gathers backup to the manipulation speculations (here). Look for the links to the before/after mirrored images.

UPDATE: Whistleblower from Minnesota describes the process of figuring out if the images were manipulated (here).

UPDATE: Yesterday, I received an announcement for the opening on July 18th of Martins’ upcoming exhibition at the Kopeikin Gallery (here) in West Hollywood, CA. Works from The Accidental Theorist (the night beach scenes) will be on view. The blurb goes out of its way to remind us that there has been no manipulation of the images.

Auction Results: Photographs, July 1, 2009 @Christie’s London

The final sale of the Spring photographs season took place at Christie’s in London last week. Whether it was fatigue at the end of a long run of sales or the onset of the hot summer, the results for the sale languished below the average for the season, with a buy in rate in the low 40s and proceeds well below the total Low estimate. It certainly didn’t help that the top four lots in the sale failed to find buyers, but even if they had, there was some softness in the outcomes across the board.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 123
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £955000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1365500

Total Lots Sold: 70
Total Lots Bought In: 53
Buy In %: 43.09%
Total Sale Proceeds: £632425

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 42
Low Sold: 22
Low Bought In: 20
Buy In %: 47.62%
Total Low Estimate: £162500
Total Low Sold: £77125

Mid Total Lots: 73
Mid Sold: 46
Mid Bought In: 27
Buy In %: 36.99%
Total Mid Estimate: £713000
Total Mid Sold: £421000

High Total Lots: 8
High Sold: 4
High Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total High Estimate: £490000
Total High Sold: £134300

87.14% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There was only one surprise in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 91, Man Ray, Kiki, 1924, at £6875

The top lot by High estimate was lot 68, Andreas Gursky, Singapore Borse I, 1997, at £150000-200000, but it failed to sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 23, Richard Avedon, Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, 1981, at £46850, against an estimate of £20000-30000.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie’s
8 King Street, St. James’s
London SW1Y 6QT

NOTE: The photography auction season is now officially over (at least for the time being), with no new major sales coming until the fall. As such, our normal Tuesday auction posts will be replaced by a variety of other topics during the summer.

Auction Results: Post-War and Contemporary Art, June 30 and July 1, 2009 @Christie’s London

The Spring season for Contemporary Art in London finished up last week with a pair of sales at Christie’s. The total photography proceeds for the two sales covered the total Low estimate, carried by the top four photo lots (which all sold), thereby masking some weakness in the rest of the sale. The overall buy-in rate was surprisingly high (50.00%), given tighter controls on consignments.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 28
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £835000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1174000

Total Lots Sold: 14
Total Lots Bought In: 14
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total Sale Proceeds: £873600

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 0
Low Sold: NA
Low Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total Low Estimate: £0
Total Low Sold: NA

Mid Total Lots: 19
Mid Sold: 8
Mid Bought In: 11
Buy In %: 57.89%
Total Mid Estimate: £269000
Total Mid Sold: £82500

High Total Lots: 9
High Sold: 6
High Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 33.33%
Total High Estimate: £905000
Total High Sold: £791100

92.86% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were no surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate).

The top lot by High estimate (across the two sales) was lot 12, Andreas Gursky, Copan, 2002, which sold for £241250, against an estimate of £250000-350000. It was equalled by lot 34, Gilbert & George, Spitalfields, 1980, also at £241250, against an estimate of £100000-150000.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Christie’s
8 King Street, St. James’s
London SW1Y 6QT

Hendrik Kerstens @Witzenhausen

JTF (just the facts): A total of 7 c-prints, framed in black with no mat and no glass, hung in the single room gallery. All of the images were made between 1992 and 2008, and come in editions of 6 plus 2 APs. A video of Alexander McQueen’s Paris Fashion Week 2009 show runs in the corner; Kerstens apparently provided a photo for the invitation cover. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This is the third time I have seen the recent portraits of Hendrik Kerstens this year (the other two were at Pulse (review here) and the Dutch Seen exhibit at the MCNY (review here)), and I’m still trying to get my head around why they are so captivating. If I took most people to the Renaissance painting galleries of a major art museum and asked them to comment on those pictures which were attributed to “School of” or “In the Style of”, the responses would likely center on the images being second rate knock-offs of the master, lacking in the special quality that elevated the work of the artist far beyond that of his/her pupils. So why then are Kerstens‘ portraits, which are so clearly and unmistakably drawn from the 17th century Dutch masters (Vermeer, Rembrandt et al), not simply a clever 21st century riff? (A similar question, with a slightly different answer, might be asked of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s spectacular waxworks portraits.)

Part of the success of these portraits is their painstaking attention to the appropriate painterly detail of the period: for Kerstens, this means the exacting turned poses of his daughter Paula, the careful use of soft white light to create highlights and shadows, the sitter’s deadpan expression and her alabaster skin, heavy eyelids and full lips, and the focus on the texture of surrounding fabrics and props as a method for creating visual interest. (Sharon Core has worked through a similar set of details in her photographic still lifes after a 19th century American painter; review here). The key here is getting the specifics right, so that the visual echo to the original works comes through just enough for the viewer to register the connection.

The twist here is, of course, that Kerstens has added contemporary clothing and accoutrements to the images, creating a subtle clash of styles that creates the excitement. Paula is variously seen wearing a hoodie, a plastic bag, a sweater pulled over her head, and a lampshade, among other things. (The early image of a younger Paula in the tub with a bathing cap was to me a ringer for David’s Death of Marat.) The images are not simply period recreations; they have incorporated an updated visual vocabulary.

For me, some of the images have far too much contrast in them, the clash creating a perplexing misfit that doesn’t quite work. But in other cases, the juxtaposition of new and old meshes exquisitely, effectively mixing photo realism, antique painterly surfaces, and a dash of unexpected humor.

Collector’s POV: All of the images in the show are printed in three sizes: 24×20, 40×30, and 60×50. Prices range from $3100 to $20000, depending on the size and the place in the edition. Kerstens‘ work has not yet appeared on the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the place to go for follow up inquiries. While we are not portrait collectors, my favorite of the images on view is the one of Paula in a ruffled collar, sporting a stylish black pleated lampshade.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, 2008 (here)

Hendrik Kerstens

Through July 11th

Witzenhausen Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

Praia Piquinia, Photographs by Christian Chaize @Bekman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 Lambda prints, framed in white, with no mat and no glass, hung in the small single room gallery. All of the images in the exhibit are 44×37, and are printed in editions of 9. The negatives were taken between 2004 and 2008, and each image is titled with its exact date and time. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: A picture of a beach is perhaps the ultimate cliche in photography: the sun baked sand against the clear blue water, perhaps with an artfully captured windy palm tree or perfect sunset in the distance as an added bonus. And yet, there is a surprisingly long list of great photographers who have tackled the subject of the beach and come away with original results: Weegee, Erwitt, Metzker and Callahan to name a few black and white stand outs, Misrach and Vitali more recently in large scale color. In many cases, these images were less about the beach itself, but about the human spectacle that occurs when a large group of people in bathing suits and accompanying gear invade the pristine sand.

French photographer Christian Chaize has come at the subject of the beach with a slightly more formulaic and conceptual bent in his first solo show, now on at Jen Bekman. Over a period of five years, Chaize made color images of the same beach in Portugal, from the same medium distance, on high vantage point. The rugged rock walls of the secluded cove provide the constant frame for the action, and half a dozen variables change from picture to picture: the position and number of sunbathers and umbrellas, the color of the sky and water, the relative positions of ocean and sand (as determined by the ebb and flow of the tides), the angle of the sun (based on the time of day), and the weather.

Seen together, the body of work is inherently more about the passing of time and the evolution of geography than it is about the beach itself, with echoes of Christenberry’s pictures of the same shacks and buildings in the South over decades. While not every image is strong enough to stand on its own, taken as a group, the work provides a fresh view of a subject most would have thought had little room for original ideas.

Collector’s POV: The images in this show start at $3500 and range up to $5000, based on the place in the edition. Larger prints (88×68) are also available, in an edition of 6 (I didn’t ask the price). Smaller prints are available at 20×200 (linked below), at $50, $500, and $2000 based on size. Given the undercurrent of taxonomy in this work, while the large prints are eye catching, this is another body of work that will perhaps perform best in book form, where more examples can be juxtaposed to get at the subtle changes over time.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
20×200 (here)

Praia Piquinia, Photographs by Christian Chaize
Through July 11th

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012

Sid Kaplan: Urban Stonehenge @Bell

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 gelatin silver prints, framed in black and matted, hung in the single room gallery space, against a mix of white and yellow walls. The vintage images were taken between 1990 and 2008, and all have been printed 14×11. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Sid Kaplan is probably best known as a master printer and teacher, a man who has printed for Weegee, Robert Frank, Eugene Smith and many, many other famous photographers over his long career in the darkroom. The current show on at Deborah Bell shows a series of his own images of New York, made over the past two decades.

Taken at sunset amidst the tall buildings and urban canyons of the city, the images all have a similar composition: a jagged V shape of dark silhouetted building forms, with the sun as either a flash of light or a muted circle situated down at the apex of the triangle. The formal composition draws the viewer’s eye down from the contrasting edges of dark black and lighter sky to the sun in the center at the bottom, near the street.

Seen together, the images of the series perform a fugue of theme and variation, with each image having the same general arrangement but highlighted by different details: deep black cornices, scaffolds, warehouses and cranes against subtle changes in the sky, from clear to cloudy and light to dark. Not surprisingly, these are indeed spectacular prints of very difficult negatives, given the preponderance of high contrasts. The blacks are amazingly rich and lush, knife edged against lighter areas of grey.

What I like best about these works is that they are both a new and original vision of the city (even the Chrysler Building makes an appearance and isn’t a cliche in this setting), and that they are very evocative of the actual feeling the city has at twilight, as the towering buildings become rugged formless shadows.

Collector’s POV: All of the prints in this show are priced at $3000 each. Kaplan’s work is not available in the secondary markets, so interested collectors will need to stick to gallery retail for potential follow ups. These works fit directly into the center of our city/industrial genre, a perfect foil for other views of New York in our collection. I particularly liked Sunset #19, with its serrated edge of balconies and lone smokestack. (Hard to see in the poor image at right.)

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

Transit Hub:

Interview: Weegee portfolio (here)
All Aboard to the Past exhibit @Roosevelt Island(here)

Sid Kaplan: Urban Stonehenge

Through July 11th

Deborah Bell Photographs

511 West 25th Street

Room 703

New York, NY 10001

Fred Ritchin, After Photography

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2009 by W.W. Norton & Company (here). 200 pages, with 50 color images/illustrations. (Cover shot at right, via afterphotography.org.)

Comments/Context: Peering into the crystal ball and trying to predict the future has always been a dangerous game, dominated by wild failures and gross misconceptions. And yet, we still have a seemingly insatiable desire to hear what the future will be like, and so a subculture of future predictors of all kinds has grown into a small cottage industry, serving every conceivable facet of our lives, from the weather to political elections.

Fred Ritchin has been around the world of documentary photography for a long time. He was a picture editor of The New York Times Magazine from 1978-82, founding director of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the ICP, and is now an Associate Professor of Photography and Communications at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the director of PixelPress. So it with some degree of credibility that he wades into the future prediction discussion, focusing his thoughts and opinions on journalistic photography and its future, given the rise of digital technology.

This book is not so much a reasoned analysis or systematic argument as it is a wandering set of ideas and anecdotes that are tied together by some overarching themes and extrapolations. As a result, it has an almost conversational feel, as if you were talking with him in his office or hearing him lecture. The unstructured momentum of the book is therefore often interrupted by flowery language or unexpected dives into tangential subjects (9/11, the war in Iraq, and climate change all make repeated appearances) which makes the following of his line of thought a bit tricky.

While the title of the book suggests a kind of light switch end to photography as we know it, the text actually outlines a number of more evolutionary forces that are currently at work in the field, and then combines these trends into a larger world view of the medium and its future, perhaps recast as “new media” (once again). While I won’t delve into each and every idea (and there are many), here are a few of the ones that I thought were most plausible and instructive:

The democratization of image making: with the advent of the camera phone and the ubiquity of digital cameras, the idea of the amateur, citizen journalist becomes more possible; everything, everywhere will now be documented by someone, perhaps not as artfully or thoughtfully as by a professional photojournalist, but covered nonetheless.
The impact of manipulation and staging: our perception of truth and reality will be further tested by the encroachment of modifications/alterations to existing images, as well as by staged works and carefully orchestrated photo opportunities which are passed off as “decisive moments”. In both cases, our trust of the imagery is eroded and our skepticism is increased, and a growing sense of uncertainty around what is actual emerges. And yet, given the democratization of image making, maybe these falsehoods (large and small) will be exposed by bystanders, who will bring the truth forward and burst the bubbles; total media control is not as easy as it once was and under reported stories now have a better chance of finding an audience.
The computer as the environment for viewing: if we extrapolate out quite a few years, it seems reasonable to assume that most of our “viewing” will be done on screens, rather than with printed photographs of one kind or another. If we take that as given, then it follows that the entire experience of seeing images will be different, and that certain types of images will be more successful than others given the constraints of this viewing method. The power of the underlying hardware and software to do amazing things will of course be used to enhance the encounter, leading to the next point…
The hypertexted narrative: Rather than follow the one way, linear narrative of the traditional photo essay, images will now be linked in scores of ways, allowing a viewer to traverse a nonlinear path, using keywords, or links, or shuffled playlists to tell the story. New approaches to interactivity will allow for more two way dialogue and conversations.

There are of course many more paths to explore in this book, many more ideas and prognostications to consider. But the overall conclusion Ritchin puts forth is that the future digital world is an ambiguous one (he uses the metaphor of quantum mechanics repeatedly), where things may not be what they seem and the old authoritative view of photography has been thrown out the window. But rather than wallow in the destruction of the old ways, Ritchin is decidedly optimistic in his view of the future of the medium, seeing exciting new possibilities for how documentary images will continue to help us to understand the world around us and to connect us to each other.

Collector’s POV: While this essay is primarily focused on the impact the digital revolution will have on photojournalism, it raises some interesting questions for collectors of fine art photography as well. If we take Ritchin’s future world as given, then fine art photography will increasingly move away from the hand held, object quality print, and toward the world of video art, with its different mediums, displays, and technological conservation issues. If the image is really a hyperlinked “book” of intertwined pictures viewable only on a computer, what will the collector actually “buy”? A digital file? The hardware and software that runs it? A certificate of authenticity? Reproduction rights or a key to the DRM? If the world indeed evolves in the manner Ritchin predicts, the challenges that video art collectors have been dealing with for decades now will suddenly become our problems as well. Or more likely what will happen is our collecting community will divide: those that are interested in the old, hold in your hand prints (even if they are mural sized), and those that have embraced the new.

Transit Hub:

Book site/blog: Afterphotography.org (here)
Pixel Press (here)

Sze Tsung Leong, History Images

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2006 by Steidl (here). 144 pages, with 80 color plates. Includes essays by Stephen Shore and the artist. (Cover shot at right, via Photo Eye.)

Comments/Context: In the past few years, if we had to choose one single symbol of the vast economic transformations that have been occurring in China, it would have to be the image of a half-built skyscraper, complete with a crane and wrapped in mesh covered scaffolding. Numerous artists have latched onto these newly constructed buildings as poignant metaphors for the societal changes that are taking place; we could probably rattle off half a dozen photographers who have made roughly this same picture, with variations in perspective, time of day, and specific location making each one slightly different, but in the end, much the same.

Sze Tsung Leong’s photographs of this same frenzy of construction are unique in that they are not so much about the building process, but about the changing context of the urban environment and the erasing of important history. Rather than looking up with awe at the endless geometries of the modern skyscrapers, Leong steps back and situates the buildings in their larger environment, showing the transitions between old-style neighborhoods and new planned communities and apartment blocks.

His best images are those that have startling juxtapositions: old and new, construction and destruction. In several, ancient Imperial homes, highlighted by carved wood beams and tile roofs, are set amidst humongous piles of brick rubble and broken concrete, with new towers seen rising in the distance in the smoky grey sky. The old narrow alley lifestyle has been abandoned (even condemned) in favor of the new sparkling apartments with wide roadways and grassy boulevards. In some images, three layers of history are visible, with grubby Socialist housing blocks providing a buffer between old and new.

These are powerful pictures, in that they show clearly how the world is being transformed before our eyes. The reforms of the market economy have made the land more valuable, and traditional single family homes and neighborhood warrens are literally being wiped out and replaced by rows of 30 story apartment buildings; the implicit question in the photographs is how the lives of the people will be changed, as they move to the new Westernized boxes and forget their old ways. (Yet another layer in the images is the question of class, and of which people will live where.) And finally, until the new has completely swallowed the old, the rubble and debris will continue to pile up.

While these images are full of bustling activity and new construction, they are surprisingly low on optimism. They are a sometimes harsh reminder of what is being destroyed in the name of progress and a subtle warning that the new may not be obviously better.

Collector’s POV: Sze Tsung Leong is represented in New York by Yossi Milo Gallery (here). Leong’s images have not yet reached the secondary markets in any meaningful way, so gallery retail is really the only way to access his work in the short term. While several of Leong’s images could fit into our city/industrial genre quite easily, I think the work is more successful in book form, where many more images can be sequenced into a larger and deeper narrative.

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Interview with Guernica magazine (here)
NY Times, 2006 (here)
NY Times, 2008 (here)

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