Photography in New York.

Photography in New York 

No, this text is not about the very useful publication Photography in New York, but an homage to it; it has now become Photograph and provides invaluable information to whoever wants to stay informed on photography shown in the Big Apple (also available on-line at: http://www.photographyguide.com).

With the first days of February comes one of the major events of the photographic year in New York: the Photography Show sponsored by the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers (AIPAD) at the Hilton hotel on 6th avenue and 53rd street. This year the show opened its doors without "supporting" exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, the Whitney, or the Guggenheim. Apparently synergy is a tough goal to achieve in New York; in fact, the Stephen Cohen Gallery is also announcing a new event competing with the AIPAD show or extending it (the Stephen Cohen Gallery is a member of AIPAD). After "Photo L.A." last January, "Photo San Francisco" next July. "Photo New York" is scheduled for next fall. 2004 also happens to be the 100th anniversary of Bill Brandt's birth. A new book of the British photographer's best images is being published in England by the Bill Brandt archive while Stanford University Press just released Bill Brandt, a Life by Paul Delany. Chair of the Department of English at Simon Fraser University (B.C.). AIPAD decided to honor the British photographer by reproducing one of his photographs on the cover of the catalogue of the show ("Doing the Lambeth Walk. 1939"): unfortunately, nothing else happened to support this gesture, no show, no lecture. MoMA is usually a block away, but due to renovations, it is currently stationed in Brooklyn until the re-opening of its Manhattan quarters next year. Its next show will be Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski! The Metropolitan did not, this year, repeat last year's initiative when the Thomas Struth retrospective not only coincided with the AIPAD show but was part of it. 2004 is a biennial year for the Whitney, whose programming has been somewhat flat for a while, lacking energy and innovative initiatives, especially in the department of photography: funds might be partly responsible for the current state of things. The Guggenheim seems to survive in the wake of its Matthew Barney show. The museum had nothing on show and looked almost more enticing with its momentary atmosphere of absence/extra-minimalist display and pervading longing for art. It had for a while given its power back to Wright's architectural genius after storing Barneyis cheap props (the museum may have had a different financial experience though), and pseudo-postmodern mental bric-a-brac. The exception these days seems to be the International Center of Photography. Under Brian Wallis's curatorial leadership, ICP has soared to new heights and its recent shows have established it as the most dynamic, and stimulating photographic institutions in the world. Hardly had their first triennial closed its door that Only Skin Deep. Changing Visions of the American Self, the fruit of 4 years of intensive research and collaboration with Coco Fusco (collaboration is definitely a key ingredient in Wallis's working method) opened. Three other events seized the opportunity that the Photographic Show provided as it attracted photo aficionados from all around the country and beyond--although it seems that photo fairs as well as "Months of Photography"/biennials are spurting everywhere resulting in less travel. These events included: the Lotte Jacobi retrospective at the Jewish Museum uptown, the release of Richard Misrach's new work both on the cover and on the pages of Aperture's latest issue, and on the walls of the Pace/McGill gallery in Chelsea, and last, but nct least, the now-ritual auctions at Christie's and Swann's. One other show benefited from the AIPAD annual fair: Mark Osterman's wet collodion images in Confidence at the Howard Greenberg Gallery until March 13 (read interview in this issue of Afterimage, pp. 5-7).

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The AIPAD Photography Show 2004

Efforts were made this year to improve "user-friendliness" at AIPAD. The innovation was the extension of the show by one day. And indeed, traffic was lighter and access to booths and works on display made easier and more comfortable,... unless it was the result of a lesser attendance due to economical factors and the multiplication of these shows in the U.S. and in Europe--Paris Photo at the Carrousel du Louvre was only last November. Seen from a galerist's point of view, not everyone appreciated the change, and some were heard to complain about the fact that the show was one day too long. On Sunday afternoon, the attitudes of some led me to establish a list of the grumpiest AIPAD booths; fatigue was taking its toll on professionalism and courtesy. Fortunately, some others navigated through the weekend with ease and good humor. To be frank, grumpiness was not always a galerist's prerogative. As in the previous years, two mornings were dedicated to a pedagogical approach to photography. On Saturday morning. Vicky Goldberg, in her quality of photo-critic writing, among other venues, for the New York Times, gave a presentation on A Quick History of War Photography. Why have this topic at the Photography show? Why have her on this topic? I am still wondering. On Sunday morning Anne Tucker, one of our best photo curators as well as the director of photography at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts (and a VSW alumna), led a panel discussion/presentation on The State of Photography in Texas. Traditionally, because of its timing, the Saturday morning event is the one that draws the largest crowds. Last year's attendees had to stand in the Hilton Great Ballroom in order to listen to Thomas Struth's presentation. This year very few familiar faces were present at 9:30 a.m.; and everyone waited an extra fifteen minutes for the thousand people that never came. The "populace" (to use the term Vicky Goldberg constantly substituted for "people." standing above a crowd of listeners has interesting side effects, sometimes) did not seem to care that much either about war photography, or Mrs. Goldberg on a Saturday morning, or simply war photography as told by Vicky Goldberg. The truth is that, considered as a photo-history 101 class, the lecture could have had the captive audience it deserved. Mrs. Goldberg knows what scholarly research is and where to find the documents needed for such an exercise. Her delivery though, is sometimes problematic. If the melange des genres works for the theater, it can be a perilous style in a presentation that has some historical ambition. In order not to sound too didactic or pedantic, the lecturer added anecdotes and personal comments. Patronizing at times, her lecture also exerted some "playful freedom" with historical facts. On a more humorous note ffor the reader, I will quote here some of the highlights of her presentation. Her audience heard that "before photography the populace had never seen a war." In silver on paper maybe,... ask Goya about it! We learnt that during WW I, pigeons were trained as photographers; fortunately a few images taken from planes were also shown. That same war was "the first industrial war." Before that, I guess. "the populace" in uniform surely used to throw stones that they dug out of the ground on the battle field, and guns were just a cottage industry: not to mention the fact that the thousands of WW I soldiers who died of bayonet wounds for lack of other ammunitions may disagree! My great grand father lost seven of his brothers in the trenches and the description of most battles sounded much like the Napoleonic wars or the American Civil War. Vicky Goldberg confirmed that Larry Burrows had cooked Robert Capa's D-Day negatives, that "Match [the French magazine whose slogan is "the weight of words and the shock of photographs"] is not a communist publication!"; well, nor is Rush Limbaugh. As for the fact that "Baudrillard believes that the Gulf War never happened." it reminded me of something that I have known for a few years, past my high school days: reading the title of a book is not enough to comment on it. Such practices can lead to embarrassing situations. The cherry on Mrs. Goldberg's self-righteous cake was to come. As a pre-conclusion, the lecturer dwelled at length on the recent case of a journalist of Palestinian origin working for France 2 (a French public TV channel). According to what the listening populace was told, this man had staged the shooting of a young boy and his father by Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories while father and son were seeking shelter behind a wall. The comment on this singular event alone lasted more than those on the two World Wars and Vietnam combined!

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Needless to say that during her whole presentation Mrs. Goldberg kept on shooting the photographers, wherever they came from; but this one was given particular attention. The question there may also have been how far from reality was this? Have we ever heard of such things happening? Wouldn't it be a better idea for that journalist, while he is there, to document groups of armed men in uniforms barging into banks, grabbing a few millions dollars and running away? One of the problems with the lecture was that Mrs. Goldberg constantly shot the photographers but never really tried to trigger a thoughtful approach to the role of war photography, yet using the photographers' "unreliable" documents as references and justifications. A broader, unbiased approach of war photography, especially in the light of Desert Storm. Afghanistan, and the "current" War in Iraq would probably have allowed both lecturer and audience to raise interesting issues; such questions as why so many photographers, such as David Turnley for instance, after their experience of US Army pools, refused to do the same last year and chose to go back to Iraq by their own means and at their own risks. Does Mrs. Goldberg think that they did this in order to bring back "staged" photographs, images that the army could easily provide at a lesser cost? Would we be better informed if we did not have any photographs? The US government and military does, but which government and armed forces do not these days? Some used to think that way in Afghanistan, they probably do so again now; many an iconoclast would have probably loved this lecture, a paradox at the Photography Show 2004.

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For the second event organized by AIPAD on the Sunday morning a fine scholar. Anne Tucker, moderated a panel discussion on Texas Photography and the State It's In. The members of the panel were Roy Flukinger. Curator of Photographs and Film at the University of Texas at Austin (SPE members will remember the building under construction that was inaugurated last year at the conference in Austin). John Rohrbach, Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth, and Wendy Watriss for Houston Fotofest. Each guest presented their institution, the rationale behind the collections, and the way they operate. Fotofest, the oldest photography biennial in the US, obviously took more time than expected, probably due to the fact that this year is "Fotofest year" and that the festival will start on March 12. The consequence was that Anne Tucker had to quickly wrap up her own presentation and little was left for a idiscussioni that did not really happen.

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In spite of the various problems. AIPAD makes an excellent initiative to organize Saturday and Sunday lectures that educate the public as well as a more specialized audience. In doing so, not only AIPAD conceives this annual show as a fair/market but as an opportunity to meet and educate a public; it brings potential customers and photo amateurs more than consumable goods, and makes them understand that the works they will see in the booths are more than just consumable goods. For most gallerists, selling photographs is a passion as well as a job.

New works by young or not-so-famous photographers was another bright ingredient of the 2004 Photography Show. Last year had a tendency to only show classic photographs. Seeing galleries that "take risks" and represent new artists is refreshing and encouraging. One example, but there were others, is the Kathleen Ewing Gallery displaying the work of Victoria Ryan. Photographers were also present on site, signing books, answering questions: Keith Carter, Bruce Davidson. Ernestine Ruben. Alexey Titarenko whose new book was just fresh from the press (small edition of 2,000, bilingual [English/French], essay by Gabriel Bauret).

Auction Houses

While major art institutions were absent from the AIPAD reunion and did not participate in the event, auction houses such as Christie's, and Swann's held one of their annual auctions dedicated to photography during the week that followed the show. Auctions, along with the price tags displayed at the AIPAD show, provide complementary information on the health of the market, and on whether one should serious contemplate the career of fine art photographer. Prices, this year, seem rather low after the heights of the Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg auction of this Fall (Merced River by Stephen Shore sold for $10,157; Mapplethorpe's Calla Lilly for $45,410; Eggleston's Memphis, Tennessee for $20,315; Robert Frank's Political Rally, Chicago, for $50,190; a box of ten photographs by Diane Arbus for $405,500 [all prices are sale prices]). Photographs at Christie's were given a bulk price determined by the category under which the photographer had been identified (for instance, a Boubat, a Ronis, a Doisneau, a Cartier-Bresson had almost identical price tags around $2,000). Most of the images at Christie's were estimated and sold at prices averaging $2,000-$2,500. Among the exceptions was New Moscow, a group of 70 lots, black and white photographs by Alexander Rodchenko that looked like press prints. These images were made for a book project. Two Moscows, on which the photographer worked between 1928 and 1932. The images that made sense, historically as well as conceptually, as a group were sold individually with no reserve. The physical as well as esthetic qualities of some of these images were rather unremarkable. The estimates were quite high ranging from $10,000 to $90,000. Ultimately, the buyers brought these prices at a more "reasonable" level but the historical body of work did not survive and ended up "dismembered."

A portrait of Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George taken in 1924 by Paul Strand sold at $1,434, under its estimate at $1,500-2,000, whereas exceptions in the opposite direction were Paul Outerbridge's Avocados, 1936 at $11,950 (estimated $6,000-8,000), Dorothea Lange's Funeral Cortege, End of an Era in a Small Valley Town, 1936 for $16,730 (estimated $6,000-8,000). Timely, Bill Brandt's famous nude, London, 1952, found a buyer at $20,315 (estimated 9,000-12,000) In the book department, Harry Callahan's first edition of At the Water's Edge (with one original print) by Callaway Editions (1980) sold for $7,170; The Decisive Moment for $1,793; William Klein's 4-book series, New York (1956), Rome (1959), Tokyo (1964), and Moskau (1965) for $1,912.

The International Center of Photography

Somewhat eclipsed by the various events that the Christmas season and the New Year festivities bring along, crippled by a nasty winter that did not encourage cultural outings, sheltered from the media by the electoral turmoil started in California and prolonged on the east coast by the Democrat primaries, Only Skin Deep, the current show at the International Center of Photography, unfortunately closing its doors before this issue of Afterimage goes to press, is another exhibition laden with content and unanswered questions signed by Brian Wallis. This time ICP's chief curator sought the collaboration of artist and art teacher Coco Fusco to produce a challenging, risk-taking, can-of-worm opening, and colorful exhibition. Wallis seems to have made it his profession to curate educational and thought-provoking exhibitions in New York. On a more academic and critical level, his last two shows have drawn on an impressive amount of sources and resources analyzed and compiled in iblocki catalogs of 300 to 400 pages by various key-players of the considered fields. In this respect, the Only Skin Deep catalog comprises 17 essays. The whole project started five years ago, in 1999, when the National Endowment for the Arts set aside special funds for the celebration of the new millennium. Only Skin Deep proposes a historical as well as critical revisit of the concepts of identity and race in America. Totally anchored in what has been at the center of postmodern discourses and many artistic practices in the past 30 years, the show and its accompanying catalog take the viewer/reader for a walk through the tropes of the critical, academic, and artistic world of the end of the twentieth century.

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Galleries

Although the obvious focus of this season for galleries in New York were the AIPAD show, followed by the Armory Show, some galleries managed to exhibit new work on their own walls. As mentioned before, and reviewed in the pages of this issue of Afterimage, Mark Osterman has his first major New York show, Confidence, at the Howard Greenberg gallery, and the Yossi Milo gallery is showing unusual portraits by Loretta Lux. Other interesting works can be seen at the Ariel Meyerowitz gallery, showcasing the work by Richard Caldicott, the Julie Saul gallery exhibiting the landscapes of Karin Apollonia Miller: the Bonni Benrubi gallery is bringing the beach scenes of Massimo Vitali (in the wake of the contemporary German school, big and colorful) until April 10. On the topic of beaches. Richard Misrach's latest series, as shown at the Fraenkel gallery in San Francisco and the Pace/MacGill in Chelsea, confirms a definite evolution in the photographer's work: minimalist, big, formalistic, and expensive. The move had started with the Golden Gate series, which definitively broke away from the Cantos Series and its more conceptual last chapter The Sky Book. This book, conceived as another series, lies half way between Stieglitz's Equivalents and Sugimoto seascapes, not without reminding the "Richard Misrach reader" of the cactus series of the artist's beginnings. The Golden Gate series seem to depart from Misrach's conceptual approach to meet with the Joel Meyerowitz of Cape Light or Bay/Sky: revisiting the Luminist tradition in photographs, light ... and colorful, with a price tag of $30,000 in the case of Misrach's latest work, hugely advertised on the covers and in the pages of both Aperture and Photograph. Now the market is the judge. This is not Telegraph 3 A.M. anymore.

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ERNESTINE RUBEN lives in Princeton, New Jersey and is an internationally known artist, who grew up surrounded by art and artists. She received degrees in the history of Art, Painting and Sculpture, and Art Education. She has taught art (including photography) for many years. She has devoted the past 25 years to photography; how it enters and enhances our lives and relates to other art forms.

Her experimentation and variety have been extensive. After beginning with silver images, she expanded to photography and dance performances, sculptures, glass, and papermaking. She has also worked in platinum, gum dichromate, and encaustics. She is now combining digital applications to the earliest processes. Ruben continues to push the boundaries of photography through her diverse concepts and processes.

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She works with the human being as her launching point and often injects the vitality and emotions of human life into other subjects such as landscape and archeological sites. Her work challenges, invites, and needs the viewer to participate in the visual experience of her images. About her work Ruben says, "As all things human have always been my center, I constantly research our meaning as humans both physically and spiritually and apply these perceptions to my art work. There is an ongoing inquiry into the process of finding the appropriate physical form for my visual ideas". She continues, "How can our imaginations take on real life qualities? Does light move, can the photographic image go beyond that which one sees? Do we feel the flow of life? In their entirely my works offer a continuing reflection of human survival. I seek to make us aware of the sensuous character of body, spirit, nature, space and material."

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Her workshops are well known for her interest in the creative process and the development of artistic careers of each individual student. Her workshops are held worldwide.

Her work is in many private and public collections including the Philadelphia, Houston and Detroit Museums of Art as well as the Museum of Modern Art, the Maison Europeene de la Photographie and Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. She has had recent solor shows at the Philadelphia Museum, John Stevenson Gallery in New York, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Stanford Unversity Museum, and her work has recently been at the Fotofest in Houston. Her work is found in 8 monographs as well as many other publications. The latest monograph, "In Human Touch" won the award of the Best Photography Book of 2002 by the International Publishers Association.

An exhibition of her work will be held at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris next June.

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