A Collection of Self-Portraits

I've just found a new blog I like called A Collection of Self Portraits. I've added it to my "Blogs I Like" section so you can click on it to find the site. I really enjoy these themed, photo based blogs I stumble on now and then. I may even convince myself to start one or two myself. All themes are not created equal, and I think this blog shows what a durable, malleable, and ever-fresh theme the self -portrait is. Take a look.....http://selfportraitgallery.blogspot.com/

David Haxton at Priska Juschka Fine Art

David Haxton

Color Photographs

January 15 - February 14, 2009

David Haxton
No. 629, Yellow from Behind and Yellow with Holes to Blue
C-print mounted on aluminum
65 x 68 in.
165.1 x 172.72 cm.
2006

There is an intriguing show of new and vintage work by the artist David Haxton at Priska Juschka Fine Art. At first I thought the work might be in the vein of artists like Sara VanDerBeek at Damelio Terras, Sarah Conaway at Bellwether Gallery , or the Irish artist Liam O'Callaghan who all use sculpturally created space to make photographs which explore that space. The surprise came when I discovered that he has been doing it since the '80s. I found it to be an exciting show. I was engaged first by the art and then by the story. I found it to be a fine combination of color, scale, and space. Like the best work of this genre, the objects can only exist as photographs. The lighting and perspective collude to make the artist's view of the object the only one worth seeing. It's well worth a look and maybe not on the route of many photography lovers. Up through February 14th.

Dissing Disfarmer

Last Wednesday I went to see the production of "Disfarmer" at the St. Ann’s Warehouse. It is a puppet theater piece conceived, directed and designed by Dan Hurlin. I am no theater critic, so I will only say that there was a New York Times review that I basically agreed with and a Variety review which I basically didn't. The draw for me -- and what I'm perhaps more qualified to speak about -- was the history of photography implicit in the play. Another reason I chose to go on the night that I did was the panel discussion which was scheduled at the end of the evening.

The panel was composed of four people:

• Philip Gefter - moderator. Writer on photography and former NYTimes staff.
• Peter Miller - the man who found and bought the original cache of Disfarmer glass negatives
• Julia Scully - was the photo professional to whom Miller first showed the negatives
• Brian Wallis - Chief Curator at ICP

Mr. Miller and Ms Scully both seemed to have a position about Disfarmer that allowed no room for questioning of his genius status. Mr. Gefter, though mostly objective in his role of moderator, seemed to agree with this position. Mr. Wallis, though stating his affection for the work, was nearly shouted down when he offered some other, less laudatory perspectives on the work. All in all, I found the panel much too weighted in the direction of those who had a vested interest in Disfarmer's mythology.

So this leads me to a question has been nagging at me lately: Why do I have such a viscerally negative attitude toward the photography of Mike Disfarmer? I mean, ordinarily I think I would like work that looks like this. I'm a big fan of vernacular and "non-art" photography, and his faux-objective style is right up my alley. Add to that the almost taxonomic picture of his native Heber Springs, Arkansas and it would seem that his work points beautifully back to August Sander and forward to artists like Diane Arbus and Walker Evans.

So what's not to like? Well the first thing that comes to mind is the hype. There's lots of hype. There's hype about his lone genius story. There's hype about the rarity of his images. There's hype about the prices his work can command, and there's hype about what effect his work has had on following generations of artists. Lots and lots of hype. I'm skeptical about most of it, and it damn near kills any pleasure I can find in the pictures themselves.

I believe Mike Disfarmer was a talented and interesting photographer from a relatively remote spot in America. His style has more in common with the itinerant tintype makers (of which he probably saw many examples) than with August Sander (of whom he was probably unaware). The flat pose, the simple makeshift backdrop, the natural light all seem to be a natural cousin of the earlier, traveling, rural tintype maker or perhaps other locally based portrait makers. So what is the difference between Disfarmer and these other artists? Inventory.

I would like to posit a slightly different scenario. Let's say Mike Disfarmer lived exactly the life he lived and took the photographs he took, but only a fraction of them survived. Let's say 40 pictures; enough to see a body of work, an artistic perspective, and an idea of the small town life he was outlining. But not enough for multiple dealers to sink their teeth into. For this we need enough inventory for multiple exhibits, books, clients, collectors and museums. If there weren't enough inventory to make this kind of a business enterprise, do we believe that all this fuss would be made about Mike Disfarmer? I do not. Mind you, I'm not saying he was a better or worse artist for having more pictures survive. I'm only saying the hype around him would have been different because there was less business to be done. I agree with those who say that there are many, many examples of fine, interesting, and personal portrait photography by local American photographers; we just don't have the cache of their work to make a larger case.

I also take issue with the idea that he was a huge influence on modern photographers. Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand, et al. all had a defined style long before they could have ever seen Disfarmer's work. Walker Evans certainly didn't. The Southern Gothics mostly didn't or at least not before their mature style was already achieved. Richard Avedon says the work influenced his "In the American West" series. I have become so mistrustful of anything this master self-promoter says, that I cannot believe anything except that he saw an opportunity to hitch his wagon to a hot moment.

This is all to say that I wish there could be a more balanced and objective view about Disfarmer's opus. I'm sure there are those who are passionate about his work that could give reasoned and principled rebuttal to all of the points I have raised. I think that's wonderful. Art makes us ask questions, right? So if the gift Disfarmer gives to me is to force me to ask questions and look more carefully, then he has met his artistic mission in a big way. Still, I have been looking at his work for years now, and the cries for his exalted status still ring empty for me. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm more and more convinced that, without the hype, something isn't there.

Black and White pleasures at Hasted-Hunt

Sometimes I want art to challenge me, to shake me up, to confuse me. A friend of mine once suggested to me that one learns more from art that you hate than art that you love. Yet sometimes I want to luxuriate in art that I know, that I understand, and that gives me simple pleasure in viewing again and again.

Bill Hunt and Sarah Hasted have provided just such an experience for me in their current show: "Contradictions in Black and White". I don't think I've ever seen a gallery show that had more work from my all-time wish list than this show has.

It started with the large-scale Adam Fuss photogram of smoke. I've mentioned this work before in this blog. I lust after it every time I see it and wonder if I'd ever grow tired of it.

Next was a number of fab composites by Ray K. Metzker supplemented by a "double frame" and a few unique images by him. Composites are the ne plus ultra for Mr. Metzker and I covet each one I see, but the double frame series is equally rigorous formally. I own a few and admire most of the rest. It is an amazing set of work in which he combines two frames (two negatives) in one picture that must be shot sequentially in the camera. The challenge of composing a what is basically a photomontage in camera without digital imaging is simply astounding.

Michael Flomen is not so well known as Metzker and Fuss, but his work is on my list as well. Check this artist out. Don't be fooled by the simple beauty of his surfaces. There is substance under the appeal of the image.

One of my favorite Irving Penn platinum prints was here, too: the crushed Deli Package. I love this series so much more than the celebrities, portraits, and fashion. If I had to pick one Penn to own, this would be on the short list.

Add to the list some pretty great Callahans, a few choice Margaret Bourke-Whites, and a sweet Vera Lutter, and you have a recipe for my visual happiness. If you want to see for yourself, it's up until February 28th. Check it out.

Hasted-Hunt Gallery

25th Anniversary Exhibition at Laurence Miller Gallery

There has been a recurring event in my gallery-going life the past 12 months. It goes something like this: I see a photo in a gallery or museum from the 70s or 80s by an artist with whom I'm unfamiliar. I go to do some research on the artist, and I discover that he's on the roster of Larry Miller's gallery. It happened when I saw the work of Michael Spano at MoMA last year. It happened multiple times last November at the American show at the Biblioteque National in Paris where I saw work of Les Krims, Charles Harbutt, and Burk Uzzle as if for the first time. It happened when I was looking at a Toshio Shibata print at a Chelsea Gallery in a group show.

Of course, that's just the artists with whom I'm unfamiliar. Larry and gallery director Vicki Harris have been my guides and teachers in discovering the pleasures of Ray K. Metzker. Add to Ray K. the marvels of Helen Levitt and a picture begins to develop of a significant slice of important American post-war photography all firmly in the program of Laurence Miller Gallery.

There's an anniversary show on at the gallery through March 7th which highlights these artists and more. The show limns a gallery career few have matched. Go to see the work of great artists you know. Go to see the work of great artists you don't yet know. No gallery is perfect, and one can't run a gallery without ruffling feathers. But I can say I have happily spent long hours discovering spectacular work in the flatfiles of this gallery. I urge others to do the same.
Laurence Miller Gallery

Raphael Lozano-Hemmer & Cory Archangel at MoMA

I went to the lecture and interview mentioned below at MoMA on Tuesday:

Open Source

Artists Speak: Conversations on Contemporary Art with Glenn D. Lowry
Panel Discussions & Symposia

This program explores contemporary art in the age of YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia, online resources that connect people and information in countless ways and through immeasurable distances. Artists Cory Arcangel and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer discuss the ways in which they utilize electronic databases to create works of art. Glenn D. Lowry, director of The Museum of Modern Art, moderates a discussion.

Readers of this blog will remember that I am a huge fan of Raphael Lozano-Hemmer. I mentioned his amazing installations in the Mexican Pavilion/Villa at the 2007 Venice Biennial as well as the recent heart-beat/light installation here in NYC at Madison Square Park. He was also included in a MoMA show in 2007 about art intersecting technology. It was called Automatic Update and you can view the exhibit archive here. Cory Archangel was also included in that show.

While I haven't mentioned Cory Archangel's work in this blog before, I have certainly been aware of and impressed by it. I've seen many videos at Team Gallery here in NYC, and I've seen one video game work at the Margulies Warehouse in Miami. The work he described in this MoMA talk was more intriguing in that it explored even more inventively the ways technology fails us and fails to live up to our expectations. It is a central tenet to much of his work. His web based piece, Dooogle, in which any search brings back Doogie Howser, MD results was a treat. Try it here. I was also very taken with a piece he did called "a couple of thousand short films about Glenn Gould. He dubs microsecond snatches of guitar shred videos from the web and knits them into a performance of a variation from Bach's Goldberg variations. A boomy, unsatisfying video of an installation of the work is on YouTube here. A precis about the project from the website of The Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art in the UK:

New York-based artist Cory Arcangel's newly commissioned two-screen installation
'a couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould' rescores Johann Sebastian Bach's famous 1741 composition the 'Goldberg Variations'.

To produce 'a couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould', Arcangel has spliced together nearly 2000 clips of amateur musicians' performances taken from video sharing web sites such as YouTube. Each note of the score jumps between individual clips of different musicians, with each screen carrying a separate melody line. The final effect is an almost hallucinatory montage - a flood of images which we are engulfed into. Arcangel allows anonymous guitarists, keyboard players, tuba players and other enthusiasts from around the world to unintentionally collaborate in recreating Bach's masterpiece.

But my biggest pleasure was a fraternal one. Time ago, my brother, Matthew, wrote a column for the New York Times covering digital and web-based art. It was called Arts@Large. He was the first major journalist to cover many of the artists, and he was way ahead of the curve on Cory Archangel and Raphael Lozano-Hemmer writing about Mr. Lozano-Hemmer as far back as 1999. I remember when I told him about this fabulous installation I had seen at the Mexican Pavilion in Venice 2 years ago, he said, "Oh yeah, so you met Rapha. I interviewed him 8 years ago". I don't know what the Times was thinking in letting him go. There still isn't a major art journalist consistently covering this field, and Matthew's reviews are consistently prescient. I couldn't be more proud and impressed by him. Here are links to two articles about Lozano-Hemmer:

Mirapaul, Matthew. "Electronic Messages Become A Beacon In the Darkness", The New York Times, Thursday, November 6, 2003.

Mirapaul, Matthew. "Online Art Lights Up A Square in Mexico City", The New York Times,1999,

If you want to read more, his column was called Arts@Large and can be found here.

Cory Archangel's website

Raphael Lozano-Hemmer's website

If you have any curiosity about or interest in computer/digital/online art, you can't go wrong with either of these guys. their work is consistently great. Check 'em out.

The Printed Picture at MoMA

The Printed Picture October 17, 2008–June 1, 2009 The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries at MoMA

If you look at the exhibition dates for the Printed Picture at MoMA you might think that you have all the time in the world to catch this show. I urge you not to procrastinate. First of all, you will not be able to take in all the information from just one viewing. Second, you will want to come back more than once (maybe even more than twice) so you can approach the show from multiple perspectives. MoMA calls this show an "educational installation". Well, I wish my education had been as beautifully, thrillingly, and comprehensively presented to me as this show is presented to the New York public.

Have you ever wondered about the difference between a Daguerreotype and an ambrotype? Are you curious about how etching creates a photographic verisimilitude? Are you in the dark when you hear terms like digital C-print and archival inkjet print? Wonder no more. Your questions will all be answered in the exhibit.

The show is arranged in rigorous chronological order starting from prehistoric cave drawings all the way to the newest printing technologies. Each process has an example, wall text, and, in many cases, a 50x enlargement of the example so you can see microscopic details inherent in that process. My first time through the show, I tried to go in the chronology that the exhibition lays out. But I found myself circling back to reread text about one process or another that suddenly had unexpected significance in a later process. Also, the exhibition cannily uses the same image multiple times so we see how a different (later, more sophisticated, and supposedly better) process renders the same image.

The only criticism I have of this important, hugely satisfying show is that it's almost too objective. Especially once we get into 21st century processes, I expected some kind of perspective on the merits of one version over another. Instead, a kind of democracy seems to be propounded where each process has its merit, but one is not better than another. I'm not so sure.

Surely though, this is quibbling. I have never seen a show like this, and I feel that I'm unlikely to see another like it soon. I urge everyone who cares deeply about photography and the printed image to make time to see this show.