Collecting Emerging Photography Panel

I've been invited to participate in a moderated panel discussion on collecting emerging photography. The details of where and when are below. I think it could be a lively event. One of the main things to wrestle with is the definition of the word "emerging" in the context of collecting. Is it an economic term? Is it defined by youth? Gallery representation? I think the term is understood in many different ways by many different people. I hope some of that will come to the fore in our discussions. Please come if you're free, and feel free to post comments after the event.

Collecting Contemporary Photography (Emphasis on Emerging)

The Camera Club of New York will present a panel discussion about collecting contemporary photography (emphasis on emerging) on Tuesday, March 3, 8-10pm, at the School of Visual Arts Amphitheater, 209 E. 23^rd St., 3^rd Floor.

Participants include photo dealers Daniel Cooney and Michael Mazzeo; photo collectors Joe Baio and Evan Mirapaul; and Cara Phllips, co-founder of the online site Women in Photography and Amani Olu, private dealer, curator, and founder of Humble Arts Foundation, a non-profit that works to advance the careers of emerging fine art photographers. Photographers Allen Frame and Saul Robbins will moderate the panel and take questions from the audience.

Please rsvp to info@cameraclubny.org or call Emile Dubuisson at the Camera Club, 212-260-9927. Please note that the event has been changed from the Camera Club of New York to SVA’s Amphitheater to accommodate the wide interest.

Light/Dark at Sepia Gallery extended

The Light/Dark show at Sepia Gallery -- blogged about below -- has been extended to February 28th. If you thought you missed it, here's a second chance to go see it. It's well worth the time if you ask me.

Fred Sandback at David Zwirner & Zwirner and Wirth

Jeez, I love the work of Fred Sandback. If you haven't gone to UES or W. 19th St. to see the concurrent shows, don't miss them. His work always reminds me that the greatest genius distills a concept down to the simplest materials. Who would have imagined before he appeared that thread and wire could shape and distort space? Who could have imagined that drawing could be a three dimensional exercise? I marvel every time I see his work.

I have little to add to what has been already written about this show (Holland Cotter's review in the NYTimes is right on the money) other than to note a small anomaly I've noticed. Sandback's work obviously is very effective in person. It's also very effective in two dimensions in his prints and drawings. But he seems to utterly fail in photographs. When I see his sculptures in photographs, I can hardly imagine that they are the masterworks that I know. This isn't a particularly illuminating observation except for the fact that the drawings are so VERY effective and powerful. They seem to point in a direction that says that the work can be represented in two dimensions. But photography is just not that medium, or the work suffers by being mediated by someone other than the artist himself.

Up on W. 19th St. through February 14th. UES through February 28th.
David Zwirner
Zwirner and Wirth

Weston in Akron

Edward Weston: Life Work

On view at the Akron Art Museum through April 26, 2009

Edward Weston: Life Work surveys the career of a giant of 20th century photography from the early Pictorialist work to his final photograph, made in 1948. Previously unpublished masterpieces are interspersed with well-known signature images. The 115 photographs in the exhibition are all from a single private collection, that of Judith G. Hochberg and Michael P. Mattis.

I traveled to Akron, Ohio last week to see the opening of the Edward Weston show at the Akron Art Museum. The purpose of my visit wasn't completely artistic. Akron is my home town so it was a chance to spend a day with my father. If the show had opened in Columbus, I'm not sure I would have made the trip! Still, the show tugged me west for more reasons than a family visit.

Michael Mattis is a name that comes up frequently in photography circles. Together with his wife, Judith Hochberg, he is an avid collector. He also has a strong philanthropic profile. He has helped build the collections of two museums about which I care a lot: ICP and Akron Art Museum(AAM). Part of his philanthropic profile is also his involvement with an organization called art2art Circulating Exhibitions. Art2art was responsible for this show of Weston from the Mattis-Hochberg collection.

(A little side note here. Mr. Mattis has a played a significant role in another recent post. He is one of the principle players in the Mike Disfarmer narrative (www.disfarmer.org is his website devoted to that subject). While we may disagree on some of the talking points about Disfarmer, we have many more points of agreement. I didn't name names in the Disfarmer post for just this reason. I want my posts to be about ideas and thoughts, not personal attacks. Whatever our disagreement about one photographer or another, I have tremendous respect and gratitude for Mattis' philanthropic philosphy.)

As a supporter of AAM, I was invited to a vernissage dinner at which Mr. Mattis was scheduled to give a tour of the show. Though I am familiar with him by reputation and word of mouth, I had never met him, nor heard him speak. Michael Mattis revealed himself to be an articulate and passionate speaker on the subject of Weston and the history of photography in general. I guess it's no surprise that someone who has amassed such an important collection would have a scholarly knowledge of the subject.

The show is comprehensive starting with early examples of his work as a commercial studio photographer and ending with his final photograph, The Dody Rocks (1948). In between, the photos are grouped generally by period, but also by some of the subjects that Weston used most effectively. So, we start in California and Mexico, then progress through portraits, nudes, and still lifes, and finish with the sand dunes and California landscapes he worked on at the end of his life.

Though the exhibit is filled with eye-popping examples, I had my favorites. There were a few platinum prints scattered through the first few rooms that were just exquisite. They came from a tight little period between 1921-23 and were mostly portraits. The portraits of fellow artists Johan Hagemeyer (1921) and Tina Modotti (1921) were character studies of the first order, while the portrait of Ralph Pearson beguiled with unusual framing, exquisite use of shadows, and genius use of negative space that limned an adobe wall as abstraction. Of course, the photo of the smokestacks of the Armco factory in Ohio was a treat to see both for its magnificent print quality and the way it showed Weston's move away from Pictorialism towards modernism.

Later in the show, there was the room devoted to Weston still lifes. One was not surprised to see the iconically famous "Nautilus" and "Pepper #30." A bigger treat for me, though, was to see Peppers from the series that were new to me plus two remarkable detail studies; one of the fins of the underside of a toadstool and the other a cabbage leaf that could as easily been the veins on the forearm of a sculptor. I had never seen any of these as anything but reproductions, so it was a revelatory treat to see them in person.

Akron's pleasure is New York's loss. I've posted here many times what a vigorous and exciting program AAM consistently mounts. It made me wonder what kind of reception this show would receive if it came to NYC. Would the NY audience feel they had seen it all before because a few fine examples are occasionally seen at the Met or MoMA? Would the show be seen as too classical in a city where the word "contemporary" sometimes doesn't extend back 5 years? Or would we see it as a chance to re-visit and renew our pleasure and knowledge in a foundational figure in photography? I would love to find out. In any case, I'm glad I didn't stay home.

Light/Dark at Sepia Gallery

Sepia Gallery has a cool show that may not be on the route of every West Chelsea art seeker. Light/Dark has some great examples exploring how photography has investigated whiteness to blackness as well as light versus darkness. I also like how the show investigates a few different approaches to photo technology. (Full disclosure here, two friends of mine are in the show, so I'm not exactly objective about Go Sugimoto or Michelle Kloehn.)

Go Sugimoto challenges the limits of whiteness in his Paper Work series. There is almost nothing visible in the frame. He photographs paper constructions in a specially built lightbox, then prints them at the very edge of visibility. I love them. They fuse drawing, photography, and minimalism. I am challenged to see what is there; to guess at the shape and wait until my eyes adjust to the white in order to see more edges. Is my brain filling in information that isn't there? Am I assuming that the shape continues past the point of visibility? One can't be sure, but the mystery and the formalism combine to make a satisfying whole.

Michelle Kloehn uses the antiquarian tintype process to explore abstract still lifes in a fashion that 19th century photographers could not have imagined. The process and the image have an inherent tension between them that I really like. An artist to watch.

The "discovery" for me is probably the artist who has the biggest career of all among the 5 artists in this show: Linda Connor. I was really taken with her "Lick Observatory" series. Ms Connor has taken century old glass plate negatives from the Lick Observatory in California and used them to make contact prints with printing out paper. This means that she leaves the negatives out in the sun on top of photo sensitive paper in order to make a 1:1 ratio print. This seems to me to be a perfect marriage between process and content. The sun is used to print pictures of the night sky, and an antiquarian process with antique negatives is used to make contemporary prints of an event that happened millions of years ago. It is the soul of the show and perfectly illuminates the theme and the fact of Light/Dark. I particularly loved the the one of the broken glass plate neg from 1895, printed in 1996. A century between the making of the negative and the printing of the plate on a negative at the very edge of destruction. I found it a beautiful metaphor for where photography is now, and a potent example of how photography represents and utilizes time.

Up until February 21st. Check it out.

"Figure Studies" at Deborah Bell

Deborah Bell has done it again. She has transformed her small gallery into a jewel of a show that examines an intriguing concatenation of photos around a central idea. This time it is the human figure. A lovely pairing of Kertesz and Brandt, a few beguiling Erwin Blumenfelds, and a couple of first-rate Fierets are just a few examples of the wonderful work on display. Up through February 28th.....take a look.

In Memoriam: Gerard P. Fieret

I was surprised and saddened to hear from Deborah Bell about the recent death of Gerard P. Fieret. I have admired this unique and quirky artist since the first time I saw his work. Despite a number of US shows and pretty good representation in NYC, he remains in relative obscurity to US collectors. I was not able to find an obituary from any US gallery or museum online. I include a link here to the obituary on the website of of the Hague Museum of Photography.

Fieret Obituary

If you want to see more of his work, Deborah Bell and Tom Gitterman are both good sources to see it in person. Ms Bell has a few examples up in her current show about which I will write a few words in an upcoming post. I loved the obsessive, outsider vibe to his photographs, and I was always engaged by his sort of covert formalism and beautifully implicit narratives. I am sorry I never met him.