Evan and the Picture Postcard Fair

Last weekend, in a fit of geeky indulgence, I went to the International Spring Postcard Show followed a few days later by a visit to the Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard show at the Met. The two were obviously related in that they both contained postcard collections, but there were deeper connections. Walker Evans seems to have been a dedicated, if not compulsive, collector. As we learned from Jeff Rosenheim's beautifully presented exhibit (and fabulous book), Evans cataloged his postcards in a detailed and meticulous way. One might have even found his cataloging obsessive until one went to the postcard fair at the New Yorker Hotel in midtown. Dear readers, if you have never been to a postcard fair, I have no words for the combination of library science and pure fetish that you will find there.

I have no doubt that there are millions of different postcards in the world. I have no doubt that collectors need those millions to be divided into sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. But I was astounded by how specific the dealers need to be in order to satisfy the surgically precise desires of their customers. The Evans show left no doubt about the quantity of main categories: geography, parades, cars, factories, hotels, rivers, mountains, medical, military, etc, etc. But I took a perverse pleasure in seeing categories I couldn't have imagined having their own sub-categories. For example: did you know that there are enough postcards of lunatic asylums that they merit their own section? Did you know that there are so many of them them that the "Asylum" section is broken down by state and country! "Excuse me, do have any postcards of Montana asylums? No, no, no, not South Dakota. I only collect Montana asylums".

I have to say, it really did have a kind of sexual fetish kind of vibe. I mean, I think porn vendors and brothels are a few of the other commercial ventures where desire is so parsed out the nth degree. That being said, I am not immune. I went because I have my own little corner of fetishistic photo collecting: pictures of violinists. And sure enough, every vendor I approached asked me straight away what itch needed scratching. When I told them, they pointed me to music>instruments>strings>violins. Violins would always be next to guitars, banjos, harps, accordions, bands, winds, saxophones, etc, etc. I didn't have to waste my time with all those other boring instruments so I could bore right into my little neurocenter dopamine hit with violins. All around me, other collectors (obsessives?) were riffling at lightning speed through their own sub-sub-sub-category of pleasure looking for the contact high of a good find.

I have to say I had a great time. I had intended to spend 2 hours then head over to the New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn. The fair won out and I spent 4 plus hours and quite a few dollars. But even if you're not the obsessive photo geek I am, a visit to a fair like this is well worth the time. There are great examples of photography to be found (sometimes for like $3), an incredible view of a hidden part of society, and a glimpse of the lengths to which humans will go to try to organize the chaos of the world. Check it out.

3 Shows in NYC

Three shows opened recently in NYC that prominently feature 4 artists I've written about before in previous blogs. I'm such a fan of the artists, I can't resist giving them a little further plug for their current shows.

Michael Mazzeo Gallery just opened a group show called Transmutations - Abstraction in Nature. Chris McCaw is included with his spectacular paper negative prints that have been seared, scorched, and punctured by the light of the sun. They remain favorites of mine and well worth seeing again. In his first NYC gallery show (long overdue), Christian Erroi presents his signature photo-sculptures: Lucite encased film transparencies. He successfully bridges a view of nature that allows for metaphor as well as science. I love them. Open through June 20.

Koichiro Kurita has a solo show at Sepia Gallery. When writing about Mr. Kurita, it is easy to fall into cliché. One speaks about "Zen" imagery, or simplicity, or "Japanese sensibility". One can also be seduced by the sumptuousness of his materials and working methods. As I have noted before, Mr. Kurita uses the antiquarian techniques of platinum-palladium, salt prints and collodion printing. His paper is always the unbelievably exquisite hand-made Gampi paper manufactured according to centuries' old traditions.

While all of this information is true, it does not approach the core of Mr. Kurita's art. There are many photographers who do something approximating this work, but no one has the pure grace and focus that Kurita has. Somehow, all of these materials seem just right in his hands; they coalesce to form a seamless language. What would be cliché or artifice done by someone less rigorous, seems here to be the essence of a landscape. Check out "Old Field Beech" "Weeping Beech". The interplay between the leaves and the reflections of the leaves is balanced in a way that makes one question if it is an abstraction yet also communicates some essential "tree-ness". Likewise, in "Kasumi", one may first have the impression of seeing a Callahan wannabe in the abstracted waving grasses. But this is something else. The Gampi paper, the platinum salts, the patient exposure marry to form an impression of nature that is Kurita's own. There's nothing really new here, but that's like saying "seen one ocean seen 'em all". Not to be missed. Through June 27th.

Marco Breuer continues to explore and expand his list of ways to abuse a piece of photo paper. The inaugural show at Von Lintel Gallery's new space has five different series on view from this always engaging artist. I especially loved the the "shot" pieces in which photo paper had received and recorded a shotgun blast. Different colors registered where various pellets hit at varying temperatures and velocities. While not all of the show was as inventive as I've come to expect from Mr. Breuer, it is certainly as intellectually rigorous and sensually satisfying as ever. Great work. Up through June 13th.

Reflections on Photolucida

I was invited to be a reviewer at the recent incarnation of Photolucida in Portland, Oregon from April 23rd to April 26th. The event had over 64 reviewers looking at over 160 portfolios. I had been invited because my friend Barbara Tannenbaum of the Akron Art Museum recommended me to the organizers. I recently read her blog on the event and I realized that I had shirked my responsibility as a reviewer and a blogger by not posting some comments. I mean, part of why I was invited, I imagine, was so that I would write about the festival and post some thoughts about the artists I met.

Read Barbara's blog here.

First let me say that the review sessions were beautifully organized. Each reviewer was responsible to attend 2 of the 3 sessions each day. A schedule was available well before the event so I could do some preliminary research on the artists I would meet. During the festival, artists showed up every 20 minutes as promised, and no one was allowed to stray too far from the alotted time slots. While 12 portfolio reviews every day for 4 days isn't exactly easy, neither was it too much. I have reviewed other places with a much more demanding schedule where I could feel my brain melting into photo soup as the day wore on. In Portland, I was always fresh enough to be alert and positive about each portfolio I saw. Kudos to all the dedicated pros who work to make Photolucida work.

My philosophy as a reviewer is simple: how can I help this artist? I don't dwell too much on whether I like the work or not. I'm looking to see what the artist is trying to accomplish by attending this review. If I can be of help, I'm happy. Some artists feel that their work is still in process and want comments, others are looking for representation or a book deal. Of course, I can't wave a magic wand and make their wishes come true, but I always look to open doors or show them doors they didn't know about. I'm keenly aware that they paid a fee to hear my opinion, so I want to offer some kind of value that goes beyond my simple likes and dislikes. It's not perfect -- some artists will find me more helpful than others -- but I hope that overall I was a productive visit for the majority of artists who met me.

It's also a bit of a roulette wheel which artists you meet. Reading Barbara's blog, I saw that of the artists she wrote about, I had only met one. But a few that I didn't meet sounded intriguing and made me wish I had had the opportunity to see their work. I did see more work than on my official schedule. Some artists ask for extra time, which I gladly did to the degree that my schedule allowed, but it wasn't always possible. So a promising artist like Ryan Zoghlin asked for time, and I never got a chance to meet him. My loss.

One practice that Photolucida implements would be a welcome addition to the NYC photo scene if someone were to organize it. It's called a portfolio walk. The way Lucida does it is to set up tables in a large room big enough to hold 60-80 portfolios and a crowd to view them. The public is invited in to walk around and view what's on the tables, talk with the artists, take a business card, or schedule a more private view. After an hour, the artists pack up and a new set of 60-80 artists come in to take their place. Rinse and repeat until all of the scheduled artists have had a turn. It's a wonderfully interactive, unjudgemental, and social way for a relatively large number of artists to have their work seen by a relatively large amount of people. It's sort of a hybrid portfolio view/one day art fair. Cool.

Following Barbara's lead, here are a few artists whose work I found noteworthy. In alphabetical order with a short comment:

Mary Farmilant had a series devoted to what she called "ghost hospitals" -- hospitals which have been closed due to lack of funding or support. She had an innovative portfolio presentation which combined photos with vials of hospital smells and a CD of hospital sounds. I loved her concept of an immersive photo environment.

Jane S. Noel showed me work from a project called "First Impressions". She distributed hundreds of questionnaires based on a photo of herself. While she allowed each responder to see only one photo, she actually used many different ones that only changed her hair color. She then collated the responses according to hair color and displayed them with the photo. I found it to be an intriguing exploration of prejudice and preconception based on appearance.

Brian Parkin showed me a typology of signs from industrial sites in the southwest. Solid work

Christopher Rauschenberg is working on a series from the flea markets in the north of Paris. As he freely admits, it's a work in progress. There were a number of very strong photographs, and the project knits together beautifully. I'm eager to see the finished book and exhibition. I think it'll be great.

I had seen Austrian photographer Reiner Riedler's series about fantasy theme parks when it was part of the Month of Photography in Bratislava last November. The series is called "Fake Holidays". This is very mature work just waiting to be pounced on by a good US dealer. As of the date of my review with him, he did not have US representation. Check it out.

Photolucida was a fabulous experience for me. Seeing work, meeting artists, networking with professional from the gallery and museum worlds, investigating local museums, galleries and shops (see post below on Ampersand) -- it all added up to a satisfying and stimulating trip. I hope I'll be invited back.

Youth

Back in February, I wrote a post about emerging photography that stemmed from a panel discussion on the subject in which I participated. It has continued to be a source of lively debate among the photo professionals I know. Few are without an opinion. In a related topic, I read an October 2008 article in the New Yorker written by Malcolm Gladwell that discussed whether certain artists produce great work when they're young and other artists produce their best work at a later age. In the article, Gladwell cites the work of David Galenson in showing the prejudices among scholars about the "right" age to produce lyric poetry masterpieces. I quote from the article:

"In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law. How old was T. S. Eliot when he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (“I grow old . . . I grow old”)? Twenty-three. “Poets peak young,” the creativity researcher James Kaufman maintains. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the author of “Flow,” agrees: “The most creative lyric verse is believed to be that written by the young.” According to the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, a leading authority on creativity, “Lyric poetry is a domain where talent is discovered early, burns brightly, and then peters out at an early age.”

A few years ago, an economist at the University of Chicago named David Galenson decided to find out whether this assumption about creativity was true. He looked through forty-seven major poetry anthologies published since 1980 and counted the poems that appear most frequently. Some people, of course, would quarrel with the notion that literary merit can be quantified. But Galenson simply wanted to poll a broad cross-section of literary scholars about which poems they felt were the most important in the American canon. The top eleven are, in order, T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock,” Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” Frost’s “Mending Wall,” Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man,” and Williams’s “The Dance.” Those eleven were composed at the ages of twenty-three, forty-one, forty-eight, forty, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty, twenty-eight, thirty-eight, forty-two, and fifty-nine, respectively. There is no evidence, Galenson concluded, for the notion that lyric poetry is a young person’s game. Some poets do their best work at the beginning of their careers. Others do their best work decades later. Forty-two per cent of Frost’s anthologized poems were written after the age of fifty. For Williams, it’s forty-four per cent. For Stevens, it’s forty-nine per cent."

This made me curious to read more of Mr. Galenson, so I bought his book, "Old Masters and Young Geniuses", in which he attempts to quantify at what age certain artists produce their best work. While he admits that his methods are not iron-clad science, he feels that by collating multiple indices he can show a broad pattern of how experts and the academic community have crowned certain periods of artistic output as better than others. He does this in a variety of ways: by comparing many years of auctions results for works of an artist over the span of his career, by counting the times that certain art works (and their corresponding period from the artist's career) have been included in anthologies, and by counting which period of work is most often included in the collections of the world's greatest museums. If all three sources of data show a similar result, Galenson feels confident that this is because a consensus has been reached about when an artist produced his best work.

Now, I'm no scientist nor economist, but reading this book made me curious about what this process would yield in the photo world. So I found a not-too-dated list of the most expensive photos ever sold and did the simple arithmetic to see how old the artists were when they produced that work. Here is what I found:

1. (47) Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456, February, 2007, Sotheby's London auction. A second print of 99 Cent II Diptychon sold for $2.48 million in November 2006 at a New York gallery, and a third print sold for $2.25 million at Sotheby's in May 2006.
2. (25) Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.
3. (55) Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands) (1919), $1,470,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.
4. (55) Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe Nude (1919)(55), $1,360,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.
5. (40) Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), $1,248,000, November 2005, Christie's New York auction. ^[4]
6. (38) Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, 113.Athènes, T[emple] de J[upiter] olympien pris de l'est (1842) $922,488, 2003, auction.
7. (37) Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete (1857) $838,000, 1999.
8. (41) Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol (1987) $643,200, 2006.
9. (46) Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948) $609,600, Sotheby's New York auction, 2006.
10. (42) Andreas Gursky, Untitled 5 (1997), $559,724, 6 February 2002.

I realize this simplified method has problems, but only one artist in the list under 35?! Wow! Yes, I know that it would have been impossible for Mr. de Prangey to produce a photograph at 20 since the medium would not have yet been invented. Yes, I understand that auction values are not the sole measure of artistic worth. Yes, I know that the list is incomplete and blah, blah, blah, blah.....Yes, I scratch my head, too, that some of this work commands the prices it does. But the whole thing just whets my curiosity. How many photographers whose work sells in six figures produced that work when they were under 35? How many of them were even recognized as important artists when they were under 35? What about work that sells between $50,000 and $100,000. Surely the list of photo artists whose work sells for between $50,000 and 1 million would define the most important artists in the field. Even if one restricted the list to say post-war or post-1970, I suspect the answers would be astounding and heavily weighted towards the more mature artist. I hope Galenson's methods will be reproduced by some enterprising grad student using photographic artists as the model.

Where does this leave me in my ongoing discussion about the emerging artist? It leaves me back at my original thought that age is not a good predictor of artistic merit. One can play a hedge fund game and buy tons of work by young artists and hope that one or two hit it big to fund all the other purchases. But that's just Vegas and ignores why most of us actually enjoy owning art. If we're really honest with ourselves, I think we see that most of the time we don't know who is going to be important and powerful until they're well into their career or even long dead. If Galenson is right -- and I think he is -- and some artists peak young and others peak late, then really the only way to make choices about which artist we want to follow (and maybe buy) is to look, think, and look again. If youth is part of the equation, it will probably be one of the least interesting or significant parts of that equation. "Emerging" is a term that remains mired in the same prejudice that mis-defined the perfect age for the great lyric poets. "Emerging" has no causative effect in great art. It's a financial euphemism not a creative one. As we've been forced to view our finances with renewed sobriety, I hope that we will begin to view this term, too, with the scepticism it deserves.

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It may rain the other 360 days of the year when I'm not here, but when the Pacific NW is like it's been for me the last few days, it's heaven on earth. Clear blue skies, crisp warm weather, fabulous food and wine, and gorgeous natural terrain. I'm here as a portfolio reviewer at the Photo Lucida photo festival. More on that another time. But since I got here a day early, I decided to poke around a few flea markets and galleries.

My first stop was Ampersand Vintage. What a cool place this is. I don't think I've ever been anywhere quite like it. Owner Myles Haselhorst has combined a small, quirky gallery, a very specialized photo book store, and a curated collection of vernacular photos and photo ephemera. It's a great mix. Imagine Strettel Books meets Winter Works on Paper. It's small and intimate, but there's plenty to look at. I easily whiled away 2 hours looking at everything I could put my paws on. I don't think there are many places in the world where you can buy a 50 cent 50's snapshot at the same place you buy a limited edition of a British private erotica collection. Sweet.

Check him out online and read his blog for updates and mini curated online shows of found work.

Don't miss: Women of the Photo League

The Women of the Photo League is up now at Higher Pictures. Don't miss it. Gallery owner Kim Bourus has lovingly compiled a show that presents work from the best known members - like Berenice Abbott and Helen Levitt - to unknown and forgotten artists.

From the gallery press release:
Rosalie Gwathmey, who served on the League’s executive committee, remembered that a “real
feeling of equality” prevailed between women and men at the Photo League. However, like
American women in other professions in the 1950s, women who came to photography through
the Photo League often returned to their homes and families. Those who remained
professionals settled for second-class status and much of their work was hidden or lost.

While Levitt (who passed away last week at 95), Abbott and Lisette Model are not hidden or lost, artists like Rebecca Lepkoff, Lee Sievan, and Ann Zane Shanks are not exactly household names in the photo community. This exhibit makes a strong case for their talent and accomplishment. The general level of the work on display is astonishingly high. If there were no gallery text, I think many experts would fail to identify which works were by the "famous" photographers.

Check it out. It's unlike anything you'll see in NYC right now.

The Women of the Photo League
Higher Pictures Gallery
March 19 – May 2, 2009
Tuesday - Saturday: 11- 6 pm
764 Madison Avenue (between 65th/66th street)
212.249.6100

Looking In - Robert Frank at the National Gallery

I went down to DC yesterday in order to see the Robert Frank show at the National Gallery. In a recent post, I made the comparison between a curator and a conductor. While I think that that analogy is often true, there are other times when a different model comes in to play. In this case, I had the sense of the silent hand of a wise and patient archaeologist guiding me through a hall of treasures. Now I grant you that the subject of this exhibit is not particularly challenging. I mean, Robert Frank's book "The Americans" is obviously one of the most admired, influential, and important photography books ever produced. Any exhibition on the subject can be expected to be a big hit. Still, there are potential pitfalls, but Senior Curator of Photography, Sarah Greenough, nimbly avoids them while creating a show chock full of pleasant surprises.

It occurred to me while I was walking through the show, but I had never seen an exhibit quite like this. I mean that in the sense that this was a photography show specifically about a photography book which took the opportunity to present an exhibition size photo of every single picture that is in the book. Has anyone else ever done that? I'm sure I've never seen it, and I've never heard of anything exactly like it. I have seen sections of books exhibited in this fashion. For example, Paul Graham's "The Shimmer of Possibility" has been shown in an excerpted form as an exhibition supporting the book. But a full-blown representation of an entire book in a gallery format was new to me.

And it was a revelation. As much as we accept the catechism that certain photographs are not only created for books but are most effectively experienced as books, it is a completely different (not to say better or worse) experience to view an entire book in sequence - with all of the purpose and care that implies - but with large format prints. It very simply changes one's perspective. It gave me the naïve hope that perhaps a seminal book of Brassaï or Man Ray might be presented in a similar way.

The show opens with some historical perspective. We see earlier work of Mr. Frank and also the work of artists who influenced his style. Here, as later in the show, the curatorial style is light and sure. The influences are clear, not stretched, the interpretations make sense, the analogies are founded in fact. I've become too accustomed to wall text that reads like a synopsis to a different play than the one I'm actually watching. To extend my archaeological metaphor a bit further, I felt as if Ms Greenough were virtually reassembling an ancient treasure in front of me. As each shard was gently dusted off, it was painstakingly shown how it fit into the larger whole. We see Frank's letters to Walker Evans, applications for the Guggenheim fellowship, and then those same applications as they were edited (well, maybe actually written) by Evans. We see a wall of working prints showing how Frank edited and sequenced. We see contact sheets with photos chosen and rejected. All of this leading us into a grand tour of the final book with large format examples of each picture. Bliss. If a working definition of art is something that leads us to see the world in a different way (which "The Americans" did and still does), then surely a working definition of great curatorial practice is something that leads us to see a great work of art in a new way.

This is a great show. It successfully presents, promotes and defends "The Americans" as one of the most important works of photographic art ever. It makes good on its promise and delivers even more. It closes in DC at the end of this month. It's coming to the Met, but it will be a different show there. If you have any time at all, make your way down to Washington for the day and see it before it closes. You won't be sorry.

PS: If you do go to DC, make time to see the show, "Inventing Marcel Duchamp" at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition is a hall of mirrors that shows endless permutations of identity. Self-portraits of the multiple and mutable characters that were Duchamp are combined with the multiple and varied portraits of him done by his friends and contemporaries. The sum is an exercise in the search for core self and the subjectivity of portraiture. Fab.