Candida Höfer at Sonnabend

Candida Höfer was one the last of the major contemporary German art photographers (Gursky, Struth, Hutte, etc.) I had not seen in person. Thomas Ruff is the other. Last year I'd seen a single photo at the Sonnabend gallery, one of a deep red themed theater and I was eager to see a larger selection of images. Unfortunately, my weekend gallery crawl included a trip to see Hofer's show at Sonnabend was mostly a disappointment. Most of the images are bland and undistinguished rooms in me-to European palaces. The photos lack sharpness I would expect as matter of course. In one photo, Höfer is seen reflected in a mirror shooting these large schale images with a medium format camera mounted on a very high tripod, which may have contributed to the shake. The one room devoted to her tried and true theme of libraries and book collections was the most interesting of the bunch.

Sonnabend is always an interesting place to visit because they've always got a grab bag collection of inventory lying around one room. I was introduced to a stunning photo by Elger Esser today (below). Amazing in person, much darker and, of course, printed in giant size.

The next time I complain that Sonnabend Gallery has no Web site, remind me they're using an artnet site instead of their own domain.