January 2005 Archives

New Atlanta art blog "The View from the Edge of the Universe" is touting a Beate G�tschow edition being offered through the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The print is an edition of 30 from the Museum's Fine Print Program. The c-prints measure roughly 12"x19" (though I see no info about this on the MoCP site) and run $300. Prints are also available by Yolanda Andrade, Shimon Attie, Helen Sear, Toshio Shibata, and Alec Soth.

Though I'm skeptical of their value as an investment vehicle, it's great that the Museum is making affordable editions such as these available. My wife and I were happy to take advantage of the low-cost giclee prints done by Edward Burtynsky for his mid-career retrospective at the Canadian National Gallery in 2003 (now touring).

I included G�tschow in my list of the best of 2004. That was based on a review in New York and visits to a few Web sites. A couple of weeks back I was able to drop by Danziger Project and see her work for myself. G�tschow's images suffer from an "uncanny valley" problem. The spliced together images are often close to seamless, but not quite close enough, so there's this weird vibe you get from them that's absent in the work of Loretta Lux, whose cut-and-paste work is more obvious. Of course, verisimilitude is only part of the point, but it's enough to put me off. Plus, I don't know enough about the landscape painters she's supposedly playing off of to know whether that's interesting, important or both. Unfortunately, I'd probably leave her off the list were I to do it again now. There's a lesson for you kids: never make up your mind about an artist by what you see on the Web.

It's interesting to see a similar theme crop up in the work of disparate photographers exhibiting in concurrent shows. The images below center on solitutde and loneliness in open spaces. If you clicked over to the Design Observer discussion I linked to last week, you'll know that some folks find this sort of phenomenon unsettling, and occasion to cry plagerism. Personally, I believe there is nothing new under the sun and it shows a great sense of extended community to know someone else is delving into the same themes from a different viewpoint or perspective.

Mathieu Bernard-Reymond
Through Feb. 26th at Remy Toledo Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 8th Floor
(212) 242-7552

Stephen Hughes
Through March 5 at Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave
(212) 989-7600

William Lamson's "Horse" and "Deer" are particularly good examples of this theme, better than his self-portraits which are more literally similar to the Reymond and Hughes images above.

Through Feb. 7 at Pierogi 2000
177 North 9th St., Brooklyn
(718) 599-2144

The Village Voice has posted Vince Aletti's lists of top photography books and amagazine work for 2004. Apparently someone's been on vacation. In my experience these sorts of things hit the stands in the weeks just before New Year's.

Amongst his top 25 photo books are several by photographers who I covered last year: Shomei Tomatsu (#8), Larry Sultan (#9), Alec Soth (#12), David Maisel (#22). It's a pretty standard list. One could have culled it from the "Amazon recommends" feature if you've even got a handful of photo books in your wish list. (Amazon really pushes Stephen Shore and Larry Sultan, for some reason.)

"Do Not Recycle" is Aletti's list of the best magazine phototgraphy. His number one photo is a crass and uninspired piece of fluff, but the accompanying article is a good stab at providing an overview of the current state of magazine photography, even if he does focus too much on fashion. Not enough on editorial, and, of course, he's completely left out photojournalistic work.

Cycleback hosts a small collection of articles on collecting, preserving and authenticating photographs. A sample random tip:

If an early 1900s black and white photo has white borders, it likely was not made before the early 1910s. The vast majority of early photos have no borders (image goes to the paper’s edge).

via Still Journal

If you're in LA this weekend (where it's been said all the really innovative and vital art is being made) check out the Photo LA show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. It appears to be much larger than last fall's photoNY show, also organized by Stephen Cohen Gallery. Among the NYC galleries slumming it up in LA: Yossi Milo Gallery, Foley Gallery, Gitterman Gallery, and Yancey Richardson Gallery.

Of particular note, Alec Soth will be giving a talk on Saturday at 1pm. Also, if the mood strikes you, go to the "Collecting in the 21st Cent." panel moderated by Art + Auction editor Jori Finkel and ask beligerent questions about the impact of blogs on the collecting scene. (By the way, A+A's Feb. issue has a heavy photography slant.)

UPDATE: Over at art.blogging.la, Caryn Coleman Valerie Palmer reports on her visit to the show.

Chris Hoff of the OC Art Blog has also weighed in.

The new documentary, William Eggleston in the Real World, will be shown at MoMA tonight, with an introduction by the director, Michael Almereyda.

Tickets cost $10 and you don't have to buy admission to the Museum. Then you can present your ticket stub in the next 30 days to get a $10 discount on museum entry. How nice.

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
(212) 708-9400

Design guru Michael Beruit has posted a lengthy and adoring review of Robert Polidori's new book Metropolis over at Design Observer. Polidori's photo of Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim is one I had not seen before, and as good as anything he's done. Via greg.org.

On a completely different topic, check out this Design Observer post about a supposed case of visual plagerism, followed by a thoughtful and extensive discussion which drives to the heart of what makes a photograph esteemed in one case and derided in another.

Ran across a new photography magazine this morning called "Making Room". Slick production, including interviews with the featured photographers. I just wish the slide show images were larger.

As I've mentioned before, I've always thought the "no flash photography" rules of many museums were just a scam to force people into buying their keepsakes at the gift shop. Seems this hunch has been vindicated. No, I haven't unearthed evidence of DaVinci's Louvre royalty payments piling up in a numbered Zurich bank account.

As part of the discussion on this site about solutions to overcrowding at MoMA, someone asked the apparently stupid question “Has it been scientifically proven that camera flash damages art?” Well, I think we all took it as a given that flash photography does in fact damage art despite my suspicions stated above. On a lark, I ran a couple of Google searches to come up with what must be plentiful evidence of the flash bulb’s nefarious effects. Nothing. After a few minutes, I ran across a reference to a message on a conservation email discussion list that actually argued that flash photography’s effects are nil. But I couldn’t find the entire post. I casually passed the info on to Dan Hopewell of Iconoduel. Dan’s more diligent than I (actually, he just knew where to look) and was able to come up with the post in question. Bottom line is, “300 amateur flashes a day is equivalent to adding five minutes to the display day.” In other words, no big deal.

Check out the complete story at Iconoduel.

Seems like a lot of good photographers are coming out of Minnesota these days. Thomas Allen's still lifes, made with beaten up thrift store paperbacks and an X-Acto knife, show a great imagination at work, with good lighting chops and a tight depth of field to boot. The medium-sized prints didn't leave me with any big thoughts, but not every photograph has to induce some sort of philisophical reverie.

Through Feb. 5 at Foley Gallery
547 W 27th Street, 5th floor
(212) 244-9081

"The NYC blogs said not a word."

True to form, we continued merrily along as if what was being said out in the hinter lands didn't matter.

(click on photos for enlarged views)

Between a punishing work schedule and providing aenemic help to my wife in caring for our new son, I haven't been able to get out to any shows. However, David Maisel's latest project, Terminal Mirage, at Von Lintel Gallery can't pass by unmentioned, whether I get the chance to see it in person or not.

Like Edward Burtynsky and Richard Misrach, both of whom also work the neo-sublime vein, Maisel's images revolve around the effects of human activity on the landscape. In this particular project, his aerial photography renders the brilliantly colored landscapes into abstract studies of the long-term consequences of short-term thinking.

Through Feb. 12 at Von Lintel Gallery
555 W 25th St.
(212) 242-0599

(Click on images for larger view)

All month, this billboard on 42nd St and 8th Ave is displaying photographs from the Magnum photo agency. It's basically a slideshow that swaps out a new photo every couple of seconds. I must've seen fifty photos from various photogs while I stood there taking pictures. As expected, everyone else around me walked on by without really noticing.

Listen to NPR's All Things Considered interview with Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden promoting the new Magnum Stories book.

My head is popping with all the things I've been meaning to write up here.

I still haven't gotten around to addressing the mention of blogs in (yawn) Art in America and the developing battle between pros and amateurs [sic] which extends beyond blogs. I think this is also related to LACMA blocking access to blogs, but time will tell if that's just general organizational fumbling.

The definition and responsibilities of a "critic" seems to be a popular topic these days, at least amongst critics. Which is a good place for the conversation to stay. The real answer to the specialist/generalist is probably somewhere in the middle. No discipline is so isolated that some amount of understanding of its outside influences wouldn't be advantageous. At the same time, no one (or very few) can possibly be so wide ranging in interest to truly be able to write about just whatever pops into their head with a modicum of skill and insight.

I've been meaning to continue my thinking on how to stem the burgeoning crowds at MoMA, which I obviously glossed over too quickly earlier this week. I never thought I'd crack open my microeconomic textbook again, but it's gonna come in handy.

And, hey!, the big jumbo-tron advertising billboard around the corner from my office is displaying photos from the Magnum photo agency all month long. I'll swing by, take a couple of snaps and post 'em up for you non-Port Authority NYers and non-NYers. (Guess we'll push that recovery in the ad biz out one... more... month.)

Plus a couple of new shows are opening this week that should be interesting. Maybe I'll even get out to the galleries for the first time since my son was born!

Yesterday, I ran across this great little article from SFGate.com (via NY Art Magazine) about Anonymous, a new book of found photography, featuring anonymous photos from the collection of Robert Johnson, curator at Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. The book's cover photo is outstanding.

"If I never see another 'Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico' by Ansel Adams or Winston Churchill's portrait by Yousuf Karsh, it wouldn't be too soon,'' Johnson says. "We've taken many of our historical fine art photographs and hugged them to death. When you go to the flea market and go through that box of photographs, whether they're good, bad or indifferent, you're going to be looking at 500 photographs you've never seen before. And you're looking at stuff in a very unfiltered way.''

To be sure, and the article says this, most anonymous photography is drek. (Think of how many "keepers" were in your crop of Christmas snapshots.) A few gems can be seen on Snaptorium, a found photography blog I stumbled across while on this jag. If you want to get started collecting found photography, the Snaptorium online store has nothing but.

Apparently the high entry fees designed to keep out the riff-raff didn't work. Tyler Green over at MAN is complaining that MoMA is so crowded that the art is in danger of being tampled. Among Tyler's suggestions are banning cameras and baby strollers. I've always thought camera bans were crass attempts to force you to make a visit to the giftshop for a postcard or poster. And as a new parent, I'm not too thrilled about the idea of a two-three year moratorium on my museum attendance. I was just getting used to the idea that a baby wouldn't be much problem to take on a gallery crawl.

Maybe they should just make the tickets $25. Still less than Disneyland.