December 2005 Archives

Like last year, I have to note that this is a purely personal list, the volume of great work that passes through NYC each year is enormous and my free time for gallery visits is severely limited. That said, here's my top picks for the year.

10 Kim Keever at Feigen Contemporary
Keever’s smoky dioramas explore the visual language of the 19th century, a time when the chores traditionally serviced by painting began to be transferred to the camera.

9 Robbert Flick at Robert Mann and Gallery 339
Unknown to me until this year, Flick’s various projects got well deserved exposure on both coasts and served as a personal inspiration in my own work.

8 Thomas Allen at Foley Gallery
Allen’s macro photography using pulp novels and other printed material brings a sense of humor to the often dour-faced gallery scene.

7 Justine Cooper at Kashya Hildebrand
Showing the inner workings of the American Museum of Natural History, Cooper’s photographs of bottled specimens and stuffed animals mirror the suspended animation of a photograph – freezing life into a semblance of its former animation.

6 Thomas Struth at Marianne Goodman
Struth makes the audience his subject, leaving the artistic object off-frame. Any artist would be proud to elicit the wide mouthed gaping David draws, even after several hundred years.

5 David Maisel at Von Lintel
Maisel’s aerial study of the life and death of California’s desert lakes are so astonishingly colored you might suspect some dark room trickery. But the straight approach renders the abstraction all the more stunning.

4 Clifford Ross at Sonnabend
I didn't get a chance to write up this show, but Ross’s Mountain series is a technical tour de force. The largest of large-scale color prints, Ross demonstrates an amazing mastery of light, particularly in the two major triptychs in this show.

3 Stephen Shore at PS1
I must own up to having not actually seen this show, but Shore’s work was ever-present this year and his American Surfaces is an important contribution to American photographic arts. At the very least, every photoblogger is his spiritual child. (This opinion is based on the photos I saw at Edwynn Houk Gallery.)

2 Edward Burtynsky at Brooklyn Museum of Art
Burtynsky’s documentary work of China’s explosive expansion into a global economic superpower perfectly matches style and subject. The eco-theme of previous work is a subtext here, and Burtynsky has unconsciously transformed himself into a sort of Lewis Hine.

1 The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes at International Center of Photography and George Eastman House
The vivid, brilliant photographs in this show open a window on another time, one of the best goals of photography – illuminating the lives of others separated from you by time, distance or culture. ICP did a masterful job hanging the daguerreotypes which are notoriously difficult to view.

Compare this list with last year’s top 10. Feel free to list your picks/pans in the comments.

Business Week has published a list of sensible tips to keep in mind when buying art My favorite is the second to last. Read the full article for details on each.

• Do keep in mind that art is not an efficient investment vehicle.
• Do set spending limits -- and stick to them.
• Do your own due diligence so you'll be less vulnerable to fad-buying.
• Don't get involved in buying collectives that plan to flip art at a profit.
• Don't get caught up in the emerging-market art frenzy.
• Do consider collecting photos rather than paintings and sculptures.
• Do consider buying what others won't.

They missed the number one rule: buy what you like, like what you buy.

The major auction houses all produce catalogs of their key auctions held throughout the year and most offer subscription packages. In comparison to a magazine subscription, they're a little steep, of course, but auctions provide a unique way to get an overview of photography in all its different forms, at least based on the contents of most recent auctions (though you might get more than you're fill of Helmut Newton.) The downside is that they can appear a little bit like a grab bag with little curatorial direction unless an auction represents the prerogatives of a single collector. Still, they're a unique photo gift you might want to consider.

Christie's
All locations, $167, approx. 6 sales/year
New York only, $90, approx. 3 sales/year
London only, $68, approx. 3 sales/year

Sotheby's
4 issues per year, $125
Covers both NY and London auctions (2 catalogs apiece); location specific catalogs, 2 issues, $80

Phillips dePury & Co.
2 issues per year, $90

Swann Galleries
No catalog subscriptions, individual catalogs are $15-$35

Bonhams and Butterfields
Subscriptions are not offered online. For more information, send an email to "info@ butterfields.com".

Jerry Saltz takes contemporary critics to task for being all rationality and no soul. An eye is more essential to being a critic than a bag of theoretical tricks. I noticed as I read through Classic Essays on Photography that the writers began to separate into two camps as I approached the mid-Twentieth Century. In one group was the doers - photographers who also wrote about their craft. The other camp was the thinkers - critics and philosophers who approached photography from a theoretical perspective. The writing quality of the first camp was approachable, straightforward and heart felt. The second camp left me cold, if I could understand what the heck they were talking about at all.

A while back, I talked about my reluctance to write negative reviews. Saltz thinks it's essential.

There's nothing wrong with writing about weak art as long as you acknowledge the work's shortcomings. Seeing as much art as you can is how you learn to see. Listening very carefully to how you see, gauging the levels of perception, perplexity, conjecture, emotional and intellectual response, and psychic effect, is how you learn to see better.

I hadn't thought about it that way. I tend to scope out shows on the Web first and then only go see stuff that catches my attention, so I don't really see a lot of photography up close that I'm not already predisposed to like. Sometimes I am in a gallery building and see something through a doorway and stop in to check it out, but the times that's led to something interesting have been few. Perhaps I should write more about those oddball shows, anyway.

(via Arts Journal)

UPDATE: Despite some trolling, there is terrific commentary on this article over at Edward Winkleman's blog.

While in Philadelphia for the recent Atget exhibit at PMA, I had the pleasure of stopping by the newly opened Gallery 339. Gallery 339 is the only gallery in Philly that is wholly dedicated to photography and opened this past June. The space is large, spread across two floors and has plenty of natural light. While I was there, they were exhibiting two shows. The first, Robbert Flick, who recently also was shown here in NYC, and the second was Douglas Takeshi Wolfe. Their current show, Fifteen Photographers, celebrates their first year with a selection of works from their represented artists.

Of particular interest are Wolfe, Stuart Rome and Amanda Means. Wolfe's bird-oriented works are a stark but delicate minimalist interplay of black and white. (Web-based presentation does them no justice.) While I was there, he had one edition on pink broadsheet newsprint paper piled in a stack in the middle of the gallery floor, free for the taking. Rome's landscape work is highly detailed straight photography in the tradition of an Ansel Adams or Thomas Struth's jungle work (actually, on a technical level, it's much more accomplished than Struth.) Rome is currently showing in NYC at Sepia International. Again, the on-screen presentation is simply doesn't have the resolution to reflect the amazing level of detail in the photos. Lastly, I was able to see two examples of Amanda Means' work, large still lifes of light bulbs and other glass work.

Light Bulb 0034C, 2001 by Amanda Means

If you have time to shoot down to Philly, it's worth the trip to expand your horizon beyond what's on display in Chelsea.

Through Jan 22 at 339 Gallery
339 South 21st St
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 731-1530

Gallery Hopper is now available as part of the "Blogs On Demand" service from Newstex. The Newstex feed contains the full content of each post, including images and hypertext links. This site is growing up and has new responsibilities (gotta keep posting to keep the paying customers happy!)

Alec Soth will be speaking at the International Center of Photography this evening as part of its "The Photographers" lecture series. It's $15 at the door if space available, but the series subscription is sold out. Soth's latest project, Niagra, will open at Gagosian on Jan 21st.

7-9pm at ICP
1133 6th Ave at 43rd St.
(212) 857-0000

Here's ICP's slate for early 2006:
Feb 1: Alessandra Sanguinetti, On the Sixth Day
Feb 8: Mark Klett, Third View
Feb 15: Giorgia Fiorino, To See
Feb 22: Ken Light, Coal Hollow
Mar 1: Geert Van Kesteren, Why Mister Why
Mar 8: Guy Tillim, Departure
Mar 15: Chan Chao, Something Went Wrong
Mar 22: David Maisel, Black Maps
Mar 29: Vik Muniz, A Primer
Apr 5: Meridel Rubenstein, Photoworks

Edward Winkleman's excellent blog has an open thread regarding the trend in photography towards digitally manipulated imagery. Gursky's work appears to be the progenitor, but recent upstarts such as Loretta Lux, Beate Gutschow and Anthony Goicolea have been proving its more than a fad.

...there's a strong parallel I've noticed between pure of digitally altered photography and oil versus acrylic paint. I've witnessed also painters who winced at the idea of giving up their oils make all kinds of excuses later for making the switch. Perhaps it's all about efficiency, but I suspect it's also being repeatedly told the general public can't tell the difference anyway, so why make your life that much harder.

My own thoughts are in the comments over there. Guess where I fall on the issue?

Sorry posts have been light of late. I'm having trouble with the server that's hosting the site. Hope to have things running smoothly any minute now. Comments are broken. In the mean time, here are some interesting links I ran across in the last few days.

The latest issue of AK47.tv is out. This one contains a series by Eliot Shepard and Stuart O'Sullivan among others.

Article about Samuel H. Gottscho's architectural photography, a sampling of which is on display at the Museum of the City of New York. (via Coudal)

Round up of this year's art criticism books, an interesting overview of the recent history of criticism. This is an area I'm not so familiar with, but strangely my own thinking is somewhat in sync with.

If you're infatuated with large-scale C-prints and can't understand the fogeys who wax rhapsodic about the good ol' days of modest-sized black-and-white, the W. Eugene Smith show currently at Robert Mann Gallery might clue you in to to the value of old-school photography. This mini- retrospective of Smith's work covers his photojournalism, corporate and personal projects.

Smith gained prominence while covering the Pacific Theater during World War II for Life magazine. The show starts with several of his war-time photographs. I have previously commented on Smith's approach to war photography in relation to modern photography in Iraq. This work, and his other photographs, are highly cinemagraphic in terms of composition and lighting, a feature that was perhaps more common at the time while modern photojournalism strives for a sense of objectivity. Smith incorporated his darkroom processing as part of the full journalistic and artistic expression in the photographic print, while today even moderate Photoshop manipulation beyond the straight capture is considered taboo. (How, or if, Smith performed darkroom work while with active combat units is unclear to me. If you can shed light on this, please elaborate in the comments. My guess is he included detailed processing instructions in his communication with Life and other magazines.)

Spanish Wake, 1951 by W. Eugene Smith

All of Smith's work has a deeply human element to it, seen promimently in his post-war work for the magazine, such as "Spanish Village", "Nurse Midwife" and "Country Doctor". Portions of these essays are included in the show. Each was achieved by becoming "embedded" with the subjects, understanding their challenges, desires, hopes, and defeats. (One of the reasons the US military's embedding program has been rejected by many modern journalists is that, by nature and intent, it leads to an empathy for the soldiers a reporter accompanies. This was once viewed as a positive result.)

Smith believed in the primacy of the photographer as the author of the photographic essay, from capture to printing to published layout. This perfectionist urge for control was ill-suited to a magazine publishing schedule and his inflexiblity led to intractable conflict with the Life editors. Eventually the relationship became untenable to him and he left Life for the Magnum photo agency. One of the outgrowths of his independent streak was "Dream Street", a 1955-56 portrait of Pittsburgh consisting of over 6000 work prints and 1200 final prints (imagine the number of negatives.) ICP was able to display a mere 193 prints in their '02 exhibition on the project. A selection is shown at Mann. (Popular Photography published 38 pages worth of the series in 1959, which shows what a different sort of publication it's become, unfortunately.)

Through Dec 23 at Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave
(212) 989-7600

Subway reading, "The Image Culture" from The New Atlantis. (via Design Observer)

Americans love images. We love the democratizing power of technologies—such as digital cameras, video cameras, Photoshop, and PowerPoint—that give us the capability to make and manipulate images. What we are less eager to consider are the broader cultural effects of a society devoted to the image. Historians and anthropologists have explored the story of mankind’s movement from an oral-based culture to a written culture, and later to a printed one. But it is only in the past several decades that we have begun to assimilate the effects of the move from a culture based on the printed word to one based largely on images. In making images rather than texts our guide, are we opening up new vistas for understanding and expression, creating a form of communication that is “better than print,” as New York University communications professor Mitchell Stephens has argued? Or are we merely making a peculiar and unwelcome return to forms of communication once ascendant in preliterate societies—perhaps creating a world of hieroglyphics and ideograms (albeit technologically sophisticated ones)—and in the process becoming, as the late Daniel Boorstin argued, slavishly devoted to the enchanting and superficial image at the expense of the deeper truths that the written word alone can convey?

As Tyler says, Nicholas Nixon is, apparently, everywhere. Over at MAN, he's posted a link to his review of Nixon's signature work, The Brown Sisters. Then head over to Yossi Milo to see the series and other Nixon works. If you don't know, The Brown Sisters is a series of pictures of four sisters (one is Nixon's wife) taken over 30 years, starting in 1975. Each photo lines the sisters up in the same order from left to right (or right to left, same thing). A testament to persistence, if nothing else.

There will be a reception for the artist on this Thursday, Dec. 8 starting at 6pm.

Nicholas Nixon
Life and Times
Through Jan 21 at Yossi Milo Gallery
525 W 25th St
(212) 414-0370