Photography in the 2013 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 2 of 5

Part 1 of this five-part Frieze report can be found here. Start there for introductory background and explanatory notes.

Miguel Abreu Gallery (here): Eileen Quinlan, $15000. This is a pulsating, attention grabbing color study - the shiny material of the woven rubber yoga mat picks up tiny reflections, dotting the electric yellow green with flecks of textured red.

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Roe Ethridge, $16000. There's something unexpectedly off about these red tennis tights (the racquet seems overly big as well). It's an eye-catching example of Ethridge's mix of commercial and fine art aesthetics working together to produce something puzzlingly compelling.

Frith Street Gallery (here): Dayanita Singh, $19400. This work is actually three, housed in a custom wood box with interchangeable slots. The overflowing piles of ledgers are documented in all three images, giving the entire work a richer resonance.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder, £15000. A simple image intervention interrupts this self-portrait, creating a jarring hybrid face..

Maureen Paley (here): Gillian Wearing, £35000. Another in Wearing's ongoing series of self-portraits in the guise of famous photographers, this time peering out from the face of Weegee.

Salon 94 (here): Katy Grannan, $14000. This booth had a powerful wall to wall installation of images from Katy Grannan's new 99 series. Taken along California's Route 99 and set against blistering, eye squinting white backgrounds, the images get close up to a parade of weathered faces and forgotten lives. They recall Dorothea Lange and Richard Avedon's In the American West, mixing unflinching harshness and quiet authenticity.

Cheim & Read (here): Adam Fuss, $60000. While I had seen this same mattress covered with a tangle of writhing black snakes in Fuss' last gallery show, I hadn't seen the snakes replaced by a black female mannequin before; it adds another detail to Fuss' garden/Eve story.

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): James Casebere, $45000. Casebere's picture perfect stage set world given a darker, worn out alter ego, with a moss covered rooftop, a broken fence, and a landscape of barren, lifeless trees.

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Otto Muehl, complete portfolio €150000. This booth was dominated by an edge to edge hanging of images documenting 10 different actions/performances by Muehl - Viennese Actionism captured in raw, transgressive, experimental brashness.

Massimo Minini (here): Luigi Ghirri, $12000. A street scene through an ice cream store window, seen with Ghirri's subtly surreal playfulness.

Continue to Part 3 here.

Photography in the 2013 Armory Show, Part 2 of 2

Part 1 of this two part post can be found here. Start there for background and a general explanation of the format of the summary. This portion of my notes covers the shorter area on the left of Pier 94 and all of Pier 92.

Lisson Gallery (here): Gerard Byrne (1), Cory Arcangel (2)

Max Wigram Gallery (here): Jose Dávila (1 set of 53, 1), Slater Bradley (1). Dávila is another artist playing with the properties of the cut photograph. In this work, he has taken pictures of famous sculpture from around the world and then excised the artworks, leaving white outlines and blobs which are surprisingly recognizable (entire set $65000).

The surrounding area in the Bradley nude below is entirely covered in black marker, making a slightly striated and entirely opaque background ($40000).

i8 (here): Roni Horn (1 set 5), Orri Jonsson (3)

Galleri Bo Bjerggaard (here): Per Bak Jensen (1)

Loock Galerie (here): Holly Zausner (3 multi-image arrays)

Marlborough Chelsea (here): Rashaad Newsome (4 collages)

Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): Alex Prager (2), Zanele Muholi (5), Victoria Sambunaris (1), Sharon Core (1), Andrew Moore (1), Olivio Barbieri (2), Rachel Perry Welty (1)

Galleri Brandstrup (here): Ola Kolehmainen (2)

Paradise Row (here): Adam Bloomberg and Oliver Chanarin (1), Douglas White (1), Jane and Louise Wilson (1)

Rotwand Gallery (here): Klaus Lutz (5)

CLEARING (here): Ryan Foerster (9)

Rokeby Gallery (here): Matthew Sawyer (8)

Winkleman Gallery (here): Shane Hope (2). While most of the works in this booth were made using 3D printing, there were two quasi-photographic works on view: the one below (a digital print, $18000) and another, which was a holographic/lenticular print. The density of collaged digital imagery in this work is truly astounding, with layer upon layer of structural elements, exploded genomes, and other scientific models.

Victoria Miro (here): Isaac Julien (1), Idris Khan (1)

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): Frank Thiel (1), Alec Soth (2), Idris Khan (1), James Casebere (1). This is a new work by Casebere, with a falling table top house and a wildfire ($50000).

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen (here): Adam McEwen (2), Justin Liberman (1)

Galerie Nathalie Obadia (here): Andres Serrano (2), Youssef Nabil (2), Lorna Simpson (9)

Michael Kohn Gallery (here): Simmons & Burke (1)

Henrique Faria Fine Art (here): Alexandra Apostol (1)

Rena Bransten Gallery (here): Vik Muniz (2)

Other Criteria (here): Mat Collinshaw (3), Damien Hirst (1)

Parkett (here): Liu Xiaodong (1), Zoe Leonard (1), Yto Barrada (2), Tracey Emin (1)

Mike Karstens (here): Thomas Wrede (1), Gerhard Richter (2)

Mixografia (here): John Baldessari (1 set of 6)

Crown Point Press (here): Darren Almond (6)

Durham Press (here): Mickalene Thomas (1)

Bitforms Gallery (here): Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (2). These works were massive arrays of high definition scans of fingertips (taken from financial services employees), each rectangle its own individual set of whorls and lines ($37000).

Derek Eller Gallery (here): Thomas Barrow (1)

Galerie Forsblom (here): Ola Kolehmainen (1)

Galerie Daniel Templon (here): David LaChapelle (1), James Casebere (1)

Blain Southern (here): Wim Wenders (1)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Martin Boyece (1), Matias Faldbacken (2)

HackelBury Fine Art (here): William Klein (6), Mike & Doug Starn (3), Pascal Kern (4), Garry Fabian Miller (4), Bill Armstrong (3)

Wetterling Gallery (here): Mike & Doug Starn, Nathalia Edenmont (3), Pinar Yolaçan (2). I thought these works by Yolaçan were very smart. She's taken fleshy nudes and covered the skin with some kind of textured lotion. With the heads cropped out and the bodies posed against colored backgrounds, they turn into stone fertility idols ($7500).

Galerie Michael Schultz (here): Andres Serrano (3), Vik Muniz (1)

Mireille Mosler Ltd. (here): Fischli/Weiss (1), Richard Prince (1). Pretty hard to beat this fabulous Fischli/Weiss shoe sculpture ($75000).

David Klein Gallery (here): Trisha Holt (2)

Alan Koppel Gallery (here): Garry Winogrand (2), Hiroshi Sugimoto (3), Patrick Faigenbaum (1)

Forum Gallery (here): Davis Cone (1)

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Irving Penn (10), Bill Jacobsen (2), Francesca Woodman (4), Richard Avedon (1), Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou (3), Imogen Cunningham (1), Edward Weston (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1). Lots of vintage treasures in this booth, including a wall of bold Irving Penn fashion portraits. While there were other more famous Penn images on view, I enjoyed this one the most, with its tower of hair and its flared collar ($45000).

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (here): Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (5)

Senior & Shopmaker Gallery (here): Robert Rauschenberg (1 collage of 4)

Marc Selwyn Fine Art (here): Rodney Graham (1), Irving Penn (1), Richard Misrach (1)

Chowaiki and Co. (here): Vik Muniz (2), Man Ray (1)

Galleria Repetto (here): Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)

Galerie Thomas (here): Marc Quinn (4)

Vivian Horan Fine Art (here): Almagul Menilbayeva (2)

James Casebere, House @Kelly

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 black and white and color works, variously framed and matted, and hung in the main gallery space, two smaller side rooms, and the office area. The works in the main gallery are large scale digital chromogenic prints mounted to Dibond and framed in black with no mat. There are 6 prints in this room, ranging in size from 70x86 to 70x106, each in editions of 5+2, from 2009/2010. The works in the other spaces are vintage black and white works from earlier in Casebere's career. 13 of the works are single image gelatin silver prints and 1 is a photo-lithograph diptych. Physical dimensions range from 14x11 to 28x38, and the prints come in multiple edition sizes (7+2, 10+1, 10+2, 24+3, 60). The black and white works were made between 1978 and 1994. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: James Casebere's new large scale color works are bigger and bolder than ever before. His purpose-built architectural models have now grown to include an entire subdivision of fabricated houses, executed in painstaking, abstracted detail. Displayed in conjunction with a group of earlier, more pared down black and white works, these images show Casebere extending and evolving his artistic approach, adding in additional layers of stylized realism and complexity to tell broader stories.

.

The new pictures document an imaginary community of homes in Dutchess County, New York, where large multi-story houses painted in pastel colors are clustered closely together over rolling hills. Freshly mown grass stripes the front lawns, while lakes, roads, and specimen trees (in fall colors) separate the landscape. Play structures, above ground pools, satellite dishes, and barbecues dot the backyards. It has the air of a perfect planned community, complete with wind farm on the brow of the hill (clean energy!) and a rainbow overhead.

What makes these photographs successful is their subtle, almost effortless irony. The abstracted nature of the model makes this community a kind of "everywhere", where the American dream of owning a home has happily come true. But it is this undercurrent of the surreal, the mythical, and the hoped for that smacks head on with the reality of the recent housing bubble and foreclosure crisis, making this cozy little community look entirely insane.

.

Casebere's earlier black and white works hung in the adjacent rooms have a more sinister, haunted quality. In these works, Casebere has constructed and photographed a single home or building, highlighting the contrast of bright white materials and shadowy dark lighting. Row houses, tenement buildings, prisons, factories, and even suburban ranch houses (complete with constructed cacti) have become quiet phantoms, with black square windows and simple boxy geometries. These pictures are more elemental and moody, filled with viewer-supplied memories and anxieties.

In all of these photographs, Casebere is uncovering our complicated relationships with common places. The new pictures dig into questions of what we think (or remember) we want, what has been built to fulfill our supposed desires, how we feel when we see these dreams come true, and the unreality underneath the surface of that cleaned-up sunny life. His light touch makes the satire earlier to swallow, making the images less overtly critical and all the more thought-provoking.
.

Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows. The large color works are generally $70000 each, although one of the images that was included in the Whitney Biennial is marked "price on request". The older black and white images generally range from $16000 to $30000 based on size (with many intermediate prices), with the smallest image (from a large edition) priced at $1800. Casebere's work has become consistently available in the secondary markets in recent years, with a handful of lots available every year for almost a decade. Prices at auction have ranged between $1000 and $60000.

.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
.

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review: NY Times (here)
• Interview BOMB (here)

James Casebere, House

Through December 4th

Sean Kelly Gallery

528 West 29th Street

New York, NY 10001

Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance @Guggenheim

JTF (just the facts): A large group show of photography, video and film, displayed in the entry space, on five levels of the darkened rotunda, and in two annex galleries off to the side. The exhibit includes work by 58 artists and photographers, spanning the period from roughly the 1960s to the present. The show was curated by Jennifer Blessing and Nat Trotman, and a hardback exhibition catalogue is available for $45 (here). No photography is ever allowed at the Guggenheim, so unfortunately, there are no installation shots for this show. Specific images have been taken from the Haunted exhibit website (linked from here). (Paul Chan, 6th Light, 2007, at right.)

The exhibit is divided into four loose thematic groups, following a generally chronological order. This is not however a rigid organizational structure; works listed under various themes are often intermixed and taken out of strict order, likely due to the vagaries of display constraints. Each of the sections is listed below, with the artists and photographers included and the number of works on view in parentheses:

Appropriation and the Archive

Bernd and Hilla Becher (grid of 9)

Sarah Charlesworth (26)

Thomas Demand (1 video)

Douglas Gordon (1 video)

Rachel Harrison (1 photograph, 1 sculpture)

Luis Jacob (set of 84)

Idris Khan (1)

Barbara Kruger (1)

Sherrie Levine (set of 12)

Christian Marclay (3 cyanotypes, 1 video)

Allan McCollum (1)

Richard Prince (1)

Robert Rauschenberg (1 painting, 3 lithographs)

Sara VanDerBeek (2)

Andy Warhol (1 painting)

.

Landscape, Architecture, and the Passage of Time

Walead Beshty (2)

James Casebere (1) (James Casebere, Garage, 2003, at right.)

Spencer Finch (set of 7)

Ori Gersht (1)

Roni Horn (grid of 64)

Luisa Lambri (2)

An-My Lê (4)

Sally Mann (3)

Hiroshi Sugimoto (5)

Janaina Tschäpe (1 video)

Jeff Wall (4)

.

Documentation and Reiteration

Marina Abramović (1 four-channel video)

Christian Boltanski (1 installation)

Sophie Calle (set of 2)

Tacita Dean (1 six-channel film)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (set of 8)

Markus Hansen (1 drawing on glass)

Anthony Hernandez (2)

Joan Jonas (1)

Robert Mapplethorpe (1)

Ana Mendieta (1)

Annette Messager (1 installation)

Gina Pane (1 installation)

Susan Philipsz (1 sound recording)

Cindy Sherman (2)

Robert Smithson (set of 9)

Lawrence Weiner (1 installation of words)

Zhang Huan (1)

.

Trauma and the Uncanny

Paul Chan (1 video)

Anne Collier (2)

Stan Douglas (1 two-channel film)

Anthony Goicolea (1 video)

Karl Haendel (1 installation)

Adam Helms (1)

Sarah Anne Johnson (39 as 1 installation)

Zoe Leonard (1)

Miranda Lichtenstein (1)

Nate Lowman (3 paintings, 1 sculpture)

Adam McEwen (1)

Cady Noland (1 screenprint)

Rosângela Rennó (1)

Anri Sala (1 video)

Gillian Wearing (1)
.

Comments/Context: The Guggenheim's current exhibition of contemporary photography, video and film (which has been on display since early Spring) is best characterized as an expansive gathering of the museum's recent acquisitions in these related media, tied up under a broad, inclusive conceptual umbrella which can happily accommodate nearly anything pulled out of storage. As a theoretical construct, Haunted offers plenty of leeway to cover everything from appropriation and reuse to history and nostalgia, and from staging and myth making to memory and documentation, covering most of the usual bases in the contemporary photography debate. (Robert Smithson, Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1-9), 1969, at right.)

.

The story begins with Warhol and Rauschenberg (as background) and quickly segues to the Pictures Generation, with iconic but routine stops at Becher water towers, Prince cowboys, Charlesworth newspapers and Levine reproductions, and a few more modern day descendants (VanDerBeek, Jacob). Paul Chan's quietly disturbing falling silhouettes are out of place amongst these works (and annoyingly interrupted by people continually wandering through the projection); this is the first work on view that really woke me up and got my attention.

.

The next level of the rotunda moves on to time as thematic element, with shadowy Sally Mann landscapes, An-My Lê Vietnam reenactments, Sugimoto seascapes, and a sparse black and white Casebere garage. I particularly enjoyed seeing Roni Horn's grid of women's changing rooms (somehow not included on the exhibit website), with its repetitions and layers of subway tile, numbered doors, mirrors, and peep holes. Continuing up the ramp, the works become more performance and installation oriented, filled with documents and relics. There are installations by Boltanski and Messager, and performance stills from Zhang Huan, Gina Pane and Ana Medieta. Robert Smithson's late 1960s images of arrays of mirrors placed on beaches, in jungles, and amid gravel were a discovery for me, and the Cindy Sherman of crime scene dirt, complete with teeth, hair, and random fingers and body parts was lovingly creepy. (Cindy Sherman, Untitled (#167), 1986, at right.)

.

The last thematic group is centered on memory and traumatic experiences, but is in many ways, more of a grab bag. Anthony Goicolea's video Nail Biter is a manic, disturbing, shock treatment, covered in drool and fingernail fragments. I always enjoy Christian Marclay's unspooled cassette tape cyanotpes, and there are three of these on view in a side gallery, paired with a Thomas Demand video; a group of Jeff Wall images and a Stan Douglas video inhabit the other annex area. The most memorable work in the entire show is Tacita Dean's six screen film of Merce Cunningham performing Stillness to John Cage's 4'33'', displayed on the entire top level of the rotunda. While the space does not lend itself well to the different vantage points of the film (and again, the crowds walk repeatedly walk through the projections), it is a triumph of subtlety and thought: Cunningham sits in a chair, from time to time shifting his arms, all in the noisy silence of his studio.

.

While the one-size-fits-all flexibility of the exhibit's curatorial approach allows for the incorporation of a wide assortment of working styles and artistic methods, it unfortunately leads to a show that suffers from being much too amorphous and unwieldy. Contemporary photography is of course a jumbled, chaotic melting pot of recursive and recombinant ideas, so charting a course through all the diversity is no easy task. But making sense of it all is why we come to museums; we seek to be educated, to be shown a path through the thicket, to be given a coherent point of view, especially in a survey show like this one. Instead, this exhibit feels like the list of accessions divided up into major conceptual buckets (a good start), but without the more important, driving sense of what the curators really think durably matters. I also felt like many of the specific selections weren't hugely inspiring; I saw far too many ho-hums or lesser examples in a row to generate much positive momentum or energy.

.

In my view, the Guggenheim has the exciting challenge of trying to create a distinct museum identity in a New York environment with many strong and capable rivals. But this show leaves me with the conclusion that at least in the realm of contemporary photography, the Guggenheim does not yet seem anxious to step into a leadership role, or is perhaps content to be more of a follower. Yes, there are many terrific works on display here, some well known and others a bit more adventurous. But I didn't discern a consistency of conception among these accessions that tells me someone is guiding the ship with a firm and deliberate hand or that risk taking and innovative thinking are a top priority. If the Guggenheim wants a reputation as a thought leader and taste maker in photography, we will need to see a more comprehensive and well-executed vision. Until then, this show is evidence that the museum is indeed very much active in contemporary photography, albeit without an easily readable point of view.
.

Collector's POV: I've already highlighted many of my favorites from this show in the comments above. None is a perfect fit for our specific collection; the Becher water towers would be the likely closest actual match.
.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

.

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), artnet (here), Another Bouncing Ball (here), Boston Globe (here), L Magazine (here)

Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance

Through September 6th

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10128

Auction Results: Contemporary Art, May 12 and 13, 2010 @Sotheby's

The results for the photography buried in Sotheby's various Contemporary Art sales earlier this week, coupled with those at Christie's in the days before, are making me think that the confident art market swagger is on its way to a full recovery. Sotheby's total photo proceeds topped their high estimate with room to spare, with a buy-in rate hovering around 10% and more than 50% of the lots that sold selling above their range. Virtually all the high end lots found buyers. On a going forward basis, I think we can expect this positive, optimistic momentum to swell the Fall consignments.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 52

Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2894000

Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $4099000

Total Lots Sold: 46

Total Lots Bought In: 6

Buy In %: 11.54%

Total Sale Proceeds: $4255750

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 1

Low Sold: 1

Low Bought In: 0

Buy In %: 00.00%

Total Low Estimate: $10000

Total Low Sold: $8125

Mid Total Lots: 30

Mid Sold: 25

Mid Bought In: 5

Buy In %: 16.67%

Total Mid Estimate: $849000

Total Mid Sold: $896125

High Total Lots: 21

High Sold: 20

High Bought In: 1

Buy In %: 4.76%

Total High Estimate: $3240000

Total High Sold: $3351500

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 49, Andreas Gursky, Rimini, 2003, at $500000-700000; it was also the top outcome of the sales at $722500.
.

97.83% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 4 surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

.

Lot 327, Matthew Day Jackson, Bucket, 2007, at $34375

Lot 425, Candida Höfer, Musee Du Louvre, Paris XV, 2005, at $104500 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's)

Lot 431, James Casebere, Spiral Staircase, 2002-2003, at $50000 (image at right, via Sotheby's)

Lot 432, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Satellite City Towers, 2002, at $28125

.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Sotheby's

1334 York Avenue

New York, NY 10021

Whitney Biennial 2010

JTF (just the facts): A large group exhibition of 55 artists, installed on four floors of the museum. (Since no photography is allowed in the galleries at the Whitney, there are unfortunately no installation shots for this show.)

The following 10 artists/photographers have photo-based work in the exhibition. Details for each are below:

• Nina Berman: 18 pigment prints, each 10x15, made between 2006 and 2008
• Josh Brand: 5 chromogenic prints and 1 gelatin silver print, either 8x10 or 11x14 or reverse, made between 2007 and 2009
• James Casebere: 2 digital chromogenic prints, each 72x96, in editions of 5, made in 2009
• Babette Mangolte: 441 vintage photographs, 2 decks of vintage photo playing cards, and 1 video, as one installation, made in 2009
• Curtis Mann: 1 bleached chromogenic print with synthetic varnish, 65x153, made in 2009
• Lorraine O'Grady: 4 pigment print diptychs, each individual print 47x38, in editions of 8, made in 2010
• Emily Roysdon: 2 sets of 3 digital chromogenic prints, one with silkscreening, made in 2010
• Stephanie Sinclair: 9 digital prints, each 17x22, made in 2005
• Ania Soliman: 1 digital montage, variable dimensions, made between 2007 and 2009
• Tam Tran: 6 digital prints, each 24x16, made in 2008

Comments/Context: What more is there to say about this year’s Whitney Biennial that hasn’t already been said? Virtually every major art critic in America has already weighed in on the succinctly titled 2010, and as usual, there has been a healthy mix of both supportive praise and scathing derision, peppered with lists of favorites and highlights. Many have connected the show to the momentum for change and redefinition embodied by the election of Obama, others have centered on the majority of women artists included in the exhibit, and still others have latched on to its pared down, recession-friendly curatorial approach. But none of these esteemed writers has comprehensively looked at the photography in the show and tried to consider about what the inclusion of these specific photographers and their work might mean in the larger context of the medium. So that’s what we’re going to try and do here.

Even if we go along with the PR line that this exhibit is not a survey of contemporary American art, but simply an edited sampler or cross section of the diversity of work produced in the past few years, the show clearly has the ability to set out a straw man, pick out some trends, and frame the conversation about what’s been relevant and/or important in the past two years. As such, 2010 should have some compelling things to tell us about the state of contemporary photography, and indeed, this year’s exhibit contains quite a bit of photography in various forms. Since this is not an inclusive biennial of photography, but rather a biennial of contemporary art which includes photography only on its merits, we should be able to see some patterns in where photography is being placed in the larger narrative of new art, or at least analyze how the show’s curators seem to be judging and categorizing what they have found to be new in photography. This does not of course lead to any sort of ultimate truth, but simply a snapshot of how one set of curators has tackled the problem of making sense of it all; so while there are an infinite variety of other ways to approach this same problem, I think a close look at how they seem to have structured their choices can tell us something about how the larger art world is seeing contemporary photography.

While it seems unlikely that the curators deliberately built a taxonomy of photographic approaches and placed various contemporary photographers in specific locations (they are not photo-specialists after all), the artists who were included in the show can quite easily be placed into one of four “buckets” based on their use of the medium (with a little cross pollination in some cases). I’ve provided a diagram below to make my line of thinking a bit more clear; I'll cover each group in more detail below.

The 2010 representatives of the documentary/straight approach to photography pack such an emotional wallop that they seem to be saying: make the content extreme or just go home. Stephanie Sinclair’s desperate images of Afghan women charred by self-inflicted burns are bloody and horrifying, so much so that the exhibition room was filled with gasps, “My God”s, and uncomfortable intakes of breath; the suffering and violence that is depicted is harsh and shocking, but entirely unforgettable. Nina Berman’s images of the hometown life of a disfigured soldier (including his thoroughly alienated wedding day) are similarly tragic. Both bodies of work depict the realities of war, and explore the downstream personal effects of our current day social/political choices. As the only two examples of “traditional” photography in the whole show, I was reminded of Paul Graham’s recent comments about the state of medium (here), and the ensuing discussion of the value of capturing unique moments with a camera. If these two photographers are any indication, the contemporary art world isn’t looking for subtlety in its straight photography, it’s looking for outright reaction-provoking challenge.

Four photographers included in the show fit loosely into the performance/staging category, although each is using photography in different ways to document or enable their ideas. James Casebere has made a career out of photographing tabletop constructions, and his two images here satirize a fabricated community of pastel colored houses; his timing couldn’t be better, in terms of being a biting look at the ridiculousness of the housing bubble. Tam Tran’s images depict the performances and imagination of childhood; dressed in Spiderman pajamas and a cape, her nephew uses a long stick to fight invisible evildoers, well aware of the presence of the camera. Emily Roysdon’s photographs are documents of public locations to be used in future performances. An array of chairs (alternately covered with dots and silkscreened dancers) and wood pilings of abandoned piers in the water are both spaces/stages that have been and will be transformed by theatrical action; the sense of being part of the audience is palpable. And Babette Mangolte’s installation of 1970s/1980s photographs and video is less about any specific picture and more about the process of perception and interaction with imagery; composites, variations and patterns of images are seen on a huge gridded wall, while a video overlays sounds from the flipping and shuffling of cards and the tearing of paper. The entire environment is a reflective performance about the how we experience photographs.

While neither Lorraine O’Grady nor Ania Soliman might usually be considered a “photographer”, both are using the recontextualization of appropriated photographic imagery as the basis for the art included in this show. O’Grady’s works juxtapose found images of Charles Baudelaire and Michael Jackson in varying color tones, wryly commenting on the ups and downs of celebrity. Soliman layers a wide range of found images of pineapples into a photomontage alphabet stuck directly to the wall, merging text and photographs into a hybrid historical survey reminiscent of Dada collages. With these examples, it is clear that we have moved beyond the irony of simple appropriation/mashup and on to more complicated and conceptual combinations of images with social/political overtones.

The last group of artists is thoroughly embedded in the technical processes of photography, reveling in the details of the darkroom, the chemical properties of prints, and the object quality of end product photographs. Curtis Mann's grid of photographs begins with appropriated images from the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah (and so ties him to the appropriation group described above). But Mann is more interested in the photographs as objects than in composing pictures from behind the camera: he has subsequently used bleach and varnish to selectively manipulate/destroy the original images, leaving whitewashed expanses of nothingness populated by glimpses of small details, like a cloud of dust obscuring our vision. Josh Brand has opted for making camera-less images in the darkroom, creating abstract photograms of the details of his everyday life.

In terms of sheer "memorableness", I found the work of Sinclair, Berman, Casebere, and Mann to be the most compelling and likely to lead somewhere exciting or new. Many of the others seem to be working in styles that we have seen before (in the inbred world of photography), but have yet to coalesce into wholly original lines of thinking. Taking a straight photograph, documenting a performance, appropriating an image, or mastering a process are not enough to make it in the 21st century art world; there are some forgettable photographs here I'm afraid. The photographic works I found most thought-provoking in this show were those that are built on layers of outward looking ideas and realities, that took on the larger forces in our society at this particular moment in time, rather than those that were overly self-conscious or inwardly reflective. The disruptions I saw were based in the context of the times, rather than the fabric of ourselves.

If I take the Whitney Biennial 2010 at face value, it is the straight photographers who are out on the bleeding edge of photographic art, pushing our collective consciousness, and the others who have heretofore considered themselves to be cleverly innovative and conceptually original that are being found to be lagging behind a bit. That's a wholly unexpected and surprisingly refreshing photographic conclusion, and the single best reason to go and see this show.

Collector's POV: Discovering which galleries represent the artists and photographers in this show isn't terribly easy. I've listed below those that I have been able to find; I'm hoping diligent commenters can point us all toward the rest.

• Nina Berman: Jen Bekman (here)
• Josh Brand: Herald St. (here)
• James Casebere: Sean Kelly Gallery (here)
• Babette Mangolte: Broadway 1602 (here)
• Curtis Mann: Kavi Gupta Gallery (here)
• Lorraine O'Grady: Alexander Gray Associates (here)
• Emily Roysdon, Stephanie Sinclair, Ania Soliman, Tam Tran: unknown

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: New York Times (here), New York (here), Village Voice (here), Washington Post (here)
• Feature/Curator Interview: Interview (here)
• Nina Berman artist site (here)
• Josh Brand artist site (unknown)
• James Casebere artist site (here)
• Babette Mangolte artist site (here)
• Curtis Mann artist site (here)
• Lorraine O'Grady artist site (here)
• Emily Roysdon artist site (here)
• Stephanie Sinclair artist site (here)
• Ania Soliman artist site (unknown)
• Tam Tran artist site (here)

Whitney Biennial 2010
Through May 30th

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021