Victor Schrager, The White Room @Houk

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 pigment prints, in either 30x23 or 45x35 inches, framed in white and arrayed in the main gallery only. All of the negatives are from 2008, in editions of 11. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: There seem to be very few contemporary photographers at work today who are focused on exploring the depths and intricacies of pure abstraction. Indeed, abstraction in black and white was thoroughly investigated several decades ago; in color, the recent expeditions have been less far reaching, mostly clinging to recognizable objects that have then been arranged and photographed in such ways as to highlight their abstract qualities.

In the past decade, Victor Schrager has been on his own abstraction trajectory. Several years ago, Schrager did a series of still life images of jacket-less books, whose forms and muted colors were arranged into planes, volumes, shadows, and intricate patterns. Indebted to the work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, the best of these images became elemental forms, blurred and indistinct.

Schrager's new work, now on view at Edwynn Houk, continues along this path, exchanging the subtle yellows, greens and ochres of the slim volumes, for candy colored neon blocks of plastic and resin. Arranged on a mirrored black table and lit with pure white light, these objects are even less recognizable than the books, leading to a further focus on their attributes of color, form, and reflection. Echoes of the Color Field painters (particularly Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Morris Louis) are everywhere, as is the connection to Irving Penn's frozen vegetable images.

Historical relationships aside, and while not every image in the show gets the objects placed just right, there are a handful of pictures that strongly resonate and shimmer off the wall, where the interactions of color and shape work to create both tension and harmony. As the objects have become simpler and less recognizable, the space for exploring the puzzles and complexity of abstraction have widened. As such, the images in this show seem less like the end of the road for Schrager, but just the beginning.

The artist's website can be found here.

Collector's POV: These images belong in a white cube of a home or apartment, whose owners are devotees of 20th century modern design/furniture. Their abstract forms and bright colors would mingle well with this aesthetic. They would unfortunately look wildly, even insanely, out of place in our old Colonial. The images are priced at $4500 and $5500, based on size.

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

Victor Schrager, The White Room

Through January 24th

Edwynn Houk Gallery

745 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10151

Martin Klimas, Flowers @Foley

JTF (just the facts): 7 color pigment prints, each 32x24, six installed in the main gallery, and a single image shown down in the first floor entryway. We were told that the show normally had several more images on display, but that they had been taken down and shipped to Photo LA. Negatives from 2006 and 2007, in editions of 5. A slim book detailing this body of work is available from the gallery for $30. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: The floral images of German photographer Martin Klimas can most clearly be described as a mashup of Robert Mapplethorpe and Harold Edgerton. In each picture, an elegant floral bouquet in a striking vase is set against a saturated color background. The unexpected part of this conceit is that the vase is in the process of exploding, having been captured at the exact instant of disintegration by careful stop motion photography. The result is a surprisingly interesting contrast between the quiet beauty of the flowers and the violent destruction of the vase. Prior to visiting this show, we thought this concept sounded a bit contrived (was this just a stunt?), but we found the execution of the idea to be first rate, and the pictures are quite a bit better and more visually engaging than we had expected.

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The artist's website can be found here.

Collector's POV: As collectors of flower and botanical photographs, we like to think we have seen pretty much everything that has ever been done in this genre, but these works by Klimas are indeed something new and different. The best of the images are to be found in the book, as the exhibit itself has been depleted by the demands of the fair circuit. At $3000 apiece, one of these would make an attractive (and relatively inexpensive) contrast to a color Mapplethorpe floral, if hung in tandem.

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

Martin Klimas, Flowers

Through January 17th

Foley Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the Early 1930s @MCNY

JTF (just the facts): 40 black and white images (with a slight sepia toning/aging) of Mississippi in the main gallery (blue striped wall), with an additional 11 images of New York in an adjacent room (brown striped wall). All from the 1930s. (Blurry installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The quick question "Who was Eudora Welty?" will in most cases elicit an answer (pulled from deep memories from high school) summarizing her success as a prize-winning writer of American novels and short stories set in and describing the rural South, primarily during the Depression. What is perhaps less well known is that Welty began her career as a photographer, as part of the WPA. Her first exhibit was held at the Lugene Opticians' Photographic Galleries (a camera supply store) in 1936, and the images from this original show have been gathered together once again for this exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. In addition to the works from Mississippi, a roomful of pictures that she took during her time in New York are also on view, and these images provide an interesting contrast to the Southern collection.

Even though Welty was a white woman in her twenties taking pictures of the predominantly black towns of Mississippi, her work has the authentic feel of an insider. These are not goopy, sentimental shots of rural workers, nor are they noble testaments to the dignity of labor. They are genuine images of day to day life, full of its dust, heat, humor and simple routine. There are scenes of both farm and city life, of people working in the fields and walking the streets in their Sunday best. While the images are too well composed to be called snapshots, there is an easy-going casualness to the work that is a testament to the comfort she instilled in her subjects.

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When Welty got to the big city, she seems to have at once become a tourist, and was drawn to the eye-catching cliches that everyone is fascinated by when they first see New York (elevated trains, tall buildings, sidewalk life, stairways and stoops). Her work from this period, while still focused primarily on the effects of the Depression, lacks the intimacy of the Mississippi work, and degenerates into (to my eye at least) second rate Abbott knock-offs.

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Collector's POV: Unfortunately, Welty's best work (that from Mississippi) doesn't fit well with our particular collecting plan. 1980's prints of Welty's images from the South (seemingly in editions of 20 or more) have come up at auction from time to time in the past few years, but in small numbers. Prices have been generally reasonable.

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

Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the Early 1930s

Through February 16th

Museum of the City of New York

1220 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029

Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson @MCNY

JTF (just the facts): A total of 50 black and white gelatin silver prints, of varying sizes, mostly small 5x7 or reverse, with a handful of larger (20x24 or mural sized) prints as well, in a single hallway gallery. A large grid of images (77 total prints) and two glass cases containing artist books are also on display. All of the works are from 1982-1984. (Installation shot at right; image of grid below right.)

Comments/Context: With the growth and prosperity across the nation in recent years, it is often easy to forget what many urban areas went through in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ray Mortenson's photographs take us back to a time in the South Bronx when the streets and neighborhoods resembled an abandoned war zone, with tumble down houses, destruction, and utter collapse the prevailing landscape.

Mortenson made an in depth study of this environment, in an almost anthropological way, taking pictures of both interiors and exteriors, and placing buildings in the context of their surroundings and separating them apart. The images are entirely empty; not a single person is to be found anywhere. What remains are the architectural remnants of broken walls and windows, graffiti, and rotting furniture. It is a bleak world of peeling paint, massive holes, chaos and neglect. There are echoes of Gordon Matta-Clark's work here, minus the conceptual overlay: walls and buildings are slashed and torn, with peep hole views through the decay.

Given the depressing subject matter, it is perhaps surprising to find that these works are consistently engaging and beautiful. Mortenson has used strong contrasts of black/white, light/shadow, and line/texture to bring vitality to these abandoned rooms and buildings. Each view has been carefully composed and crafted, and the small images draw the viewer into an intimate dialogue. The work is thought provoking, in the sense that Mortenson has taken spaces that were defined by negligence and dereliction, and paid respectful attention to them. In doing so, he has exposed some glimpses of simple beauty hidden underneath.

Collector's POV: Prior to this show, we knew nothing about the work of Ray Mortenson. Given this body of work, we have come away impressed; one of these images would easily fit into our collection. Ray Mortenson is represented by Janet Borden (site here).

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson

Through March 3rd

Museum of the City of New York

1220 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10029

Book: David Perkins, The Intelligent Eye

JTF (just the facts): Subtitled Learning to Think by Looking at Art. Published by the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1994. 95 pages.

Comments/Context: We received this book this Christmas from a friend who runs the education department at a museum we support. The author, David Perkins, has been working at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since the early 1970s, primarily in a group called Project Zero, where he has focused on teaching/learning, especially in the context of arts education and creativity. This slim volume is a quick read, but grounded in some compelling concepts.

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The first key underlying idea is that neuroscience (study of the brain) has come along far enough in the past decades to understand some fundamental things about how our brains work. (Another excellent book on this topic is On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, site here.) In a nutshell, our brains are hierarchical systems that use our memories to continuously pattern match and draw analogies. This activity creates a flow of predictions based on this data, trying to make sense of the stimuli that surround us and place it into a context that we can understand and make use of. In 90% of our daily activities, this "experiential intelligence" works extremely well and produces "right" answers and useful "solutions".

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Perkins argues that experiencing art falls into the other 10%, where our innate systems follow routines and well worn paths that don't serve us particularly well. In these cases, the normal day-to-day approach is too hasty, often narrow, and sometimes fuzzy and sprawling (lacking discipline). Certainly, we have all had times when we blasted through a museum or gallery show, making 50,000 foot conclusions about what we had seen, without having really spent the time to take it all in.

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His thesis is that a "reflective intelligence" is required in viewing art (and in other specific areas), almost as a check on the "experiental intelligence", where an active, thoughtful and systematic approach is taken to ensure a deeper understanding. The second half of the book is a series of example artworks (several of which are photographs) and the stream of consciousness observations people made when consciously using his framework for thinking.

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There are four anchor points to his "reflective intelligence" as applied to looking at art. The first is to slow your looking down, to resolve to spend several minutes with key works, and to allow your eyes to work and generate questions, and finally, when the flow stops, to look away, and then return again with a fresh perspective. This is really about giving your brain the time and space it needs to process what is before you. The second is to make your thinking "broad and adventurous", to break away from the obvious conclusions that your brain has already provided and to look for open-ended solutions outside the normal boundaries. This involves looking for "surprises", connections, and even technical specifics that can trigger a new pathway of thought. The third concept is to add a layer of more analytical thought on top of the expanded ideas that were generated by the second step. To summarize this idea perhaps simplistically, the concept is to dig in and investigate these ideas that have been surfaced with some rigor, "clearly and deeply". Perkins' final idea is that once you have gone through the first three steps, a summing up or orchestration of all the data is needed; organization is necessary to generate final conclusions. In this section, he refers to many well known strategies for looking at art, that include description, formal analysis, interpretation, and finally judgement, that are more oriented toward criticism. In his view, while these "art specific" strategies can be useful in providing frameworks for thinking, his view is that his "reflective" approach can be used for areas beyond the world of art. The final chapters of the book are about just this topic: how to apply and transfer this art-based thinking into other realms of thought.

Collector's POV: This is a short book, but nevertheless, quite thought provoking in terms of challenging the established ways that most people (including ourselves) fly though art exhibits. I have always thought that people had an inherent "pace" to their viewing of art (slow, fast, or somewhere in the middle), and that it is important to find people with similar pacing to enjoy your art with, or you will be driven crazy (Have you ever gone to a large museum show with someone with meaningfully slower pacing than yourself? It's maddening.) This book has led me to reevaluate this idea, and to consider slowing myself down a bit more, and to hopefully with a little more observant mindset, find some deeper and more interesting conclusions.

Book: Lee Friedlander, New Mexico

JTF (just the facts): Lee Friedlander, New Mexico, 2008, published by Radius Books. 74 pages. Includes 51 black and white images, with a foreword by Andrew Smith and an essay by Emily Ballew Neff. Published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico (site here).

Comments/Context: This exhibition catalogue collects together images that Friedlander took in New Mexico over the past two decades and were shown at the Andrew Smith Gallery this past fall. These images have been drawn from several different projects, and many of the pictures were previously published in Sticks and Stones, The Desert Seen or elsewhere, and as such, this group has a little bit of an "old wine in a new bottle" feel to it.

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Friedlander's recent work, regardless of its particular subject matter (harsh desert scrub brush, fences/yard landscapes, sidewalks/roadways/shadows etc.), has settled into a common framework: square format images, full of high density patterning and visual contrasts. Going back to his earlier work of the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander has always been interested in how the camera "sees", where the three dimensional world is flattened into a two dimensional plane of line and form. These more current works have taken this concept several evolutionary steps further, as the images get more crowded, brimming with contradictory and chaotic motifs and constructions.

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Friedlander's newest project uses the window (and oftentimes the side mirror) of a non-descript rental car as an additional framing mechanism for his world view. Given the setting of the car, one might think of these pictures as fly-by snapshots, but indeed, they have the same careful composition of all Friedlander's work, and the frames and posts of the car just give him an additional set of dominant lines to unbalance and divide the picture plane.

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An interesting thing to consider is whether the whole construct of this exhibit, namely the New Mexico setting, matters at all. Friedlander's work isn't "about" his environment per se; it's about the compositional shapes and forms that are the outgrowth of the picture making process. So whether the pictures are "of" New Mexico (or any other place for that matter) seems irrelevant. It is his vision of these places that we came to see.

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Collector's POV: Oddly enough, we actually already own an image from this exhibit (here), which came from the Sticks and Stones series, and which we bought from Fraenkel Gallery (site here) a few years ago. Since that time, and likely as a result of the massive Friedlander touring retrospective, retail prices for Friedlander's new work have continued to rise. We don't have a price list from this show, but earlier last year, Friedlander's new work was selling in the $7000 range at retail. One annoying thing about this book is that there is no listing of the images by title, date etc., so there is no way to reference the images, except by their page number. Overall, however, we continue to be amazed by Freidlander's work, and even though this may not be his most ground breaking collection of images, we expect these pictures will likely stand the test of time quite well.

Photo Book Wednesdays

We just can't seem to ever get enough photo books. In the past months, we felt like we haven't devoted enough time to the amazing array of new, old, and out of print photo books that help inform our collecting passions. So we've decided to get more systematic about things in the new year and mark a regular day (Wednesdays) where we will review photo books of all kinds: monographs, exhibition catalogues, art/photo criticism, etc. Since books tend to hang around a long time, and are a little less time sensitive than auctions and gallery shows, we feel like it is acceptable to group them together once a week (knowing full well that we still may write about books on other days as well).

A couple of quick notes on this process:

• You can expect that we have bought every book we review with real cash money, unless we highlight the fact that it was given to us by an artist, gallery or friend.
• We are only going to review books that we think are worth having in your library, so there won't be any rating system or quality gauge: if it's here, it's worth your time (and money) in our opinion.
• Since we're not a media outlet, we don't feel obligated to only review recently published books from the current year. We buy books from all kinds of sources and discover photographers in serendipitous ways, so we will very likely (and often) review books published years or decades ago, if they are new to us.
• As we have said before, we don't care about signed copies, books owned previously by famous people, or even first editions. We want a clean, fine copy that we can use as reference. So you won't find many of the super high end, limited edition, slipcase kinds of books being reviewed here.
• We will not link to Amazon, Abebooks or elsewhere in the hopes you will click through and earn us some referral dollars. If you are inspired to follow up on a book we have reviewed, you certainly can find it without our help.

There are of course lots of places to read reviews and criticisms of photo books (in the blogosphere, 5B4 (here) is the best we have found). We hope to add a collector's perspective to the sea of commentary and let you follow along as we educate ourselves.

Finally, below is a picture of our idea of the perfect art library. It is an image of Donald Judd's library at his ranch in Marfa, Texas (Judd Foundation website here.) To us, it looks like a practical, comfortable, welcoming place to sit down and enjoy art books. Just imagine if all those shelves were filled with photo books...

Photo LA, January 9-11, 2009

When we lived on the West coast, Photo LA was just a quick and inexpensive plane trip down from the Bay area, and so we visited this photography show regularly every year, and more often than not, came home with something wrapped in cardboard and bubble wrap. Since we have found our way onto quite few lists, our mailbox has been full of brochures for this year's fair, but sadly, we will not be joining the fun in Los Angeles this year.

In the past, the show was dominated by familiar California and Arizona based galleries and private dealers (Bellows, Cohen, Etherton, Fetterman, Hertzmann, Nichols, Singer, Smith etc.), but over the years, the base has expanded to included galleries, dealers and book publishers from all over, totalling just under 70 exhibitors for this week. The show had previously been held in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (when we attended), but is now in the Barker Hangar.

In conjunction with the action in the exhibit hall, there are lectures, "collecting seminars" (as if we didn't know how to collect already), book signings, and other events scheduled at various times over the run of the show. The "conversations" between LACMA photography curator Charlotte Cotton and David Maisel (12-1PM on 1/10) and Susan Meiselas (5-6PM on 1/10) look interesting, and we certainly wouldn't miss the lecture by Catherine Opie (1PM on 1/11), having recently seen her retrospective at the Guggenheim.

As always, if you're a collector going to this show, feel free to post a few comments, so the rest of us can live vicariously.

Photo LA

January 9-11

Barker Hangar, Santa Monica

Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography @Met

JTF (just the facts): 34 images (including a handful of smaller works in a glass case), displayed in the Modern Photography gallery, a single large, high-ceilinged room. (Installation shot at right.) The following artists are represented in this group show:

James Wallace Black

Frank Breuer (2)

James Casebere

Gregory Crewdson

Edward Curtis

Thomas Demand

Julian Faulhaber

Robert Grober

Naoki Honjo

Craig Kalpakjian

Shai Kremer

M. Laroche

David Levinthal

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2)

Vik Muniz

James Nasmyth

Ruth Orkin

Gabriel Orozco

Stephen Shore

Taryn Simon

Joel Sternfeld

Thomas Struth

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Bernard Volta

Mark Wyse

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Comments/Context: The arguments about the concept of "truth" in photography are as old and well worn as the medium itself. For nearly every person who ardently believes in the sanctity and veracity of the photograph (especially as evidence of a documentary truth), there is another who has claimed since the beginning that all photographs are fabrications - it's just a matter of degree (from seemingly innocent cropping and darkroom dodging/burning to outright staging and manipulation). While the arrival of digital capture and Photoshop in the past few decades have raised this question again in new and more obvious ways, this feud has been around a long time, and isn't likely to go away any time soon.

The Met had waded into this fight with its third exhibit in its new space for contemporary photography. My first reaction when I heard about this show was that it was a pretty tired subject, well traveled already and hackneyed, with a predictable set of photographers and techniques that would be represented. And while some of the images on display here are expected (can a show about "reality" not include Gregory Crewdson?), the overall effect is much crisper and tighter than the previous two efforts in this gallery. Instead of providing an unwieldy set of wildly inventive and obviously false manipulations and distortions, the group of pictures in this show have been carefully selected to totter right on the edge of truth, with a significant number of the images being straight photographs of subjects that just look unreal, due to an unexpected change in scale, viewpoint or framing. (As an aside, I never seem to tire of tilt-shift photography, and there is an excellent example of this technique in this show by Naoki Honjo, Tokyo, Japan, 2004, above right.) There are staged pictures that look haltingly real and there are real pictures that look haltingly staged. Perhaps the takeaway here is that given more powerful tools, contemporary photographers are finding increasingly subtle ways to play with our perception of truth. These are sly and quiet games, rather than shouts and flourishes.

One interesting outgrowth of this exhibit for me was a desire to trace the influences of many of these contemporary photographers back through the history of film and the cinema, rather than through the traditional roads of still photography. A few of the images in this show seem to bear the strong influence of a cinematic eye, and it would be enlightening to understand the historical precedents in the world of film for what we are seeing in the galleries today.

Collector's POV: While there are some terrific images in this exhibit, there were few works that would really match our particular collection. The pair of Frank Breuer images (Industrial House (Nike), 2000 and Industrial House (Philip Morris), 2000, at right) would likely be the best fit.

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

Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography

Through March 22nd

Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

Of National Interest: Photographs from the Collection @Art Institute of Chicago

JTF (just the facts): 53 images, divided into 7 separate groups by photographer and "nation", displayed in three small connecting rooms on the museum's lower level. (Installation shot at right.) Images range from the mid 1850s through the 1990s and span albumen prints, photogravures, gelatin silver prints, and color prints. The seven thematic groups include:

• Gustave Le Gray (5 images) France
• Alexander Gardner et al (8 images) United States Civil War
• Edward Curtis (7 images) The North American Indian
• Robert Frank (12 images ) The Americans
• August Sander (11 images) People of the 20th Century/Germany
• Gilles Peress (5 images) Northern Ireland
• Raghubir Singh (5 images) India

Comments/Context: If there was one overarching theme that dominated this year's unprecedented election cycle in America, it was that our nation had somehow lost its way, had forgotten what it was that had made us great, and was in need of profound frame-breaking change (in countless large and small ways) to lead us back to ourselves. Perhaps it was the fact that we had drifted so far off course that the decisions determining our path forward elicited such energy and action by the people at large. It was time to reconsider and remake the idea of our nation.

Given this dialogue going on all around us, this timely exhibit at the Art Institute chronicles how different photographers over the life of the medium have taken on the task of depicting a nation. The question then becomes, what do these pictures tell us about the general topic of nations and national character? What lessons do they show us as we consider our own direction?

Some of the "nation" projects in this exhibit have become icons of photography: Robert Frank's incisive portrait of 1950s America, August Sander's meticulous categorization of the German people, Edward Curtis' collective portrait of the vanishing American Indians. As such, they are so familiar that they have lost a little of their freshness in terms of bringing forth new ideas. (That said, this many great vintage images from these three series are exhibited so rarely that they are still wholeheartedly worth seeing.)

The two 19th century series (Le Gray and Gardner) fail to elicit much about their respective nations. They tell us about soldiers, and wars, and life around these one-dimensional activities, but they don't lead to many conclusions about the national characters that underlie the marches and conflicts. The two most recent series in the exhibit (Peress and Singh) are the most though provoking, and left us wishing there had been more images in these two groups (it's hard to draw an even rudimentary portrait from 5 images each). The Peress images of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland are big, dark pictures, brimming with action and emotion. The Singh images of India are saturated with color and cultural contrasts. Both seem to capture well the hidden and not-so hidden vignettes and identities that make a nation unique.

In all, while the exhibit itself is a bit uneven, the idea underlying it (whether we can know and capture the spirit of a nation) is one well worth exploring. Perhaps some other 19th century projects could have been explored (Beato's Japan?), or left out entirely in favor of two additional 20th century bodies of work.

Collector's POV: While none of the work in this exhibit fits our particular collection, we certainly enjoyed seeing the excellent Frank and Sander vintage prints. And books by Peress and Singh will certainly be added to our photo library in the near future, so we can educate ourselves about their work more fully.

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

Of National Interest: Photographs from the Collection
Through January 11th

Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603

Disfarmer Puppet Show

Here's one for the eclectic category, recommended by another photography collector: Disfarmer, a "table-top" puppet show by Dan Hurlin based on the life and work of portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer.

Disfarmer
January 27-February 8

St. Ann's Warehouse
38 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

More Disfarmer at Fugitive Vision here and Looking Around (Time) here.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Art and Photography of Paris @Art Institute of Chicago

JTF (just the facts): A total of 42 photographs, 5 paintings, and 9 etchings/drawings, displayed in a single gallery on the lower level of the museum. In addition to the 14 images by Cartier-Bresson, photographs by Atget (1 image), Brassai (7 images), Kertesz (16 images), Bing (3 images), and Seuphor (1 image) are shown. The other artworks in the exhibit are by Lhote (Cartier-Bresson's painting teacher), de Chirico, Mondrian, Dali, Picasso, and Matisse. All of the pieces in the exhibit are from the late 1920s and 1930s. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: During the holidays, we visited family in Chicago and were able to sneak off one morning for a quick visit to the Art Institute to see the two photo shows on view. So while Chicago is not our usual territory, we'll cover both exhibits in today's posts.

We're all familiar with Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment", where the contents in his frame would resolve themselves into an amazing composition for only a fleeting instant, which he would capture with his camera. Many people have commented that Cartier-Bresson's genius was not so much capturing this decisive moment, but in fact being ready, with his camera pointed in the right direction and pre-focused, before the decisive moment happened. This exhibition (in honor of the centennial of his birth) takes that concept a step further, where we see a complex mix of artistic and cultural influences that were boiling around in Cartier-Bresson's mind and that helped to shape his photographic vision.

The exhibit is organized thematically by subject matter, where carefully selected groups of related images are juxtaposed. On one wall, Kertesz nude distortions and Brassai etched nudes are paired with Picasso and Matisse nude etchings. On another, a classic Mondrian painting is flanked by two Bing geometric Eiffel Tower images and a handful of more abstract Kertesz images. There is a trio of sea scenes (Bing, Cartier-Bresson, and Lhote), as well as groups of bicycles, faces, portraits, and intertwined bodies. All are meticulously selected and hung to show their similarities.

The major takeaway for us was the idea that Cartier-Bresson, indeed all the artists of that place and time, seemed to be liberally exchanging compositional ideas. The echoes and parallels that are seen in these pairings are too exact to be random; they had to be seeing each other's work, thinking and talking about it, and internalizing it to such a point that the ideas were then reformed and reused. It says that the worlds of painting and photography in Paris were intertwined communities, learning from and referencing each other. Disparate ideas from surrealism, abstraction, modernism, and humanism were all borrowed and merged into Cartier-Bresson's approach. In many ways, this exhibit seems less about Carteir-Bresson in specific (there are actually more Kertesz images in this show than Cartier-Bressons), but more about the overall artistic melting pot of the period.

As an aside, since Cartier-Bresson gave up photography in his later life and returned to drawing and painting, it would be interesting in a future exhibit to see a few of these later works juxtaposed with the images from this period to see how his vision continued to evolve.

Collector's POV: Cartier-Bresson's work is ubiquitous at auction, with later prints available in nearly every sale. Vintage prints from 1920s and 1930s Paris (like those in this exhibit) are much harder to come by and range from perhaps $50000 to well into six figures for more iconic pictures, assuming you could find them. Ironically, the prints from this exhibit (and this period in general one might suppose) aren't particularly strong in terms of craftsmanship. Overall, while we don't have any Cartier-Bresson images in our collection at the moment, we certainly came away from this show with an increased appreciation for his early work.

There were also several splendid early Kertesz images of Paris in this exhibit that we had not seen before; additionally, there was a Bing image that we have in our collection up on the wall (here). In general, this Paris period is full of tremendous photography by a variety of artists.

As background, the Cartier-Bresson Foundation site can be found here.

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

Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Art and Photography of Paris
Through January 4th (unfortunately closed yesterday we realise)

Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603

Happy Holidays!

In our image saturated world, the photographic holiday card is yet another ritualistic way that people exchange pictures. What's interesting about these cards is that they often come from people that we don't see at all during the regular year, and so this is their one chance to give us a glimpse of their lives from afar.

As we have somewhat young children in our house, our card bowl is overflowing with shots of other people's kids: in perfectly posed and matching outfits, in costumes, in exotic locales, and in one particularly odd example this year, underwater. Adults are never seen in these images, unless it is a "family photo" (i.e. the one staged shot taken during the entire year when all of the family got into the frame, likely at some family gathering/reunion or taken by some random stranger passing by at just the right moment).

A decade ago, these pictures would have been actual film pictures, stuck onto the outside or tucked into the fold of the card. With the advent of digital technology, only the Luddites are still doing this. (I say this knowing that we did indeed send out actual printed pictures this year, as we went with a snappy letter press card.) Most folks have migrated to an online source (Shutterfly or the like), where their digital picture is merged into a template and printed together as one piece on card stock. To our eyes, while these cards might be "produced" better, they seem to have lost some of the craftiness and personality of the old kind. They all look the same, even when the photos are of people we know.

Artists and photographers have long sent holiday cards as well, usually not of their kids, but actual mini art objects. Our favorite is the one below:

Mapplethorpe got it just right. (Christmas Tree, 1987, above.) Simple, elegant, and somehow entirely festive at the same time.

This post will be our last of 2008, so there is no need to come back and check for something new in the remaining days of this year - there won't be anything, we promise. We will back with passionate, daily posting on January 5th.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the process of writing this blog in the past months and thank you wholeheartedly for taking the time to listen. If you are feeling particularly generous this year, introduce our blog to a handful of other collectors or photo enthusiasts that you know. There's nothing like a personal referral from a taste maker to get people interested in something new, and we will do our best to live up to your recommendation.

Overall, we look forward with great optimism and anticipation to new shows, new auctions, new books, and stunning photography of all kinds in 2009. Best wishes.

Top Photography Shows of 2008 (Abbreviated)

Since just about every other news source and art critic on the planet has already weighed in with his/her "Top 10" list, it seems only fitting that we should offer our own view of what was noteworthy in the world of photography in 2008. While there was of course a major rebalancing of prices in the photography market in line with the larger economy (and this is of meaningful interest to collectors), in the end, it's the art itself that matters most, so that's where we'll focus our remarks.

Since we have only been writing this blog since mid-August of this year, our commentary is limited to the time period since then (thus "abbreviated" in the title). Our general pace would have us visiting approximately 100 photography shows in galleries and museums in any given year; the blog has a total of 43 reviews for the past four and a half months. Next year, assuming we keep the same pace up, we'll be even more comprehensive.

There were a grand total of six shows that received our top rating of three stars during this year. They were, in alphabetical order by artist's name:

William Eggleston @Whitney Museum
(original review here)

Susan Meiselas @ICP
(original review here)

Catherine Opie @Guggenheim Museum
(original review here)

Cindy Sherman @Metro Pictures
(original review here)

Hiroshi Sugimoto @Gagosian Gallery
(original review here)

Minor White @Howard Greenberg Gallery
(original review here)

In our minds, great shows inspire us, move us, force us to think in new ways, and most of all educate us, about the artists and their work, and hopefully about ourselves in some degree as a byproduct. Every single one of the listed shows significantly increased our understanding of these photographers, convinced us of their importance in the overall history of the medium, and produced staggering moments when we were struck dumb by the sheer grandeur of the art on view.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded by images and "stuff", we are constantly on the lookout for the memorable, for the event or outing that will rise above the noise and somehow make a more lasting and meaningful impression. These shows meet that standard. I can in my mind's eye easily recreate each and every one of them: the sublime Sugimoto black room, the brooding and empty Meiselas images of Kurdistan, the pitch perfect satire of Cindy Sherman, Opie's intense and beautiful self portraits, the unexpected compositions and color of William Eggleston, and the quiet meditations of Minor White. Perhaps the common thread among these shows (and the key to their ultimate success and longevity) is that they were each overflowing not just with compelling pictures, but with compelling ideas.

Flor Garduño, Mujeres Fantasticas @Throckmorton

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 black and white images, displayed in wide black frames, throughout the gallery. Most of the works are 20x16 inches, although there are a handful in a larger size (approximately 40x30 inches). Negatives range from the late 1980s to the present. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Looking at the work of Mexican photographer Flor Garduño, you would never, ever, mistake her work for that made by a man. Indeed, Garduño's images are among the most overtly "female" pictures we have seen.

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Nearly all of Garduño's pictures have a sensual female form/nude staged together with symbols from the natural world (fruit, leaves, flowers, feathers etc.). Her compositions have an earthy mythology to them, an almost dream-like or magical quality that seems drawn from the long history of Latin America. In her early days, Garduño was an assistant to Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and she seems to have absorbed the same love of the uniquely Mexican culture, as well as the ability to structure images with poetic simplicity. She is also a master printer; all of her works are printed with an astounding and meticulous attention to dark and light. This show mixes a few new pieces with a variety of other works from the past decade or two, so there is some ability to see how her approach and aesthetic has been refined over time.

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Collector's POV: For us, while Garduño's work is always made with an original point of view and with thoughtful care, the results are often hit or miss. When it works, the images are stunning; when it doesn't, the works feel a bit contrived and odd. The works in this show are priced between $2500 and $9000, dependent mostly on size it seems. We actually already own an excellent nude by Garduño (Los Limones, 1998, found here and also on display in this exhibit), which we bought a few years ago from Andrew Smith (gallery site here) when we were living on the West coast. In addition to prints found in the retail market, Garduño's work has become more available at reasonable prices in the secondary market in the past few years.

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

Flor Garduño, Mujeres Fantasticas

Through January 9th

Throckmorton Fine Art

145 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

Auction Results Fall 2008: Swann (December) and Christie's (Constantiner)

The final two photography sales of the year were at Swann, with its combo book and photo sale, and at Christie's, with the fashion and glamour images of the Constantiner collection. The results are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Swann Galleries

Total Lots: 401
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $854000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1233650

Total Lots Sold: 243
Total Lots Bought In: 158
Buy In %: 39.40%
Total Sale Proceeds: $442741

This sale had two distinct sections that performed differently: the photo books accounted for approximately 73% of the lots, and delivered 57% of the proceeds with a buy-in rate of 35.40%, while the photography accounted for approximately 27% of the lots, and delivered 43% of the proceeds with a buy in rate of 50.00%. Thus, as a group, the lower priced books did "better" than the more expensive photography.

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

Low Total Lots: 384
Low Sold: 236
Low Bought In: 148
Buy In %: 38.54%
Total Low Estimate: $878650
Total Low Sold: $334741

Mid Total Lots: 15
Mid Sold: 6
Mid Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 60.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $280000
Total Mid Sold: $84000

High Total Lots: 2
High Sold: 1
High Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total High Estimate: $75000
Total High Sold: $24000

The lot by lot results can be found here.

Overall, another generally solid outing for Swann in these volatile economic times.

Christie's - Constantiner

Total Lots: 320
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $7472500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $11020500

Total Lots Sold: 281
Total Lots Bought In: 39
Buy In %: 12.19%
Total Sale Proceeds: $7721875

This sale seems to have performed almost exactly to expectations: it did well across the board, but would likely have delivered a meaningfully bigger outcome under more optimistic economic conditions. That said, Christie's brought in proceeds above the Total Low Estimate, which was a rarity this auction season.

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

Low Total Lots: 146
Low Sold: 135
Low Bought In: 11
Buy In %: 7.53%
Total Low Estimate: $784500
Total Low Sold: $738625

Mid Total Lots: 127
Mid Sold: 106
Mid Bought In: 21
Buy In %: 16.54%
Total Mid Estimate: $2816000
Total Mid Sold: $1881000

High Total Lots: 47
High Sold: 41
High Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 12.77%
Total High Estimate: $7420000
Total High Sold: $5102250

The lot by lot results can be found here.

The Low end was quite strong here, but the quality of the material led to a good performance across the board. The low buy in rate for the High lots was impressive, but the dollar figures lot by lot for these same High lots were a bit soft. Chalk this one up to poor timing for an otherwise strong collection.

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1968-2008 @Whitney

JTF (just the facts): A total of 159 images (134 color and 25 black and white), along with 2 videos, and 4 cases of miscellaneous materials (books, catalogs, album covers etc.), hung in a series of 10 divided spaces, covering the entire third floor of the museum. (Memphis, 1971, at right.)

Comments/Context: So much has been written about William Eggleston's original 1976 show at the MoMA (scandalous! boring! notorious! ground breaking!) and its subsequent impact on several generations of color photographers that it has taken on a legendary aura. So it is somewhat surprising that it has taken more than 30 years for any New York museum to give him another solo show. The comprehensive retrospective now on view at the Whitney covers the entire span of his career, from his early black and white images, through the famous William Eggleston's Guide project/show, and on through a number of other strong bodies of work, up to the present.

Over the years, the never ending mantra on Eggleston has been his amazing use of color. Ah, the color! Lush color, subtle color, saturated color, color tuned by warm light, glorious color (and a staggering number of bad puns and word games using color: "local color", "living color" etc.). In seeing all this work together for the first time, I came to see the color as part of a larger puzzle, where the real genius of Eggleston lies in composition, in the most mundane of questions about where to put the camera. I imagine his artist's brain working something like this: out on a random walk, shooting pictures, his eye catches a glimpse of a breathtaking (insert color here - green, for example, as in the picture above right). The harder question then becomes, how to turn this mundane, ordinary subject (albeit with a graceful set of colors) into something interesting? Eggleston's vision took him even a step further, where these commonplace scenes (primarily of the rural South) are somehow filled with an intensity of emotion, a Faulkner-esque dread in many cases. While not every image Eggleston has taken is a winner, there are far too many iconic compositions in this show for it to be luck. And while his work is often labeled as having a "snapshot aesthetic", the consistency of his approach, across the years and in work that is lesser known, is the stunning takeaway for me from this exhibit.

All of Eggleston's "greatest hits" are on view here: the tricycle, the red ceiling (Untitled, 1973 at right), the dog licking the puddle, the peaches sign, most of them displayed in the entry or in the cavernous central room (where images from the Guide, the 14 Pictures portfolio and the Troubled Waters portfolio are intermingled). The three galleries on the right side were of the most interest to me. In the first room, Eggleston's early black and white images from the early 1960s are shown. In these pictures, you can see Eggleston experimenting with composition and exploring the everyday American subjects around him (diners, drive-ins, cars), as he refined his approach to the medium. The middle room on the right holds 20 pictures from the Los Alamos series, along with some other ephemera in cases. There were unexpectedly many more tremendous images in this group that I had remembered. In the far right room, Eggleston's black and white video Stranded in Canton is shown on four stations, along with some less than remarkable large scale black and white portraits. The video is a wild, boozy, almost surreal vision of nightlife, fast food and other general weirdness. The scenes near the end of a rowdy group of men biting the heads off of chickens (the heads drop, the headless bodies jerk and twitch) are creepy and unsettling.

The rooms on the left side and back of the exhibit trace a variety of projects and commissions, picking representative samples and highlights from each. There are works from the Carter commission project, the Graceland commission, the Dust Bells portfolio, the Southern Suite, the Morals of Vision portfolio, the Democratic Vision portfolio, the True Stories project, a selection of new works (printed larger than anything else in the show) and a few portraits. There are winners buried here as well, although in lesser numbers and with lesser overall intensity somehow.

Beyond the work, a few comments on the staging of the exhibit are in order. In general, the structure and architecture of this show are weak, and make the work seem less inspiring than it is. While there is a general chronology at play, it is hidden and needed to be much more explicit. An opportunity to tell a much more linear narrative of the evolution of Eggleston's art was missed. While there are some interesting juxtaposition of images, the scale of the rooms and the expanses of space in the middle tend to encourage scanning the images from 20 feet, rather than getting up close to engage them more intimately, so these interrelationships are lost. There is an aimless, wandering style to this exhibit, and a tendency to see your favorites from afar and "check them off", thus all the works from various time periods wash together and lose definition. And why the Whitney didn't do an audio guide, taking advantage of Eggleston's marvelous gravelly Southern drawl is beyond me (there is a short video of Eggleston on the Whitney website however, linked below).

But putting these distractions and detractors aside, the work in this exhibit is forceful, novel, and memorable, and the retrospective format does a good job of covering all Eggleston's periods of work. Simply put, it is a must-see show of a masterful career.

Collector's POV: The recent auction of the Berman collection of Eggleston images at Christie's is the best proxy for current market conditions for Eggleston's work (preview post here, results post here). In general, demand and prices are both high and consistently strong. At retail, Eggleston is represented by Cheim & Read (site here), although there are 26 galleries listed on artnet that claim to have Eggleston inventory, so his work is spread around the market a bit. Beyond the original color dye transfers, some new digital prints are now available. The Eggleston Trust website can be found here.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1968-2008
Through January 25th

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

Richard Avedon: Performance @Pace/MacGill

JTF (just the facts): A total of 55 images of various formats and sizes, all portraits, shown against dark grey walls, throughout the entire skylit gallery. Negatives from five decades, beginning in 1940s.

Comments/Context: Richard Avedon's minimalist frontal portraits against white or grey backgrounds have a style and intimacy unlike most anything else in the history of photography; a high contrast Avedon portrait is hardly ever mistaken for that of another artist. In this show, a slice of his work has been pulled together under the common theme of "performers", and includes portraits of famous and not-so-famous artists, actors, writers, musicians, dancers, and singers. (Marian Anderson, contralto, New York, June 30, 1955, at right.)

This exhibition has few surprises in terms of undiscovered or "new" images. Most will seem like familiar friends as you tour the gallery. There is however an interesting set of contact prints from a 1949 session with Truman Capote hung back behind the main wall that shows part of the editing process Avedon went through after the film was developed. Otherwise, it's an excellent (if well-known) parade of Marilyn, the Beatles, Dylan, and Charlie Chaplin. Our particular favorite was the image of Nureyev's foot from 1967.

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Collector's POV: The images in this show are a mixture of vintage and later prints, priced between $11000 on the low end and $850000 at the top. There is a large amount of Avedon's work consistently available in the secondary market, as many of his most famous images were made in editions and portfolios of 50, 75, 100, and even 200 prints (Natassja Kinski and the Serpent as an example of the largest of edition size). A new book, Richard Avedon: Performance, is also available (image at right). The Richard Avedon Foundation website can be found here.

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

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Richard Avedon: Performance

Through January 3rd

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Pace/MacGill Gallery

545 West 22nd Street

New York, NY 10011

Catherine Opie: American Photographer @Guggenheim

JTF (just the facts): A total of 177 works, shown in four of the Annex galleries (Levels 2, 4, 5, and 7) adjacent to the main rotunda: 54 panoramic black and white gelatin silver and platinum images of urban architecture on Level 2, 45 color images (primarily portraits, but also interior domestic scenes and house exteriors) through a series of galleries on Level 4, 28 color images (ice houses and surfers) in one room on Level 5, and 50 color images in two galleries (domestic scenes, community images, and television Polaroids in one room, and large scale portraits in the other) on Level 7.

Comments/Context: Catherine Opie's mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim tells the story of an artist who is consistently and intensely interested in human communities: in how we gather together in temporary and permanent groups, how we associate with and identify each other, how we find company and a sense of place from relations with others, and how we organize and structure the world around us to hold these communities. Her body of work spans portraiture, landscape, city/architectural images, and even a kind of social documentary, and is organized into a number of projects or series that are held together as differing strands of the larger exploration she is interested in. Taken individually, they cross a dazzling variety of genres and types, and show an artist experimenting with different ways to approach and explain the world around her.

The exhibition itself is chopped up into four different sections on the different floors and is grouped somewhat thematically rather than chronologically, so there is a little jumping around that happens if you are trying to follow her progression through time. The Level 2 galleries house her various projects depicting urban architecture. The Freeways series from 1994-1995 are intimate platinum prints of Los Angeles freeway overpasses, accenting their monumental scale and intersecting sculptural forms, absent cars or people or humanity of any kind. (Untitled #40, 1994-1995, at right.) These images contrast the stereotype of Los Angeles freeways as congested, smog ridden, dens of frustration with the surprisingly sublime beauty of these engineered structures. These are stunning works, taken with the loving care of a local. The Mini Malls series from 1997-1998 finds Opie out on Sunday mornings, capturing empty moments in transitional neighborhoods, where the architecture itself shows the cultural transformations and mixings going on around her. These large panoramas, shot from the street level, show the changing dynamics of communities inside Los Angeles, even when these subcultures may not be otherwise apparent from the outside. The more recent Wall Street and Chicago projects use this same large format panorama to tackle other cities and architectural identities with somewhat less success (the Wall Street works echo Thomas Struth's slightly smaller images of similar empty downtown streets).

The works on Level 4 include many of Opie's best known images. Her Being and Having and Portraits series are portraits of her friends in the gay, lesbian and transgender communities, against saturated color backgrounds. Opie has acknowledged the influence of 16th century Northern Renaissance portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger on these works, and the photographs (some full size, others 3/4 or torso) have a simple rigor and formality that enhance the beauty of the subjects. There is a warmth in these pictures that distances them from Arbus' "freaks"; as you wander through these galleries, these are not specimens from some anthropological exercise - they are people whose triumphant individuality (and human vulnerability) is on display in a way that makes you want to meet and know them.

Opie's three self portraits (done as part of this series) are among the most powerful works in the show. One shows her with a kindergarten stick figure image of a family with two moms carved into her back (Self-Portrait, 1993 at right), one shows her with a leather hood, arms covered in piercing needles, and the word "Pervert" carved into her chest, and the last shows her nursing her baby son. Together, they ask all sorts of questions about what it means to have a traditional family, what it is to live a life outside the "acceptable" mainstream, and how our common humanity brings us together, regardless of these differences. These are beautifully crafted works of art, full of hard and real emotion.

Two more projects are found on this floor, Domestic and Houses. The Domestic series chronicles the everyday lives of lesbian families from across America, taken by Opie while out on the road in an RV. While these images have a snapshot quality to them (even though she uses a view camera), there are tensions underneath and they are asking some underlying questions about what "family" means (especially when it isn't a "traditional" family). The Houses images are frontal shots of mansions in Bel Air, where the gates and architectural ornaments have interesting parallels with the tattoos and body piercings of the previous rooms.

On Level 5, a single gallery houses two sets of work, Ice Houses and Surfers, hung on opposite walls facing each other. (Untitled #6, 2003, at right.) Both projects explore the formation of temporary communities (one, fishermen during the short season when the lakes are frozen, and the other, the surfers, clustered together in the expanse of the sea, waiting for the next set of waves). Both groups employ a Sugimoto-like bisecting of the images at the horizon, and the large images dwarf the subjects in the vastness of the environment, the people/shacks often becoming lost or fragmented in the flatness of the fog. Opie has called this combination her Rothko chapel, and together, these works create a meditative environment, where there is quiet waiting and isolation and longing.

On Level 7, Opie's scenes from her family life, In and Around Home, chronicle her own environment, her home, children and family, and the people and storefronts that make up her multi-racial Los Angeles community. These pictures are interspersed with sets of Polaroids taken directly from her television, mostly of President Bush during the 2004 election season. These are subtler pictures, that aren't as directly powerful as some of her other work, but perhaps can be thought of as an evolution in her exploration of gender and community, now from the new angle of parent. In the last room are a series of monumental (larger than life size) Polaroid portraits of performance artist Ron Athey. These are spectacular pictures, that draw on martyrdom images from the ages, shown through the modern lens of body modification and pain. There is a jaw-dropping grace and composure in these pictures, where lush textures intermingle with harsh realities.

If there is any single take away from this tremendous show, I think it must center on Opie's careful and considered approach to her art. All of her work is crisp in detail, formally strong and compositionally meticulous. Like many artists, her subject matter is brought forth from the emotions of her own life and from her own struggles to understand herself and her world. As you look through the body of work she has assembled thus far, the common note is a real and genuine attention to and compassion for those around her, particularly for their attempts to be themselves regardless of what the society around them deems "normal". In sum, this is without a doubt one the best shows of the year. And don't miss the audio guide commentary given by Opie herself, as her thoughtful and grounded approach shines through.

Collector's POV: For our specific collection, we have always thought that a pair or group of the Freeways would fit well and still be representative of her artistic approach. Opie is represented by Gladstone Gallery (here) and Regen Projects (here), and a small amount of her work, from various projects, has been available in the secondary market in the past five years or so.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Catherine Opie: American Photographer
Through January 7th

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10128