The Checklist: 11/22/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

No reviews at this time.

Midtown
ONE STAR: Joel Meyerowitz: Howard Greenberg: December 1: review
TWO STARS: Lee Friedlander: Pace/MacGill: December 22: review
ONE STAR: Abelardo Morell: Bonni Benrubi: December 22: review
ONE STAR: New Photography 2012: MoMA: February 4: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

TWO STARS: Nadav Kander: Flowers: November 24: review
TWO STARS: Doug Rickard: Yossi Milo: November 24: review
ONE STAR: Danny Lyon: Churner and Churner: December 8: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

No reviews at this time.

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

November 23: Photographs (London): Bloomsbury: catalog
November 23: 7th Photo Auction (Vienna): WestLicht: catalog
November 28: Modern and Contemporary Photographs (Berlin): Villa Grisebach: catalog
November 29: Photographie (Cologne): Lempertz: catalog
December 5: 19th-21st Century Photography (Berlin): Bassenge: catalog
December 7: Photographs (Cologne): Van Ham: catalog
December 11: Fine Photographs & Photobooks (New York): Swann: catalog
December 12/13: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl (New York): Sotheby's: catalog

Joel Meyerowitz, 50 Years of Photographs, Part I: 1962-1977 @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 47 black and white and color photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung against light brown walls in the main gallery space, the book alcove, and the back transition gallery. The works in the show were made between 1962 and 1976. The 17 black and white images are a mix of vintage gelatin silver prints and modern archival pigment prints, sized between 9x13 and 11x15. No edition information was available for the vintage prints; the pigment prints are available in editions of 25. The 30 color images are a mix of modern archival pigment prints, vintage chromogenic prints and vintage dye transfer prints, sized between 9x14 and 27x40 (or reverse). No edition information was available for the vintage prints; edition sizes for the modern prints are variously 10, 15, 20, or 25. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Joel Meyerowitz seems to having a bit of a resurgence these days. A new two volume retrospective book, a European museum show, a couple of lifetime achievement awards, and now, in conjunction with joining the stable at Howard Greenberg, a two part career survey at the gallery. It feels like a consolidating, summing up moment for the influential American photographer.

 

This show digs back into the archive and tells the story of Meyerowitz' early career. It finds him moving back and forth between black and white and color, testing the affinities and limits of both approaches. During this time period, there is a slow evolution from a focus on street photography (particularly in New York) to a broader look at the effects of color, in locations all around the world. But this transition doesn't happen like a turning on a light switch; it's more like a faucet, starting with a trickle of ideas that eventually overwhelms the previous style. Many of Meyerowitz' early street scenes center on a single event: a woman in a coffee shop, a Times Square ticket seller obscured by the window grill, the splash of a red dress and gauzy hat at Easter, a cluster of women in white pumps standing in a doorway, the kiss of a hand in Central Park. A few of the pictures then start to become more complex and cinematic: a woman being thrown into a convertible, a gathering of people on a front stoop all looking in different directions, the blown hair of couples in Dallas, a fallen man in Paris surrounded by a chaotic group of gawkers.

One wall of the exhibit shows pairs of images in black and white and color, taken seconds apart. They are evidence of Meyerowitz' changing mind set, and the creeping influence of color on his work. The astro turf swimsuit man standing under a blimp is far more puzzling in color than in black and white. Slowly, the images seem to turn on the play of color rather than the coalescing of a decisive moment: the blue brushes of a Bulgarian car wash, a shadowy green room with an American flag, a pile of grey police barriers, a pair of camel hair coats on the sidewalk. And once again, the compositions increase in complexity, this time balancing many color fields: a bikini clad body, a blue car, and the long white line of a curb, snug in a mess of Florida telephone poles, a shapely bus driver's leg in white boots in warm yellow sun, a lion balanced by a photo-taker in a car, taken through the dark frame of another car window. The few vintage dye transfers on view tint these kinds of scenes with a more saturated, richer color, both darker and more tactile.

I liked the sense of experimentation that is found in this selection of pictures - they're not all greatest hits or best shots. Whether it was a woman behind a projection screen, the flowers in a window of a trailer, or a jumping poodle, Meyerowitz was honing his craft and internalizing the nature of photographic color. Overall, this show is a solid sampler of work from the artist's formative years, and sets the stage for Part II of the exhibit coming in December.
 

Collector's POV: The works in the show are priced between $5000 and $40000. Meyerowitz' work is routinely available in the secondary markets, particularly prints of his 1970s images made in large editions (75 or even 100). Prices have typically ranged from $1000 to $14000, mostly on the lower end of that range.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here)
• Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time, published by Phaidon (here)

Joel Meyerowitz, 50 Years of Photographs, Part I: 1962-1977

Through December 1st

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Doug Rickard, A New American Picture @Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the East and West gallery spaces. All of the works are archival pigment prints, made between 2009 and 2011. The prints come in three sizes: 26x42 (in editions of 5+3AP), 40x64 (in editions of 5+3AP), and 21x34 (in editions of 7+3AP, but not on view in this show). A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Aperture (here). (Installation shots at right.)

  

Comments/Context: Doug Rickard's A New American Picture is one of the most polarizing bodies of contemporary photography to surface in the past few years. While it is deeply and thoughtfully rooted the history of the medium, it aggressively pushes previously established boundaries and fundamental definitions. This has led to a wide spectrum of opinions on its merits, from ringing praise to scathing dismissal. In my view, heated arguments are a very good sign of something worth paying attention to - it's a sign that the establishment feels just a little bit threatened.

 

Part of what has caught the wider public's attention about this work is its unconventional process. All of the images are appropriated from Google Street View (the car mounted effort to mechanically photograph every street in America), then digitally tuned, reframed and edited by Rickard, and finally rephotographed from his computer screen. Supporters see these methods as an innovative extension of old school image appropriation, smartly matched to a 21st century flood of available digital files. They understand the pixelation and optical blur in the final works to be deliberate remnants of (and references to) their original quasi-surveillance function, and consider his archive mining as the natural next step in the onward progression of digital art. Detractors openly scoff at his tools, mocking him as an editor rather than a photographer and ridiculing the low fidelity image quality. They remind us of other artists doing similar things, characterize his interventions as less than original, and generally walk away underwhelmed.

 

The other part of the conversation that surrounds these pictures is their bleak, sometimes boring, often poverty laced content. For the most part, Rickard has selected uneventful scenes on the outskirts of our cities, where vacant lots grow weedy, street corners are closed or boarded up, and young men (virtually all black) wander in packs. Look closely and it will become apparent that Rickard has a well trained eye for overlooked detail: the billowing clouds over a cemetery, the shadow of a telephone pole, a blindingly white dog, the intense pop of a red wall flanked by a person in lime green pants, an overturned toy truck in a muddy yard at sunrise. And if you've ever read Rickard's excellent blog, American Suburb X, you will know that Rickard is undeniably informed by a sense of history. His body of work is not an accidental grouping of snapshots thrown together; he knows exactly which images he is referencing, from the FSA photography of Evans to the road trip images of Frank, and from the American color of Eggleston, Shore, and Sternfeld to the street photography of Winogrand. So I think it's an oversimplification to just see these as a newfangled extension of iconic street photography, dumbed down for a digital age. Given his raw material, he has carefully selected images that have echoes of the old but depict a very different, more modern existence and aesthetic.

 

Having heard both sides of the Rickard debate and looked closely at the pictures, I have to say that I come down on the side of being excited by what he's doing. Not every photograph on view here is wildly memorable or entirely pleasing, but I came away won over by the thoughtfulness with which he is breaking rules and extending limits. I hope that Rickard will not end up hopelessly branded as a "Google Street View" photographer, as his broader approach is applicable to more than just this one method. This body of work asks us to reconsider the definitional edges of image capture and artistic creation, and to think differently about how the avalanche of digital imagery we now create can be repurposed and recontextualized. This work is a sign post pointing toward the new. So even if we have the innate urge to pick it apart as something unlike what we're used to, we would be foolish not to watch closely.

 

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 26x42 prints are $6000 each, the 40x64 prints are $8000 each, and the smaller 21x34 prints (not on view) are $4500 each. Rickard's work has not yet reached the secondary markets with any regularity, so gallery retail is likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• American Suburb X (here)
• Features/Reviews: Artforum (here), New Yorker PhotoBooth (here), Time LightBox (here), Believer (here), Daily Beast (here)

Doug Rickard, A New American Picture

Through November 24th

 

Yossi Milo Gallery

245 Tenth Avenue

New York, NY 10001

Nadav Kander, Yangtze - The Long River @Flowers

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in a series of three connected gallery spaces. All of the prints are chromogenic color prints made between 2006 and 2009. The prints are available in three sizes: 38x48 (in editions of 5), 48x59 (in editions of 5), and 59x69 (in editions of 3). A monograph of this body of work was published in 2011 by Hatje Cantz (here). (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: China's rapid economic and cultural transformations over the past few decades have provided a rich vein raw material that countless artists and photographers have continued to mine. The most common underlying narrative follows a nearly endless set of clashes and contradictions: West and East, modern and traditional, urban and rural, new and old, uneasy dichotomies and unlikely juxtapositions seemingly everywhere one might look. Nadav Kander's three year exploration of life along the Yangtze River explores this same terrain, centering on the dizzying cycle of destruction and construction that has wholly remade both the physical landscape and the day to day existence of millions of people along the river. But this isn't a Three Gorges Dam story exactly, nor is it a documentary study of displaced families or overlooked individuals; Kander has instead stepped back to take an outsider's wider view, creating images that revel in extreme contrasts of scale and outlook.

 

Printed large and bathed in the glow of a soft, foggy palette, Kander's photographs bring a contemporary sensibility to the grandeur of 19th Romantic painting. The rugged mountains, wide vistas, and turbulent storms of nature have been replaced by massive, often unfinished, man made structures. Soaring bridges, concrete spans, support pillars, and industrial smokestacks anchor many of the pictures, dwarfing everything around them in their sleek newness. Tiny figures are evidence of the immensity of the scale, their insignificance made obvious by the enormous physical size of these infrastructure projects. Paltry human activities like having a drink, washing a motorcycle, fishing with an old style net, or swimming in the river become almost wistfully comic when set against these manifestations of power, a few of these ominous scale mismatches bordering on something out of a science fiction novel.

 

Kander hits the underbelly of this forward looking, aspirational future with images that highlight both the disconnect between old and new and the messy, unfinished nature of the changes taking place. A Vegas-style hotel complete with a pirate lagoon stands like an oversized concrete hulk, while old school bamboo scaffolding holds up an immense flyover and rebar spikes are covered by incoming tidal sand. Rickety, rusted barges still do the work of the river, and entirely new cities explode in chaotic sprawls just across the river from now abandoned wastelands. Once again, tiny people look on, alternately forlorn and awestruck by the metamorphosis - it's impossible not to gawk at the pace and the scale of the activity, even if it means the only world you have ever known is disappearing.

 

I think the success in these pictures is found in their calm balance. They pepper the formally majestic and the atmospherically sublime with undercurrents of intimidated, vulnerable respect. They astonish and amaze with their can-do achievements, while never straying too far from the gritty realities of everyday life. And the emotions of personal anxiety and apprehension are quietly matched by national wonder and pride. It's an impressive photographic mix, smartly charting the complex character of China's modern personality.

 

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced in ratcheting editions, starting at $6500 (38x48), $10500 (48x59) or $16000 (59x69) based on size; prices range all the way up to $48000, and many of the images are NFS or sold out in certain sizes. Kander's work has just begun to enter the secondary markets in the past few years. That said, not enough lots have changed hands to generate any kind of auction pricing pattern, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

  

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

  

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: NY Times Lens (here), Photograph (here), Conscientious (here), Guardian (here), New Yorker (here)
• Interview: Le Journal de la Photographie (here)
• Prix Pictet, 2009 (here)

Nadav Kander, Yangtze - The Long River

Through November 24th

 

Flowers Gallery

529 West 20th Street

New York, NY 10011

Aperture Remix @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of 8 individual photographers and 1 artistic pair who were asked to make new work inspired by an Aperture publication. The exhibit is divided into 9 sections, with each section containing the new works, a sample of the works which made up the original book/magazine, and a limited edition book combining the old and new. The exhibit was curated by Lesley Martin. (Installation shots at right.)

 

The following photographers have been included in the show, with their chosen influential publication as reference. The details on the works on view made by both the commissioned artists and the subjects are underneath.

 

Rinko Kawauchi: Sally Mann, Immediate Family, 1992

• Mann: 5 gelatin silver prints, 1984-1989
• Kawauchi: 6 c prints, 2012
• Case with Kawauchi's limited edition book

Vik Muniz: Edward Weston, Daybooks, Volume 1, Mexico, 1973

• Weston: 3 gelatin silver prints, 1921-1924
• Muniz: 1 digital gelatin silver print, 2012, 1 copy of Daybooks cut up

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Aperture essay books, 1976-2011

• Onorato/Krebs: 1 camera made from a dozen cut through books, 1 archival pigment print

Martin Parr: Aperture issue 103, 1986

• Nan Goldin: 2 cibachrome prints, 1977-1980
• Chris Killip: 2 gelatin silver prints, 1983-1984
• Larry Sultan: 2 digital c prints, 1984
• Parr: 3 digital c prints, 1990-2001
• Case with Parr's limited edition book

Doug Rickard: Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places, 1982

• Shore: 1 set of postcards, 1971-2000, 5 chromogenic prints, 1973-1975
• Rickard: 8 archival pigment pigment prints, 1971-1978/2012
• Case with Rickard's limited edition book

Viviane Sassen: Edward Weston, Nudes, 1977

• Weston: 3 gelatin silver prints, 1 palladium print, 1927-1936
• Sassen: 5 archival pigment prints, 2003
• Case with Sassen's limited edition book

Alec Soth: Robert Adams, Summer Nights, 1985

• Adams: 4 gelatin silver prints, 1975-1980
• Soth: 1 video
• Case with letters and Soth's limited edition book

Penelope Umbrico: Masters of Photography series, 1977-1999

• Group of source images: 2 Henri Cartier-Bresson gelatin silver prints, 1948 and 1964, 1 Wynn Bullock gelatin silver print, 1958, 2 Manuel Alvarez Bravo gelatin silver prints, 1966 and 1967, 1 Edward Weston gelatin silver print, 1935, 1 Alfred Stieglitz gelatin silver print, Eikoh Hosoe gelatin silver print, 1996, 1 Paul Strand gelatin silver print, plus other reproductions
• Umbrico: 87 iPhone images, manipulated by apps, hung as a single cluster
• Case with Umbrico's limited edition book and stack of original Masters of Photography series books

James Welling: Paul Strand, Time in New England, 1980

• Strand: 6 gelatin silver prints, 1928-1946
• Welling: 22 archival pigment prints, 1 diptych, and 3 texts, 2012
• Case with Welling's limited edition book

Comments/Context: In honor of its 60th anniversary this year, Aperture might have easily trotted out a luscious parade of past masters and iconic photobooks, in a deservedly congratulatory and self-referential manner given the publisher's important position in the history of the medium. But the overly obvious greatest hits show has been smartly avoided and instead recast by asking ten contemporary photographers to make fresh works (and books) in reference/homage to any one of Aperture's many publications. The idea of exploring how a contemporary artist borrows and incorporates ideas from other artists is not a new one, of course, but in our age of image explosion and remixed culture, one that seems ever more relevant. Where is the line between responding and appropriating, riffing and reworking, entirely reformulating and just being derivative? The works in this show examine this process, opening a dialogue between past and present, asking and answering thorny questions about the nature of influence and interpretation across the photographic generations.

 

Edward Weston provides the starting point for two of the photographers included. Viviane Sassen has made deceptive pink toned nudes in reference to Weston's iconic almost abstract creations, starting with a similar interest in the lines of the human form, but extending it in her own way into multi-body nudes that have a mysterious selection of extra limbs. Her images are both seductive and sculptural like Weston, but startlingly disconcerting and unexpected. Vik Muniz has also channeled Weston, immersing himself in the Daybooks and building one of his signature constructions out of text fragments from the book and other Weston imagery. His rework of Weston's elegant portrait of Tina Modotti holding a white iris is both reverential and also uniquely Muniz.

 

Alec Soth's homage to Robert Adams' Summer Nights is fascinating near failure. After backtracking from night photography to experimenting with his new camera's video function, Soth opted for still video clips of trees and their shadows, strip malls at twilight, and houses with lights in the windows; my first reaction was that it was all a little too literal for me, and not quite enough of Soth's own vision coming through. But then I stopped looking and started listening more actively: the rustling of the trees, the background noise of a town, the settling down for the night, all captured (perhaps inadvertently) by the video. It's an amazingly perfect soundtrack of summer nights, achingly evocative of Adams' own photographs.

 

Other pairings are equally clever  and thoughtful. Rinko Kawauchi reconsiders Sally Mann's images of her children, with her own ephemeral, atmospheric shots of kids: boys swimming, a splash of water, a baby behind a curtain, the soft sunlight streaming down behind a young girl. Penelope Umbrico dives into images of mountains made masters of the medium, and then reworks them using her iPhone, creating a candy colored array of the very same mountains, somehow made less imposing by tints, tiling, and reorientations. And Doug Rickard parrots Stephen Shore's own postcard idea back at him, discovering his own 1970s era postcards of motels, cars, and restaurants, and then further tuning them to accent the saturated yellow palette of the times; they're a smart homage, using Rickard's own affinity for found imagery.

 

What I like best about this show is its sense of honoring without fawning, of acknowledging influence while still staying true to original thinking. If all of our remixed, reshuffled, chopped, and appropriated digital art of the future is as shrewd as most of what is on view here, we need not ever fear that photography is somehow over.

 

Collector's POV: One of the consistently puzzling things about this venue is that it is always a challenge to figure out what is actually for sale. For the most part, this is a non-selling environment more like a museum, so there is hardly ever an easily accessible checklist with ready price information and image details. What is perplexing about this approach is that often at least some of the works are really for sale or there are additional prints available in the print room, so it usually takes some initiative to get the answers. In the case of this particular show, it is not at all clear whether any of the photographs are available for purchase. My assumption is that at a minimum the limited edition collaborative books are for sale, but I didn't surface any prices, so interested collectors will need to follow up directly with Aperture or potentially with the various galleries that represent the artists.

 

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

 

Transit Hub: 

• Features/Reviews: CNN (here), Capital NewYork (here), New Yorker PhotoBooth (here), Time LightBox (here)

Aperture Remix

Through November 17th

 

Aperture Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

The Checklist: 11/15/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

No reviews at this time.

Midtown

ONE STAR: Ray K. Metzker/Ruth Thorne-Thomsen: Laurence Miller: November 17: review
TWO STARS: Lee Friedlander: Pace/MacGill: December 22: review
ONE STAR: Abelardo Morell: Bonni Benrubi: December 22: review
ONE STAR: New Photography 2012: MoMA: February 4: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: FSA Photography/Contemporary Social Realism: Robert Miller: November 17: review
ONE STAR: Danny Lyon: Churner and Churner: December 8: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

TWO STARS: Tina Barney: Janet Borden: November 21: review

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

November 15: Post-War & Contemporary Art Morning (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 15: Post-War & Contemporary Art Afternoon (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 15: Contemporary Art Evening (New York): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 16: Contemporary Art Day (New York): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 16: Photographies (Paris): Sotheby's: catalog
November 16/17: Photographies (Paris): Christie's: catalog
November 17: Photographs Signature Auction (New York): Heritage: catalog
November 23: Photographs (London): Bloomsbury: catalog
November 23: 7th Photo Auction (Vienna): WestLicht: catalog
November 28: Modern and Contemporary Photographs (Berlin): Villa Grisebach: catalog
November 29: Photographie (Cologne): Lempertz: catalog

Lee Friedlander: Mannequin @Pace/MacGill

JTF (just the facts): A total of 28 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against purple and grey walls in the two room gallery space. All of the prints are gelatin silver prints made between 2009 and 2011. Each of the works is sized 18x12 and is uneditioned. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Fraenkel Gallery (here). (Installation shots at right. There is no photography allowed in the gallery, so the images are courtesy of the Pace/MacGill website.)

Comments/Context: Few photographers can boast of having consistently subverted existing visual genres as often as Lee Friedlander has. Over the years, he has radically disassembled the self portrait, the urban scene, the architectural image, the landscape, the floral still life, and even the nude, making each uniquely and undeniably his own. In this show of recent work, Friedlander takes on a classic of street photography - the reflected storefront window - and tries to wholly reenvision a subject that Atget, Abbott, Modell and many others have justifiably made iconic.

Friedlander has long been a master of complex, overlapping, interrupted compositions, so it is not particularly surprising that he was drawn to the layered flatness offered by the alternately transparent and reflective glass of these displays. His mannequins pose with rigid style, draped in clashing reflections and repeated geometric patterns. Sleek torsos are offset by soaring modern skyscrapers and grids of stone windows, sometimes framing the body with bold lines and other times trampling all over the background figure. Areas of dark and light, brightness and shadow, invert compositions and add a double exposure effect. A few of the headless models look like they are actually dressed with buildings, city trees bursting from their heads and metal scaffolding cutting straight through their graceful figures. No one would ever mistake these shop windows for pictures made by anyone but Friedlander.

My one quibbling criticism of these otherwise well made photographs is that a few too many are a bit flat, lacking in the crackling wit that I enjoy so much about Friedlander's work. The compositions are characteristically cluttered, but I just didn't feel the same restless energy and vitality that I do with his other bodies of work. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that he hasn't been able to break the rules quite as much with this subject matter as he has been able to do with others; the Surrealists had plenty of fun with reflections like these, so Friedlander's images seem less transgressive and shocking than they normally might. He's at his best when he thoroughly upends the viewer's expectations, and these photographs only turn the chaos up a notch or two from scenes we are already familiar with. All that said, they're still a singular new riff on an old visual motif, and evidence that Friedlander's eye continues to be distinctive and exceptional.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced at $8500 each. Friedlander's work is routinely available in the secondary markets, with prices at auction ranging from approximately $2000 to as much as $80000 in recent years.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: Artcritical (here), New Yorker PhotoBooth (here), Le Journal de la Photographie (here)

Lee Friedlander: Mannequin

Through December 22nd

Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Danny Lyon: Deep Sea Diver @Churner and Churner

JTF (just the facts): A total of 30 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against white walls in the front and back gallery spaces. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, made between 2005 and 2009. Each of the prints is sized 8x10 and is available in an edition of 6. The exhibit also includes two glass cases containing notebooks and maquettes, and a pair of large darkroom bulletin boards covered edge to edge in ephemera. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Phaidon (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Danny Lyon's newest project applies his particular brand of get-involved photojournalism to life in Shanxi province in northeast China. This is rural coal country, a throwback to a slower, more time-resistant existence rather than a shining example of the energetic hustle of the modern urban world. His pace is measured and deliberate, taking the time to immerse himself in the small details and repeated patterns of this overlooked region.

Many of Lyon's images capture the rough, griminess of people-intensive industrial work: coal miners in a communal bath, railway workers swinging pickaxes and laying track, grubby mechanics fixing broken vehicles, and truck drivers lingering waiting for the next load. The rocky roads are bumpy and cracked, the leftover coal must be hand gleaned from the track side, and smokestacks loom in the distance. Circus performers and opera singers provide animated distractions from the exhaustion and tedium, but most folks seem to opt for simpler pleasures: playing cards, chatting and/or smoking in a tea house, flying a kite. The economic boom of the cities has obviously failed to reach this area; dusty antiques, magazines in plastic bags, and fireworks are all that is for sale.

In many ways, these pictures look like they could have been taken ten, twenty, or even fifty years ago; the tide of change in the rural Chinese provinces has obviously been extremely slow. What I like about Lyon's photographs is that they are consistently evenhanded and dignified. They forgo overly easy judgment and criticism for supportive curiosity and genuine interest. Every picture has a quiet backstory, providing understated context and straightforward details, approaching the people of countryside with openness and honesty.

Collector's POV: Each of the prints in this show is priced at $6000. Lyon's work is consistently available in the secondary markets, with recent single image prices at auction ranging between $1000 and $15000.

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site/blog (here and here) 
• Exhibit: Menil Collection, 2012 (here)

Danny Lyon: Deep Sea Diver

Through December 8th

 

Churner and Churner

205 Tenth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

FSA Photography & Contemporary Social Realism @Robert Miller

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 41 photographs by 10 different photographers, hung in the front room, the common area, and the two middle gallery spaces. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers are included in the main show, with the number of prints on view and image details as background:

• Horace Bristol: 5 gelatin silver prints, framed in white/black and matted, sized between 9x7 and 14x11, from 1938
• Jack Delano: 2 dye transfer prints and 2 gelatin silver prints, framed in white/black and matted, each 10x15 or 11x14, from 1940-1941
• Walker Evans: 5 gelatin silver prints, framed in white/black and matted, sized from 5x8 to 7x11, from 1935-1945
• Debbie Grossman: 5 inkjet prints, framed in black and matted, each 11x14, from 2010
• Dorothea Lange: 3 gelatin silver prints, framed in white and matted, each roughly 8x9, from 1935-1936
• Russell Lee: 3 dye transfer prints, framed in white and matted, each 10x13, from 1940
• Arthur Rothstein: 2 gelatin silver prints, framed in black and matted, each 14x11, from 1936-1939
• Zoe Strauss: 5 archival pigment prints, framed in white and unmatted, sized 13x27, 18x27, or 20x30, from 2001-2006
• Emma Wilcox: 7 gelatin silver prints, framed in black and unmatted, each 20x24, in editions of 7, from 2002-2012
• Marion Post Wolcott: 2 gelatin silver prints, framed in black and matted, sized between 10x6 and 7x10, from 1936

Large black and white photographic portraits by Josh Lehrer hang in the back gallery, but are designated separately on the checklist (Project Room) and have not been included in the discussion here.

Comments/Context: While an exhibit pairing photographs from the 1930s Farm Security Administration with contemporary social realism certainly sounds promising in general, this particular show doesn't quite fire on all cylinders. This isn't so much a reflection on the quality of the work (which is excellent from the FSA bunch and plenty strong from the more current artists) as it is a lack of interesting parallels and unexpected connections. The chasm between the two time periods is wide enough that even though there are some common issues (poverty first among them), there isn't a clear continuum of visual ideas connecting the past and the present in the selected pictures. As a result, the show feels a bit disjointed and awkward, instead of resonating with juxtaposed insight.

The only true pairing in this show is the side by side hanging of Russell Lee's 1940s small town farmers and Debbie Grossman's digital manipulations of those same images sixty years later, where she has carefully replaced all the men with women, creating a fictional all female world. It's a clever old/new mix, where the physical labor of homesteaders is done by women and stoic square dancing families have two female parents; traditional gender roles are smartly upended and reconsidered. Many of the other FSA works on view are penetrating vintage portraits: Rothstein's Montana rancher, Wolcott's coal miner, Bristol's bearded migrant, and Lange's disembodied weathered hands, wearing torn work clothes and holding a wooden hoe. On the contemporary side, Zoe Strauss offers shot appliances and and the texture of a yellow curtain, while Emma Wilcox plumbs the depths of darkness, via shadowy checkout aisles, stenciled skulls, and an aerial town shot with the residence of a thief indicated by large white letters and an arrow.

I think this show would have benefited from the inclusion of a few more contemporary photographers and a more conscious and repeated mixing of the two time periods; instead of bigger single artist groups, small side by side comparisons might have helped to tease out the similarities and differences. That said, there's plenty of solid work worth seeing here, even if the thematic construct isn't hugely effective.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows:

• Horace Bristol: $10000, $12500, $15000 or NFS
• Jack Delano: $3500, $4000 or $6000
• Walker Evans: between $9500 and $26000
• Debbie Grossman: $2500 or $3500
• Dorothea Lange: between $8000 and $12500
• Russell Lee: $6000 or $7000
• Arthur Rothstein: $2500 or $3500
• Zoe Strauss: $2600, $3250, or $3600
• Emma Wilcox: $1850 each
• Marion Post Wolcott: $3000 or $5000

The work of the FSA photographers is generally available in the secondary markets, ranging from the iconic and expensive to the lesser known and very reasonably priced. The work of the contemporary photographers in this show (Grossman, Strauss, and Wilcox) is much less available at auction, so gallery retail will likely be the best option for following up on these three.

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

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here)
• Debbie Grossman artist site (here)
• Zoe Strauss artist site (here)
• Emma Wilcox artist site (here)

FSA Photography & Contemporary Social Realism

Through November 17th

Robert Miller Gallery

524 West 26th Street

New York, NY 10001

Abelardo Morell: Rock, Paper, Scissors @Benrubi

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 large scale photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung in the entry area, the main gallery space, and a smaller side room painted blue. All of the works are archival pigment ink prints, made in 2011 and 2012. The images are available in three sizes, with varying edition sizes depending on whether the works are in color or in black and white: 24x30 (in editions of 10 for color and 8 for black and white), 30x40 (in editions of 8 and 6), and 50x60 (in editions of 6 and 4). There are 2 works in the smallest size, 9 in the middle size, and 4 in the largest size on display. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This show brings us up to date with Abelardo Morell's most recent work, bringing together images from three distinctly separate photographic projects. In the past two years, Morell has clearly been busy: out on the road with his ingenious tent camera, in the studio making meticulous cut paper collages, and in the darkroom playing with water drop photograms.

While Morell has been working with his periscope tent camera for a few years now, I think the these textural landscapes continue to get better and better. I like the combined experience of the picture postcard views and the rougher reality of the physical location of the viewer: the iconic silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge is decorated with scrubby weeds, star-shaped dandelions and hard packed dirt, while the epic grandeur of the Grand Canyon is underlaid with a rock slab and loose scree. The two simultaneous views outward and downward are flattened together, with recognizable landmarks like Old Faithful and Yosemite Falls interrupted by rocky gravel, pine needles, and delicately strewn flower petals. It's as though the images have been hand painted out of the ordinary, overlooked path around your feet; they're "grounded" in more ways than one.

Back in the studio, Morell has been channeling Frederick Sommer and MC Escher, picking apart 18th century Piranesi etchings and creating complex collaged fantasies of buildings made of impossible colonnades and swirling vortices of prisons and architectural facades. His book plate constructions play with perspective and angle, twisting and clashing in crisp black and white. Morell's photograms have a more Berenice Abbott scientific feel, with water droplets shaped into a perfect triangle and transformed into a starry landscape of tiny round bubble orbs. Human profiles make appearances in both projects, a negative space self portrait is pushed into a ream of white paper, while another face is gently arced in water bubbles.

What holds these three bodies of work together is an interest in both the edges of photographic texture and the underpinnings of process. Morell displays craftsmanlike control over his varied tools, seemingly at ease with any combination of image making methods. Overall, this show is strong evidence of an artist actively and successfully exploring multiple complementary approaches and thought patterns, rather than being satisfied with following just one.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The color works are $11000 each (24x30), $17000 each (30x40) or $24000 each (50x60); the black and white works are $5000 each (24x30), $9000 each (30x40) or $16000 each (50x60). Morell's work has become more consistently available in the secondary markets in recent years, with prices at auction ranging between $2000 and $17000.

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: TimeOut New York (here), The Two Percent (here), NY Photo Review (here)

Abelardo Morell: Rock Paper Scissors

Through December 22nd

Bonni Benrubi Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

The Checklist: 11/8/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

No reviews at this time.

Midtown

ONE STAR: Ray K. Metzker/Ruth Thorne-Thomsen: Laurence Miller: November 17: review
ONE STAR: New Photography 2012: MoMA: February 4: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

No reviews at this time.

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

TWO STARS: Tina Barney: Janet Borden: November 21: review

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

November 8: Photographs (London): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 12: Andy Warhol (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 13: Photographies Collections et Propositions (Paris): Millon: catalog
November 13: Contemporary Art Evening (New York): Sotheby's: catalog
November 14: Contemporary Art Day (New York): Sotheby's: catalog
November 14: Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 15: Post-War & Contemporary Art Morning (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 15: Post-War & Contemporary Art Afternoon (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 15: Contemporary Art Evening (New York): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 16: Contemporary Art Day (New York): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 16: Photographies (Paris): Sotheby's: catalog
November 16/17: Photographies (Paris): Christie's: catalog
November 17: Photographs Signature Auction (New York): Heritage: catalog
November 23: Photographs (London): Bloomsbury: catalog
November 23: 7th Photo Auction (Vienna): WestLicht: catalog
November 28: Modern and Contemporary Photographs (Berlin): Villa Grisebach: catalog
November 29: Photographie (Cologne): Lempertz: catalog

New Photography 2012 @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A group show of the work of six contemporary photographers (4 individuals and 1 partnership), variously framed and matted, and hung in a divided two room gallery on the 3rd floor. The exhibit was curated by Eva Respini. (Installation shots at right.)

 

The following photographers have been included in the show, with the number of works on view and image details in parentheses:

• Michele Abeles: (9 pigmented inkjet prints, framed in white and unmatted, from 2009-2012)
• Birdhead (Ji Weiyu and Song Tao): (1 group of 71 gelatin silver prints, tacked directly to the wall in a grid, overlaid with 8 additional photographs set in mahogany frames, from 2012)
• Anne Collier: (4 chromogenic color prints, framed in white and unmatted, from 2009-2012)
• Zoe Crosher: (1 group of 11 chromogenic color prints (including 1 set of 15 images mounted together), mostly framed in white with no mat (two are mounted and unframed), from 2012)
• Shirana Shahbazi: (4 chromogenic prints, 3 gelatin silver prints, and 1 wallpaper lithograph with applied pigment, framed in white/black and unmatted, from 2011-2012)

Comments/Context: This year's annual roundup of new photography at the MoMA follows in the footsteps of its predecessor and opts for inclusive diversity as its overriding theme. Given the explosion of image making triggered by the digital revolution and coupled with the loosening definitions and boundaries of the medium, this would seem like a safe and prudent choice. But with today's backdrop of tumultuous innovation and risk-taking experimentation, I have to say I was surprised at how dull and expected this show is. It covers bases and samples styles (especially those with a conceptual bent), but ultimately fails to get out to the edges and bring back something fresh and brilliant.

 

In my view, the overwhelming standout in this show is Michele Abeles. What's exciting about her work is that it both collapses several discrete genres (nude, still life, studio staging) and throws the results into the digital mixer, flattening out the space and cutting it into misaligned strips and layers. Odd juxtapositions of male bodies, plywood, printed fabrics, potted plants, wine bottles, engineering drawings, and colored filters lead to puzzlingly complex groupings, which are then further upended by digital stitching and rework, creating woven plaids and jittering lines of image fragments. I like the clash of ideas in these pictures, as well as the smart integration of digital wizardry; the photographs feel like the beginnings of something truly original and invigorating.

 

The other four bodies of work are all accomplished, of course, but don't really offer wildly compelling or particularly new paths forward. Anne Collier sharply recontextualizes printed ephemera (album covers, magazine ads, a MoMA event calendar with a Weston nude), forcing the viewer to reconsider embedded stereotypes and biases. Zoe Crosher immerses herself in the appropriated archive of a 1970s woman, rephotographing and altering her subject's Mae West poses and fantasy lives in a Cindy Sherman-esque study of identity. Birdhead furiously snaps offhand black and white images of the vitality of everyday Shanghai, finding the energy of self-centered youth in a city of bridges, TV towers, and palm trees. And Shirana Shahbazi pairs commercial-style abstractions in bold color with the parallel visual motifs of a jagged mountain or a diver in flight.

 

So while this show certainly covers many of the key themes in today's photographic dialogue (it's all appropriately "on trend"), the overall feeling of the exhibit is more like a checklist of the topics we're supposed to be discussing rather than a discovery or championing of groundbreaking ideas. As we might expect, there's China, and appropriation, and archives, and digital manipulation, and image proliferation, and commercial approaches, and crossing medium boundaries, but aside from the impressive chaos of Michele Abeles, much of the output is less than memorable.

 

Collector's POV: Given this is a museum show, there are of course no posted prices. The photographers in the exhibit are represented by the following galleries:

• Michele Abeles: 47 Canal (here)
• Birdhead: ShanghART Gallery (here)
• Anne Collier: Anton Kern Gallery (here)
• Zoe Crosher: Perry Rubenstein (here)
• Shirana Shahbazi: Galerie Bob Van Orsouw (here)

None of these artists has any meaningful history in the secondary markets, so gallery retail will likely be the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Exhibition site (here)
• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), Time LightBox (here), New Yorker PhotoBooth (here), Capital New York (here)
• Michele Abeles artist site (here)
• Zoe Crosher artist site (here)

New Photography 2012

Through February 4th 

 

Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53rd Street

New York, NY 10019

Ray K. Metzker and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Two of a Mind @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A two artist show containing a total of 40 black and white photographs by the husband and wife pairing of Ray K. Metzker and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen. The works are framed in white or blond wood and matted, and hung against white walls in the entry space and main gallery area. All of the photographs by Metzker (there are 23) are from the series Pictus Interruptus and are displayed in the main gallery space. They are vintage gelatin silver prints made between 1976 and 1981, sized either 11x14 or 16x20, and available in editions of 5, 15, 20, 25, or 30. The works by Thorne-Thomsen (there are 17) are from four different series: Expeditions, Door, Prima Materia, and Songs of the Sea and are on view in the entry area. They are toned vintage gelatin silver prints, sized 4x5, and available in editions of 25. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: While the premise of this show is that there are connections and relationships between the photographs of Ray K. Metzker and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, the reality is that these are two very different bodies of work and aesthetic sensibilities. Yes, the two artists are married to each other, and yes, both have placed objects in front of the camera in these particular images, but that's where the superficial similarities end I think.

Metzker's Pictus Interruptus series is a masterful study of flat, two dimensional abstraction. Starting with something vaguely identifiable (a street sign, a gutter, a parking lot, a city view, a set of stairs, a marble faced wall), he has then quickly waved a piece of paper, a face in a magazine ad, a folded edge, or some other perforated object through the image area, creating blurred frenetic forms that interrupt the compositions. When juxtaposed with the original views, lines and angles slash through the frame, bright white trapezoids and dark fields of dots cutting in front of the found shapes. The result is images that mix crispness and softness, hard edged geometry with the passing glance of a model's eyes. They're restlessly inventive, unexpected, and routinely engrossing.

Thorne-Thomsen's intimate pinhole photographs are dark and dreamlike, full of oversized surreal heads, floating airships, silhouetted figures, and broad sweeps of land. Female statues perch on columns engulfed in fog, a man made of dots stands on a rocky seashore, and a hot-air balloon hovers near the Leaning Tower of Pisa. While these fabrications are indeed fanciful and unreal, their mystery seems a little too obvious and self-conscious to me. They successfully conjure up a mythical world, but from my perspective, it was almost like the artist was trying a little too hard to be magical.

Overall, this show is a quirky pairing, held together by a simple bonds but largely non-competitive. I think the Metzker abstractions continue to be visually challenging and exciting (even three decades later), largely due to their smart understanding and manipulation of the way a camera sees.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The Metzker prints range in price from $7500 to $25000, based on the place in the edition. The Thorne-Thomsen prints are $4000 each. Metzker's work has only been intermittently available in the secondary markets over the years; recent prices have ranged between $1000 and $23000. Thorne-Thomsen's prints have not yet reached the second markets, so gallery retail is likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up on her work.

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

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)

Ray K. Metzker and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Two of a Mind
Through November 17th

Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Tina Barney, Small Towns @Borden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the divided gallery space. All of the works are chromogenic color prints, made between 2005 and 2011. The prints come in two sizes: 30x40 (or reverse) in editions of 5, and 48x60 (or reverse) in editions of 10; a couple of images have been printed even larger (70x88) and these prints are “included” in the 48x60 edition. A 6:55 minute video, entitled Tina Barney, Small Towns, runs on a monitor in the back room. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Tina Barney’s photographs are nearly always built on small human nuances. Her pictures follow gestures, highlight overlooked details, chart invisible relationships and explore hidden emotional landscapes. At first glance, her pictures can seem offhand, but immersion in the details generally opens up something unexpected, where a knowing stare, the style of a piece of clothing, the distance between people, and the presence of a house all become the evidence of subtle but discernible social patterns.

While most of Barney’s previous photographs have centered on her intimate family and friends, her newest pictures find her wandering through nearby small towns, watching parades and historical reenactments, visiting farms, and interacting with strangers. Each scene tells the story of how we value traditions and customs, how we embrace small rituals that give our lives structure and meaning, and how we both present ourselves and see each other. Apparel and attire offer important clues: the howling wolf t-shirt and checkerboard skinny pants of a teenage bike rider, the standard issue red polo shirt and denim skirt of a bored waitress, the white shirt and black tie (collar unbuttoned) of a 4H kid showing off a rooster, and the slightly too long in the arms uniform of a marching band trumpeter waiting under a tree. Costumes are also a reminder of our shared history: the puffed out skirts and modest bonnets of young girls in a colonial reenactment, the tricorn hat and red, white, and blue coat of a serious boy from a fife and drum band standing stock still in a parking lot puddle, and the oversized striped bow and black silk parasol of a witchy Victorian woman standing in front of a cornfield. The best images in the show take these visual cues and surround them with even more elaborate found compositions: a young woman tries on a bridal dress, flanked by a triangle of blond flower girls, a tower of shoes, and a judgmental mother reflected in the mirror, and a grimacing farm kid does shoveling chores, his straight arms angling one way, the tilt of the falling down shed behind him going the other.

Even though Barney likely works fast with her large format camera, these pictures have just enough of a pause in them to let the scenes settle and come to rest. Her light touch “do what you were doing” staging ensures that her wall-sized tableaux stay firmly in the realm of reality, rather than veering off into overly contrived fiction. It is this attentive believability that makes the pictures successful for me; her photographs gently burrow into the in-between spaces in her subjects’ lives, uncovering the coded details that help explain who they are.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 30x40 prints are $20000 each, while the 48x60/70x88 prints are $30000 each. Barney's work is remarkably absent from the secondary markets; very few prints have come up at auction in recent years. Prices have ranged from $3000 to $42000, but these data points may not be entirely representative of the real value of her work. As a result, gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New Yorker PhotoBooth (here), Time LightBox tumblr (here)

Tina Barney, Small Towns
Through November 21st

Janet Borden, Inc.
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012