Lars Tunbjörk @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 color photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. The works come from three distinct projects: Landet Utom Sig (1988-1991), Home (1991-2001), and Office (1996-1999), each of which resulted in a monograph. There are 8 images on display from Landet Utom Sig, all vintage c-prints, framed in white and matted, each 20x24, uneditioned. There are 6 images from Home, all c-prints, framed in blond wood and unmatted, each 21x25, in editions of 20. And there are 9 images from Office, framed in white and unmatted, each 23x27, in editions of 12. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk's pictures have a sharp eye for the quietly absurd, his visual moods ranging from dry and witty to a slightly darker brand of caustic skepticism. This show provides a neat sampler of three of Tunbjörk's recent projects, capturing the idiosyncrasies of suburban Sweden and anonymous office work with a flair for overlooked human oddity.

Splashes of bright color punctuate Tunbjörk's Landet Utom Sig series, where something slightly strange is often taking place: a man plays an accordion outside a red van, a pair of people sit under matching yellow umbrellas on a grassy expanse, a father drives a tiny children's car while being watched ominously by Santa Claus, and a man tips over while sitting at a table submerged in the warm Midsummer water. The Home series has the same sense of the surreal, but without the human presence; striped awnings, white fences, flashy red tulips, and lots of white siding find the earnest ridiculousness hiding in the suburban experience.

Moving farther afield, Tunbjörk's Office project takes us into the international world of cloth covered cubicles and fluorescent lighting, where adventurous leggy plants strain toward the light and elevators get caught between floors. In these pictures, the everyday of the business world is seen through the eyes of an outsider: why on earth would a man get his shoes shined in his office or would a lawyer sit under a conference room table drowning in a sea of papers? The ordinary office environment is somehow exposed for its weirdness in these pictures, the unusual behaviors captured in an understated anthropological deadpan.

All in, this is a show that proves that there is comedy to be found in the mundane, where a subtle turn of perspective turns the commonplace into the peculiar
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Collector's POV: All of the prints in this show are priced at $4000 each, regardless of project or date. Tunbjörk's work has not been widely available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

• Review: Photo Booth (here)
• Agence Vu page (here)

Lars Tunbjörk

Through November 19th
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Amador Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

Japan Today @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of a total of 33 black and white and color photographs from 3 photographers. The front gallery space contains the work of Taiji Matsue and Mikiko Hara. Hara's works are square format type c prints from the series Hysteric Thirteen, each 14x14 and framed in white with white mats, printed in editions of 10. The 8 images on view were made between 1996 and 2005. Matsue's works are type c prints, 20x24 and framed in white with white mats, printed in editions of 5. The 8 images on view from the JP-22 series were all made in 2005; a single image from the Cell series is also on display; it is an 18x18 digital type c print, available in an edition of 15. The back gallery contains 16 images by Osamu Kanemura. All of these works are gelatin silver prints, each 20x24 and framed in black with no mat, printed in editions of 5. 7 of the works come from the 1995 series Today's Japan; the other 9 works come from the 2007 series My Name is Shockhammer. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the wake of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, there have been countless efforts to provide support, assistance and awareness to the people suffering through the devastation. In reaction to the events on the ground, this show gathers together the work of three contemporary Japanese photographers from the gallery's stable and provides a pre-disaster view of Japan in the last decade.

The exhibit begins with the pared down aerial photographs of Taiji Matsue. Taken from a helicopter, these images document a single Japanese province, capturing details from urban and factory zones, wide expanses of agriculture, and deep blue areas of water. At these heights, pure abstraction reigns, with grids of city streets and rectangular buildings boiled down to rigid geometries. Rice paddies are cut into angular forms, often covered in tiny stripes of green. And the immensity of the sea is dotted with minuscule kayaks and strips of fishing traps, or decorated by lines of cut logs gathered in perfect alignment like matchsticks. There is a strong sense of order and organization in these pictures, of a people efficiently managing the land. The best are those that take some time to decipher; when the subjects become too obvious (like the golf course), the images lose a bit of their power to startle.

Osamu Kanemura's black and white images get down into the crowded infrastructure of Tokyo city streets, where tangles of overhead wires clash with architectural geometries and neon signage. His photographs have a dark compactness, a sense of overlapping, constricting tightness, where the shadowy layers of the city pile one upon another, creating narrow alleyways and overwhelming mazes. There is something wonderful about Kanemura's messiness, where visual ideas intrude on each other like an unruly brawl.

Mikiko Hara's color photographs go yet another level deeper, finding women in moments of uncertainty in the subways and on the streets. Isolated women stand in long lines, buy tickets, wait for trains, and linger on sidewalks, their everyday narratives open ended and ambiguous. Gazes are averted, gestures are muted, and the scenes are unknowable. What seem at first glance like simple snapshots are found to have a deeper sense of mystery, a nagging undercurrent of tension lurking just beneath the surface. The more I looked at these images, the more they seemed to have to offer, if only in my imagination.

Overall, this show provides three markedly different perspectives on contemporary Japan: the cleaned-up, orderly perfection from the air, the tumultuous ferment of the city, and the weary uncertainty of the inhabitants. It's a diverse and thoughtful combination, creating a multi-faceted portrait of the time before the storm.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The Kanemura images are either $2500 or $3000, based on the series the image is from. The Hara images are either $2500 or $3000. The Matsue images are either $4000 or $5000, and the single image from the Cell series is $2500. The work of these three photographers has not been widely available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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I have long thought that a dense, chaotic Kanemura would make a good addition to our city/industrial genre, and this show was a good reminder of how just many of his images would fit neatly into our collection. With so many solid choices, we'll need to invest some time in looking through all the images from the various series to select one with the right balance of complex skewed angles.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Reviews: New Yorker (here), DART (here), Woman Around Town (here)

Japan Today

Through June 30th
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Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Mark Power, The Sound of Two Songs @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 color and 10 black and white photographs, framed in white and unmatted and framed in black and matted respectively, and hung against cream and grey walls in the main gallery spaces. All of the color works are type c prints, made from negatives taken between 2004 and 2006. These images are available in two sizes: 20x24 (in editions of 10) and 40x50 (in editions of 5). The black and white works are gelatin silver prints, made from negatives taken between 1993 and 1996. These images are square format, printed 20x24 with detailed captions, in editions of 10. A monograph of The Sound of Two Songs was published by Photoworks in 2010 (here). A monograph of The Shipping Forecast was published by Zelda Cheatle in 1996. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This show is a two-for-the-price-of-one opportunity to get acquainted with the work of British photographer and Magnum Photos member Mark Power. It combines his black and white work from the 1990s with more recent color images made across Poland, providing an opportunity to compare two working styles tailored to specific projects.

The images in the back gallery come from the series The Shipping Forecast, named for the BBC Radio broadcast heard daily by listeners across the UK. Each work documents a specific coastal location and time, complete with its maritime forecast ("mainly fair" or "moderate or poor becoming good"). These seaside scenes have a dark edginess: a child lies with his dump truck near lumpy mounds of sand, boys search amid cylindrical cement blocks used to bulwark the surf, grey skies envelop beach cabanas and a deserted slide, abandoned white towels are bisected by the blackness of shadows, and cemetery plots look out over the bright horizon. Places listeners have never visited suddenly have a face, and the gathering power of the weather offers a gritty sense of impending doom.

Power's newer images of Poland find moments of quirky optimism and compositional rigor in the drab, grey Eastern European environment. Of course, there are the usual grimy apartment buildings and ugly highway sound barriers that are the staple of so much contemporary German photography. But Power seems to be drawn to the more unexpected visual contrasts and unlikely juxtapositions: a dingy elevated view of Warsaw with a pristine cloud filled blue sky straight out of a 19th century Romantic painting (almost like a LeGray two negative combination), the oddity of green tree trunks amid brick buildings, the strange metal framing of a dusty construction site entrance, the downward look at a winter skating rink (a dead ringer for Moholy-Nagy), or the bisected back view of the massive video screen used to watch the Pope's funeral by a crowd of onlookers. These pictures are like road trip discoveries, the more unusual details of today's Poland that get overlooked when we focus on the obvious or the stereotypical.

All in, this is a solid pairing of photographic projects, with ample evidence of both range and craft on display.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The color images are either $3000 for the 20x24 size or $6000 for the 40x50 size. The black and white images are $3500 each. Power's work has not been widely available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

While I enjoyed most of the images from The Shipping Forecast series, my favorite was THAMES, Sunday, 7 January, 1996; it's in the center of the third installation shot. I liked the apocalyptic wash of thick fog covering the lone dark figure on the beach.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Magnum Photos page (here)
• Review: New Yorker (here)

Mark Power

Through March 26th

Amador Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

A Sincere Plug for our 2010 Sponsors

I'd like to end this year with a sincere plug for the 2010 sponsors of DLK COLLECTION. Given that the vast majority of our readers subscribe to the feed (rather than arriving directly to the site), many of you may not even realize that we have sponsors. In fact we do, and their banners fly proudly along the sidebar.

As a friendly reminder, although we don't have non-profit status, being a photography critic/blogger is undeniably a money losing proposition. It's also a massive time sink, and if it wasn't such an amazingly gratifying and challenging labor of love, a rational person would give it up right away.

Our sponsors provide something extremely valuable that our mostly silent readers, followers, and intermittent anonymous visitors don't: they provide a public vote of confidence for what we are doing. With their dollars and their brands, they support the grand idea of a multitude of hopefully intelligent voices engaging in thoughtful discussion about photography of all kinds.

But let's not be confused however. While counting the number of click throughs or page views of a banner is mildly entertaining, the point of sponsoring this site is to get bodies in the door, to add subscribers (for the magazines), and to generate tangible sales. If we can reliably connect the dots between reading reviews on this site and buying photographs in the real world, then we're doing much more than just shouting into the void.

While each and every one of our 2010 sponsors is deserving of my heartfelt thanks and your disposable income, I would particularly like to highlight the support of Janet Borden Inc. (here). Janet's gallery has been an anchor sponsor of this site for the entire year, taking the top banner slot month after month. She has been tirelessly enthusiastic about the evolution of this blog, and has been quick to point out my delusions and misguided opinions with her biting wit. Her persistent encouragement, even when her show of the moment didn't get 3 STARS, has been invaluable. If you find enjoyment in what we are doing here, I urge you to reward Janet for giving her support when it wasn't even remotely obvious. Get down to Soho and buy that Lee Friedlander, Tina Barney, Martin Parr (or whoever) that you have been coveting, and tell Janet that one of the reasons you are there with your dollars out is that you read DLK COLLECTION. You can thank me by thanking her.

Our other monthly sponsors also deserve your attention and your patronage. They have chosen to stand and be counted as well, so open your wallets folks and show them you value their commitment to independent photography writing:

Amador Gallery (here)
ClampArt (here)
Robert Koch Gallery (here)
Lee Gallery (here)
Photograph magazine (here)
Von Lintel Gallery (here)

Finally, I'd like to send out an authentic thank you to the many sponsors (past, present and future) of other photography blogs. This is a vibrant and collegial community and the dollars that are spent in support of Joerg Colberg or AD Coleman, Marc Feustel or Andy Adams, or countless other important voices are critical to keeping them on the air. I know from experience: don't underestimate what a small amount of support will do for the confidence of a writer wondering if they can feed the beast with something intelligent for yet another day. And by the way, their daily traffic of targeted, photography-loving visitors is likely larger than the entire client database of most galleries.

This is the last post of 2010. We'll be back in January, starting with the posts that didn't get done this week: the 2010 Auction Summary, the Top 10 Photobooks of 2010, and hopefully some reviews of books that came out from under the tree. Happy Holidays!

Arnold Odermatt, On Duty @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 color photographs, mounted and framed in black without mats, and hung against cream and grey walls in the main gallery spaces. All of the works on display are modern digital type c prints, made from negatives taken between 1964 and 1986. The images are generally 19x19 (two are sized 19x14), and all are printed in editions of 15. A monograph of this body of work was published by Steidl in 2006 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: With easy mockery becoming a pervasive lowest common denominator in recent photography, finding subtle undercurrents of genuine, non-ironic humor has proven to be particularly elusive of late. Arnold Odermatt's staged photographs of Swiss policemen in action are the welcome exception to this unfortunate rule. Made with the help of his fellow officers, his images were designed to expose new potential recruits to the positive aspects of police work. They combine a careful documentary aesthetic with an underlying feeling of the absurd, as if the serious policemen pictured were stifling their urges to burst out laughing.

The show gathers together a collection of different police tasks: directing traffic, fingerprinting, stamping passports, checking travel paperwork, setting radar traps, photographing accident scenes, and training police dogs, each depicted in vivid 1960s color. In every scene, the policemen wear their finest uniforms, complete with white leather sashes, red collars, and crisp white hats. Several images capture the men earnestly racing ahead in their sleek police speed boats, like a chase scene from a James Bond movie. The pictures stand right on the edge of deliberate camp, the posing done with a nuanced mix of studious diligence and not-quite-acknowledged fun.

The rest of the exhibit is peppered with images of oddities: the crumpled remains of sculptural car crashes, the globular wavy forms of melted plastic tail lights, and the unexpected landing of a light plane in the middle of the roadway (with a spectacular snowy mountain vista in the background). Together they are overwhelming evidence that Swiss police work is anything but dull and boring.

Overall, this body of work can't help but make you smile. It's advertising of course, but it's done with such affection that it's hard not to be seduced by its warmth.

Collector's POV: All of the prints in this show are priced at 5000€ each. Odermatt's work has not been widely available in the secondary markets, although a handful of prints have come up for auction in the past few years; prices for these lots have ranged between $2000 and $4000.

By the way, these are some super color prints (particularly the first car crash as you enter the exhibit and the two melted tail lights across from it), even if they are modern. They have none of the faded, dated look that you might expect from negatives from the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these pictures really explode off the wall with the intensity of their colors, making the images surprisingly fresh and timeless.

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

Transit Hub:

• Koenig Projekte show, 2010 (DLK COLLECTION review here)

Arnold Odermatt, On Duty

Through January 22nd

Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Chris Killip, 4 + 20 Photographs @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 24 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against grey and off-white walls throughout the gallery space. The works on display were printed using a mix of processes: most are gelatin silver, but there are a few inkjet prints included as well. All of the prints are 24x20 in size (or reverse) and are uneditioned. The images were made in Northern England between 1974 and 1988. Most of the prints are modern prints made recently by Killip himself; a select number of vintage prints are also on view. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Even after many years as a collector, the intricacies of how the markets for photography operate often still puzzle me. I wonder: how is it possible that until now a photographer as talented and influential as Chris Killip has failed to have a solo gallery show in the US? Curators and institutions have long known his work, and In Flagrante is widely recognized as one of the great photobooks of all time. How is it then that he doesn't have a broader following? It's a complete head scratcher.

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This show gathers together a mix of the known and unknown Chris Killip, a few images that might be familiar and a number of pictures that have never been published. The works document the lives of ordinary people in the North of England during the 1970s and 1980s as the governments of Margaret Thatcher and others worked to dismantle much of the country's aging industrial base. The pictures might be classified as 'social documentary', but I think this label overlooks the strength of emotion that simmers underneath his photographs.

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Killip is able to capture a whole range of related feelings through the turn of an arm, an expression on a face, or the stance of a man in an overcoat. These images uncover despair, weariness, anxiety, and boredom from the inside, and with a sense of empathy that makes the situations achingly real. He then uses careful juxtapositions to both express glimmers of hope and simultaneously undermine them. Children play amidst the squalor of housing projects or on building scaffolding (like an improvised jungle gym) with dirty smokestacks in the background. A family sits on a blanket in their Sunday best, surrounded by trash and worn out grass. Gardens of roses and brussel sprouts are flanked by broken fences, rubbish bins, and plywood walls covered with torn posters. 'True love' is chalked on a brick wall near a sidewalk strewn with newspapers and garbage. Confrontation and violence seem just outside the frame, as the society slowly breaks down under the weight of declining prospects. Neighbors are reduced to peeping out of their windows, fearful of the world outside.

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In seeing these images in person for the first time, I felt a direct connection to the work of David Goldblatt, to the telling of larger, more complicated stories through the nuances of smaller everyday moments. There is the same sense of making pictures that have a pointed political message, by catching the contrasts but without highlighting the obvious. Individually and together, Killip's images tell the sad stories of slow, relentless decay and of the harsh tests to their resilience that these people have had to repeatedly endure.

I came away from this show with an increased appreciation for both Killip's compositional skills and craftsmanship, as well as his ability to single out resonant moments that can help outsiders to better understand the plight of his subjects. It's an impressive body of work, full of durably memorable images of the edges of hopelessness.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows: the contemporary prints are $4500 each, while the vintage prints are $10000 each. Surprisingly, Killip's work has not yet become widely available in the secondary markets. A few recent prints have come to market in the past few years, fetching prices between $3000 and $6000, but there are so few data points, it is hard to chart much of a line. As a result, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point, and Amador is Killip's sole representative in the US. The artist is also represented by Eric Franck Fine Art (here) in London.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Harvard faculty page (here)
• Book: Errata Editions In Flagrante (here)

Chris Killip, 4 + 20 Photographs
Through November 13th

Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Bruce Gilden, Coney Island @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 24 black and white images, framed in black and matted, and hung against cream and grey walls in the main gallery spaces. All of the works on display are vintage gelatin silver prints, made between 1976 and 1986, with dimensions 16x20 or reverse. A monograph of this body of work was published by Magnum Editions/Trebruk in 2002. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The density and diversity of humanity that descends on the beaches and boardwalks of Coney Island in the summertime heat has long been a favorite subject of photographers. There is something about the combination of swimsuits and bare skin, the closeness of the mixed crowds, and the sideshow carnival atmosphere that makes for great visual discoveries and juxtapositions.

Bruce Gilden's images of this now familiar landscape have an edge of black humor, an enjoyment of the everyday oddities and weirdness found amongst the throngs of people. There are plenty of misshapen bodies, bulging and drooping out of swimsuits or slathered up in shiny oil. A dizzying array of hats, sunglasses, and sun-protecting nose covers make ordinary folks look surprisingly strange. Add in a healthy dose of eccentricity, from the older woman lounging in her lingerie, to the nuns walking in front of the Wild Swamp Man mural, from the woman covered in a huge pillow-like blob of cloth, to the leathery skin of a woman carrying a folding chair and suddenly the whole beach seems like an eye-catching parade of freaks and deviants.

If the punishing heat of the city has you daydreaming about summer-themed photography, then this show can provide a much needed glimpse of the beach, in classic New York style: a wild, swirling, comedic mass of the bizarre, the distorted, and the unexpectedly real.
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Collector's POV: The vintage prints in this exhibit are all priced at $6500. Modern prints of these same images (with the same dimensions), in editions of 15, are available for $3000 each. Gilden's work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

• Magnum site (here)
• Reviews: New Yorker (here), WSJ (here, scroll down)

Bruce Gilden, Coney Island

Through August 20th

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Amador Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

Ryuji Miyamoto, Kobe @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 works (18 black and white images and 5 photograms), framed in black and white respectively and matted, and hung against cream and grey walls in the main gallery spaces. The gelatin silver prints are 24x20 or reverse, in editions of 15; all of the images were taken in 1995. The photograms are either 32x26 or 15x12, and each is unique; these prints were made in 2008 and 2009. A revised monograph of the Kobe images was published in 2006 by Bearlin (here); signed copies are available from the gallery for $75. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ryuji Miyamoto's photographs of the aftermath of the earthquake in Kobe in 1995 are so formally pure that they almost make you forget that about the death and destruction they document. Unlike other pictures of natural disasters (floods, hurricanes, tornadoes etc.) which often depict the awe-inspiring chaos left behind by the sheer force of nature, Miyamoto's images of shaken and collapsed city buildings have a sense of orderly disorder, a composed sculptural quality that focuses our attention on abstract patterns in the tilted walls and rubble.

For the most part, these pictures are entirely absent of people, enveloping them in an uninhabited silence, a quiet unreality where the walls are falling in all around us. In some images, the damage seems to have been controlled, where buildings stand mostly intact, except for the strange dissonance of a collapsed floor or a string of broken windows and snapped girders. In others, the destruction is more widespread; entire structures lean perilously, or have been reduced to dense piles of broken concrete and tangled wires. Some even look like Postmodern architecture, albeit with an unsettling disaster undertone. In nearly every image, straight lines have become angles and diagonals: buildings are toppling into alleyways, telephone poles are bent, entire structures teeter on the verge of giving in. The geometries overlap in cacophonous layers, with architectural patterns and motifs repeated and reprised in unexpected ways. What is perhaps most shocking is how beautiful these pictures are, especially when the lines and forms tangle together in a big, chaotic mess.

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Hung together with the earthquake images are a set of recent photograms, made almost 15 years later. In these works, Miyamoto went back to Kobe and collected a variety of insect and bird specimens (mosquitoes, cicadas, dragonflies etc.) and made simple photograms representing the relentless renewal of life after the catastrophe. In one, the artist's hand reaches into the frame like the Michelangelo's hand of God; together, they provide an eloquent coda to the rebuilding process.
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Overall, this is an exquisitely crafted and mature photographic project, combining large format formality and up-close intimacy, telling the devastating story of the Kobe earthquake with remarkable grace.

Collector's POV: The gelatin silver prints in this show are reasonably priced at $3000 or $4000, based on their place in the edition. The photograms are either $6000 or $3500, based on size. A few of Miyamoto's works have recently come into the secondary markets, but not enough to have any real pricing pattern. Many of his photo books have also become quite collectable. Miyamoto is also represented by Taro Nasu Gallery in Tokyo/Osaka (here), Kicken Berlin (here), and Michael Hoppen Contemporary (here) in London.

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

• Cardboard Houses (here)
• UBS Art Collection (here)

Ryuji Miyamoto, Kobe

Through May 8th

Amador Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

Robert Voit, New Trees @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 color images, framed in blond natural wood with no mat, and hung against cream and grey walls in the main gallery spaces. The c-prints are available in two sizes: 60x50, in editions of 6, and 24x20, in editions of 4. There are 5 large prints and 12 small prints in the exhibit. The images were taken in various locations around the world between 2004 and 2009. A monograph of this body of work is being published by Steidl (here). (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: The mobile phone tower is an excellent example of one of the necessary evils of modern life. While most people demand better coverage for their phones, town zoning boards and local residents aggressively fight the telecommunications companies to prevent the construction of massive eyesores that are visible from miles around. Both sides would like to somehow make these towers "invisible", and the current solution favored by many is to dress the towers up to look like trees, so they blend in better with the surrounding environment. Or at least that's the intention.
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German photographer Robert Voit has spent the past several years scouring the globe, making pictures of these cell tower trees. Voit trained in Düsseldorf under Thomas Ruff, and so has absorbed many of the conceptual lessons passed down from the Bechers. Each image is rigorously composed, with the tower centered in the frame, using consistent portions of land and sky and generally similar scale. Given the diversity of examples in the series, the various towers can be hung together in pairs and typologies to get at the underlying themes and variations in the artificial decorations.

The towers themselves are disguised as a dizzying array of species: there are palms and cypress, cacti and multiple types of evergreens, some with perfectly symmetrical branches, others with quirks and random limbs to make them look less fake. While a few do a satisfying job of blending into the environment, most have been transformed into caricatures of the natural world, odd sculptural forms that border on the absurd; it's quite easy to wander around this show giggling at the insanity of it all.

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Stylistically, while the debt to the Bechers is obvious, Voit has clearly taken some of the foundation concepts and adapted them to his own artistic approach. In contrast to the meticulously uniform backgrounds employed by his predecessors, Voit allows a wide spectrum of colors to float behind his subjects, from washed out whites to deep blues with puffy clouds (there's even a painterly pink and orange sunset). He's also allowed more locally specific context into the frame, showing the base station buildings and more of the surrounding natural environment; several of the images juxtapose the fake cell tower tree with a real tree or two standing nearby. Finally, while the works are conceptual, there is an element of subtle humor and satire in these pictures that dissolves away the cool detachment that is the hallmark of many of his mentors and classmates.

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Overall, this project contains a convincing mix of conceptual inversion and clever ridiculousness. As such, it has an element of fun that will broaden its appeal far beyond the usual crowd of ardent Becher adherents.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows: the 60x50 prints are $9000 each, while the 24x20 prints are $2750 or $4000 (including the frame). Voit's work has no secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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While I did like the large scale images quite well as individual pieces, I think these images will be most successful when hung together in groups. For those museums and collectors who are amassing a representative sample of the Düsseldorf school (or are planning the comprehensive retrospective for a decade from now), it seems obvious that a grid of 4, 6 or 8 of these small prints would be an important acquisition, especially since they represent the next generation of idea refinement (from the Bechers to Ruff to Voit).
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Feature: Daily Beast (here)

Robert Voit, New Trees
Through March 6th

Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Olaf Otto Becker, Above Zero @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color works (including one diptych and one portfolio of 17 images plus a map), framed in white, and hung throughout the gallery space. All of the prints are archival pigment prints, taken in 2007 or 2008, and subtitled with GPS coordinates. Each of the prints in the River 1 portfolio is 16x20, and the portfolio itself is available in an edition of 7. The other single images are either 26x30 or 44x52 (the diptych is a pair of 26x30 images); all of these are made in editions of 6. A monograph of this work has recently been published by Hatje Cantz (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: German photographer Olaf Otto Becker is a throwback to the intrepid landscape photographers of the 19th century. Like Muybridge, Watkins, and O'Sullivan before him, he takes his cumbersome 8x10 view camera out into the unexplored (and often dangerous) wilderness to capture its vast glories. Becker's previous project took him to the coastal areas of Greenland, where he photographed monumental icebergs and glaciers via an inflatable Zodiac boat. This recent project finds him further inland, trekking out into the icy unknown to document the paths of newly formed glacial rivers.

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Becker's images are a complicated confluence of science, politics and art. Beyond the views of the research station itself, the details of the melt water pictures ask all kinds of scientific questions (mostly hows and whys) concerning the formation process of the holes and pock marks, the carving of channels, the layers and stratification of the ice, and the eventual gathering into large lakes, both above and below ground.

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The politics of the larger climate change and global warming questions are also obviously embedded in the works: black dust and soot from industrial pollution blankets the landscape, capturing heat much faster than the reflective ice normally would, accelerating the pace of melting, and thus driving the formation of these rivers. And hordes of eco-tourists taking pictures of themselves out on the dirty ice are a surreal reminder how intimately involved we actually are in transforming this faraway landscape.

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In a purely artistic sense, the unexpected color palette of these images is what is most striking: there are no earthy colors at all, no greens, or browns, or yellows, even in the tiniest amounts. These are landscapes made entirely of white, grey and black, with pure strands of luminous light blue water winding through the canals of ice; in a sense, they are almost like negative prints - light where they should be dark and dark where they should be light. In composition, the works are relatively straightforward, carefully composed to heighten the grandeur of the gradual sweep of the rivers.

In general, in a time when images of the arctic have become a bit hackneyed, Becker seems to have found ways to keep the work fresh and unexpected, successfully mixing surprising beauty and serious commentary.

Collector's POV: The prices for the works in the show are as follows: the portfolio of 17 prints is $18000 (sold as a single unit), the large 44x52 prints are either $6000 or $7000, the smaller 26x30 prints are $3500, and the diptych is $5250. Becker has virtually no secondary market track record, so gallery retail is really the only option for interested collectors at this point.

While we are not landscape photography collectors, we can certainly appreciate the decorative quality of these pictures, as well as the many subcontexts and connections to the issues of our times that they represent. I think it would be an interesting juxtaposition to dig up some similar long exposure images of rivers by O'Sullivan and other 19th century expedition photographers from the American West and hang them side by side with Becker's works.

Overall, these images are particularly memorable as a group, and will therefore work well in book form where the individual images can play off each other. I can also imagine a few of the largest prints being hung dramatically on their own, the otherworldly blue of the water catching a viewer's eye from across a room.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interview @Conscientious (here)
• Broken Line book review @5B4 (here)

Olaf Otto Becker, Above Zero
Through January 9th

Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Keizo Kitajima, The Joy of Portraits @Amador

JTF (just the facts): A total of 48 black and white and color images, framed in black and matted, and hung throughout in the main gallery space. (Installation shots at right.) Six separate projects are represented in the show; details for each are as follows:

• Koza: 6 gelatin silver prints, taken between 1977 and 1980, printed in 2008, all 12x9 or reverse, in editions of 7
• Tokyo: 8 gelatin silver prints, taken in 1979, printed in 2008, all 12x9, in editions of 7
• New York: 11 gelatin silver prints, taken between 1981 and 1982, printed in 2002, all 12x9, in editions of 7
• Eastern Europe: 6 gelatin silver prints, taken between 1983 and 1984, printed in 2003, all 12x9, in editions of 7
• Seoul, Berlin, New York: 11 digital c-prints, taken between 1986 and 1989, printed in 2004, all 12x9 or reverse, in editions of 12
• Soviet Union: 6 digital c-prints, taken in 1991, printed in 2009, 12x17 or reverse, in editions of 5

Comments/Context: The exhibit of Keizo Kitajima's portraits now on view at Amador Gallery is really a mini-retrospective of sorts, a sampler of a handful of different projects spanning approximately 15 years. What I like best about this show is that it shows the evolution of an artist's approach to picture making over time; ideas are expressed, refined, and adapted to different circumstances, and then eventually abandoned when a new perspective is required.

Kitajima's earliest works used a snapshot aesthetic to capture the cultural mixing of servicemen and local residents in Okinawa, often in bars or in nighttime encounters. In the following years, under the influence of Daido Moriyama and others, Kitajima's Tokyo work became much darker, toned, grainy and often out of focus, with a heavy emphasis on process; high contrast images were rephotographed and roughly printed, with chemical residues dripping visibly down the sides. The images have an avant-garde performance aspect to them, reminiscent of the whole Provoke era.

In the early 1980s, Kitajima came to New York, where he left behind the experimental processes and returned to environmental snapshot portraiture, now using flash lighting to document the gritty street life of the city; his camera was drawn to the fringes: the sordid, the outrageous, and the unusual. His book, New York, published in 1982, earned him the Kimura Ihei Award and cemented his position as a fine art photographer in Japan. Kitajima then moved on to Eastern Europe, where his portraits became slightly more formal, buttoned-up overcoats and three-quarter poses matching the grey skies and dreary cities.

Color entered the photographer's palette in the late 1980s, where his snapshot aesthetic was still in evidence, but now modified to capture fleeting head shots on city streets around the world; these works are strongly reminiscent of similar images by Harry Callahan and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. The final group of images in the show are from Kitajima's visit to the USSR in 1991, just prior to its collapse. These pictures are formal color portraits, carefully framed and composed, with more sense of surrounding context. Put side by side with his 1970s era black and whites, most would be hard pressed to be convinced that these two projects were the work of the same photographer.

While Kitajima's portraits aren't uniformly engaging, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to see how his technique has evolved over time, and how interlocking pieces have been added and taken away to create new aesthetic variations at each step along his artistic road.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show range in price from $2500 to $3500, based on the different projects. Kitajima's work has to date not been available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the only option for interested collectors at this point. A few of his collectible photo books have started to appear in the photo book auctions.

While portraits aren't a fit for our specific collection, I particularly enjoyed the late 1970s Tokyo images, where shadowy sunglassed faces are cropped and reworked.

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

Transit Hub

• The Joy of Portraits, published by Rat Hole Gallery (here)
• NYTimes review, 2006 (here)

Keizo Kitajima, The Joy of Portraits
Through November 7th

Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Book: Osamu Kanemura, My Name is Shockhammer

JTF (just the facts): A large format, tabloid style booklet, published by Osiris in 2007. Produced in conjunction with an exhibit at the Port Gallery in Osaka. 16 pages, with 15 black and white images. (Poor cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: If the name Osamu Kanemura is familiar to collectors in the United States, it is likely due to his inclusion in the New Photo exhibit (number 12) at the MoMA in 1996. We actually became aware of Kanemura much later, with the introduction of his body of work known as Spider's Strategy several years ago (we saw the exhibition at Cohen Amador and bought the book for our library). This thin pamphlet brings us up to speed with what he has been working on lately, and it seems to be a direct extension and continuation of the ideas that underlay Spider's Strategy.

The most obvious and common stereotype about Tokyo is that it is an overcrowded, chaotic mess. Kanemura has pointed his camera at this complexity and selected densely fragmented slices of the environment around him. His images recall some of Lee Friedlander's work, packed with information and overlapping patterns, reduced to a two dimensional cluster of interlaced electric wires, buildings, bicycles, and shop billboards. The pictures are often bewildering in their richness, provoking the same wide eyed visual overload of the new visitor to the city.

While there are often random pedestrians in his images, Kanemura's work doesn't seem to be about any particular narrative, but about the complexities of this built environment and the social relationships that have emerged out of the closeness. The images are dark, and often claustrophobic, with nets of wires, street signs, and blinking lights falling down from the nearly obliterated sky. While there are only a small number of works in this booklet, his unique view of the city comes through hauntingly.

Collector's POV: Truth be told, we have been thinking about adding a Kanemura to our collection since we saw the original Spider's Strategy show, and every time we visit Cohen Amador (Kanemura's gallery in New York, site here), we are reminded of just how much we would like to add one of his images to our city scene genre. While the retail prices are reasonable (I believe they are around $3000 each, in editions of 5), we just haven't gotten focused enough on any single image to get to the finish line. There is no secondary market for his work at the moment. So going forward, we'll need to do some more legwork and look at some more images to find a representative picture that jumps out at us, full of crazy intersecting wires.

Gabriele Basilico, Intercity @Cohen Amador

JTF (just the facts): 12 black and white pigment prints, hung in dark grey frames throughout the gallery. The works come in two sizes (approximately 29x37 and 53x42) and are printed in editions of 15. The images were taken in a variety of locations (Naples, Moscow, San Francisco, Monaco, Barcelona, and Bari) during the period 2004-2007. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico has been making careful studies of cities, urban environments and architecture in Europe and in other locations around the world for nearly three decades, and yet he remains a bit of a mystery to audiences in the United States. Except for the show at the SFMOMA last year and a relatively recent relationship with Cohen Amador, Basilico has been virtually absent from America.

Basilico's images of densely built habitats are neither wholly abstracted exercises in lines and planes, nor are they wide documentary views of architecture in the context of its surroundings; they lie somewhere in the middle, giving the structures some larger situation, while playing with the relationships of space and pattern inherent in their design. At first glance, some of the images can seem a bit dull, but upon further inspection, the complexities start to reveal themselves and the pictures become more intriguing.

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An example of this is a set of three images from Monaco, hung together in the back of the gallery (image at right). When I first saw these pictures, I wondered why three pictures which were so obviously similar had been chosen for the exhibit, when they were not designed as a triptych. And yet, as I stood and looked at these images more carefully, it became clear to me that each image had its own subtle variations in pattern as a result of the changes in camera angle. The sinuous street down in the valley of the buildings was entirely different in each image, and the relationships between the structures had been altered just enough to create varied compositions. Each picture could easily stand on its own, and the triptych effect created by their installation together simply highlighted their differences.

Basilico's works merit this type of patient looking. These are silent, almost introspective pictures, that encourage standing and thinking awhile. His work asks questions about our built environments, but it does so without shouting or overt critique. The images are simply put forth, to be read in a multitude of ways. Focus can quickly shift from the interplay of the planes and tones of a dense warren of buildings, to harder questions about how or why they evolved to be that way in the first place.

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In sum, this small show is certainly worth a visit, particularly if you aren't familiar with this important photographer.

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Collector's POV: Basilico's work makes an interesting contrast to a variety of city and industrial photographers throughout the history of the medium, from Abbott, Callahan, and the New Topographic photographers, to newer voices (Struth, Opie, Kanemura and others). His work is solely represented by Cohen Amador here in the US (I believe), and is virtually absent from the secondary market, so there aren't many options for acquiring his prints locally. The images in this show are retailing for 8000 and 11000 Euros, based on size. Vintage works from the 1980s and 1990s are also available (although not part of this particular exhibit).

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

Gabriele Basilico, Intercity

Through March 6

Cohen Amador Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

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UPDATE: We have been reminded by another collector that Basilico also had a solo exhibition at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2004.

Taiji Matsue, Nest @Cohen Amador

JTF (just the facts): 5 large color C prints (50x60) from the "Nest" series and 12 smaller color C prints (19x19) from the "Cell" series, all from 2008 and in editions of 5, shown throughout the gallery (installation shot of the "Cell" series at right).

Comments/Context: Taiji Matsue is a technologist. I say this not because he uses digital capture and Photoshop, because even the Luddites among us are doing these things in today's world. No, Matsue's work and underlying approach seem to stem from a comfort with and genuine interest in technology: in computer programming, display electronics, and cartography, and how these technologies are related to the process of image making.

We first became aware of Matsue's work a year or so ago when Paul Amador showed us several of his black and white city scenes and landscapes. In both sets of work, the surfaces are flattened out, the horizon is cropped out, the camera angle is from above or aerial, and the textures are brought into sharp focus. The traditional landscapes (if you can call them that) are very reminiscent of Frederick Sommer's shimmering shots of the desert. The urban landscapes are low contrast, topographical studies, with windows and buildings used to highlight the interlocking patterns and repetitions. These have some echoes of Lewis Baltz, or perhaps 1970s Harry Callahan.

The work in this new show builds on these earlier themes and introduces the elements of color and larger/smaller scale. The "Nest" project is derived from an idea from computer programming: the concept of nesting subroutines, allowing a programmer to build a hierarchy of detail that is called only when necessary. The "Nest" images are large images with a huge amount of detail, "hyper real" you might call them. These are works that can be taken in on one level from 10 feet, and then can be engaged intimately at the same level of sharpness right up close (think Clifford Ross). This "feature" of the pictures creates a feeling of drifting in and out, as you move up and down the scale of magnification. They're a little like playing with Google Earth, zooming in and out. The subject matter and general approach is the same as the earlier work: landscapes and urban studies, with the same cropping and camera angles, once again focused on patterns that are enhanced by this staggering level of detail.

The "Cell" series evolve these same concepts in another direction (perhaps derived from microprocessor or display architectures, or simply from spreadsheets or maps). In these images, Matsue has taken one of his standard size images and "discovered" one single "cell" 1/200th of the size of the overall negative, and then blown this small area up into a larger work. Up close, the effect is that the images are pixelated, with almost Pointillist dots of grainy color making up the magnified images. The subjects seem like ants shot from the moon (what are these tiny little people doing?).

While all of this is interesting at a technical level, the question is whether it is durable art. I found a few of the "Nest" images, particularly Leon, Mexico, to work quite well, the hive of small buildings and colors creating an all over pattern that was mesmerizing. Others in the series were less effective, and while I got the point he was making, the images weren't as compelling, or perhaps seemed too reminiscent of the work of other artists. Of the "Cell" series, overall, I found the texture and graininess of the images intriguing, as the subject matter was broken down into points of color. Again, I think there were a few winners, and a decent number of more average examples.

There is a two part interview with Taiji Matsue in conjunction with this exhibit to be found at Modern Art Obsession, here and here. Matsue's new book, Cell, is also available.

Collector's POV: Matsue's "Nest" images are being sold between $7500 and $11500 and the smaller "Cell" works are between $2000 and $4500. Since we have virtually no color in our personal collection, one of Matsue's earlier works (likely an urban landscape) would fit better for us. That said, I think there are a handful of memorable pieces here that would be worth adding to your collection, especially in the context of considering how technology (as a mindset rather than as a tool) is influencing the photography of the 21st century.

Rating: * (1 star) GOOD (rating scale described here)

Taiji Matsue, Nest
Through December 31

Cohen Amador Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022