Unique @Von Lintel

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing 14 photographic works by 9 different artists/photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are unique. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers have been included in the show, with the number of works on display and print details as background:

• Matthew Brandt: 1 chromogenic print soaked in Silver Lake water, 30x40, 2010
• John Chiara: 1 Ilfachrome print, 34x28, 2012
• Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk: 2 chemigrams on paper, 20x20, 2011
• Agnes Eperjesi: 3 color photograms, 10x20, 2011
• Curtis Mann: 1 bleached chromogenic print, 30x40, 2011
• Klea McKenna: 2 photograms on gelatin silver fiber paper, 24x20, 2013
• Amanda Means: 2 developer on Ilford matte gelatin silver fiber paper prints, 24x20, 2005
• Floris Neusüss: 2 gelatin silver prints, 88x42 and 25x21, 1987, 1991

Comments/Context: The oxymoron of photographic uniqueness has always offered a set of specific challenges for photographers, forcing them to examine the very nature of the image making process itself. While inherent reproducibility may be the hallmark of most forms of the medium, artists have continually wanted to introduce hand crafted gestures, elements of chance, and original marks to photographs, undermining the usual multiplication and creating one of a kind artworks. This group show provides a recent sampler of this impulse, matching contemporary lines of thinking with a few representatives from the prior generation.

 

John Chiara, Curtis Mann, and Matthew Brandt all start with photographs that are recognizably representational (blue skies, trees, lakes, and other landscape elements are readily identifiable), but each quickly moves off from standard documentation into areas of improvisation. Chiara uses a custom made camera obscura, multiple exposures, and uneven cut paper to pile image atop image. Mann adds tiny dots of bleach in a large round circle, creating a transparent scrim like a light flare. And Brandt dips his image in the lake water it depicts, allowing the color chemistry to break down into unexpected abstract swirls.

 

Other artists forego the use of a camera, either heading into the darkroom to make photograms or playing with light sensitive paper in more uncontrolled environments. Floris Neusüss provides the baseline for traditional photogram work, mixing positive and negative silhouettes of bodies and greenery (often with added solarization) into complicated, overlapped abstractions. Agnes Eperjesi offers a contemporary foil to these works, with her photograms of newspapers, hands, flowers, and other random objects, all bathed in washes of drifting color. Klea McKenna's photograms of raindrops are a process mystery; how she captured the literally thousands of individual drops with such amazing clarity (some like circles, others like bursts of flame) is a fascinating puzzle.

 

The remaining artists in the show take these ideas to their ultimate photographic limit, effectively drawing with developer on light sensitive paper. The chemigrams of Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk are astonishingly intricate, with grids of squares and rectangles covered in concentric light brown polygons; there is a connection here to Chuck Close's approach to painting his individual grid elements, but Cordier and Falk's process is even more strict and controlled, except when the lines melt into tiny blobs and pools. Amanda Means takes a more fluid approach, allowing the developer to wash across her cut grid, creating fingers of color like the gullies of a dry river bed.

 

All in, this is a well-edited gathering of unique works, mixing both known and unknown names. It successfully defines the essential challenge of uniqueness and points to the diversity of innovative approaches being used to upend the idea of the repeatable photograph.

 

Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows:

• Matthew Brandt: $5000
• John Chiara: $6400
• Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk: $21000 each
• Agnes Eperjesi: $3150 each
• Curtis Mann: $6700
• Klea McKenna: $2400 each
• Amanda Means: $4900 each
• Floris Neusüss: $23000 and $42000

Aside from Neusüss and Cordier, most of the photographers in this show have little or no secondary market history, although Brandt and Mann are recent regulars on the art fair circuit. As such, gallery retail is still the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Feature/Review: New Yorker (here)
• Matthew Brandt artist site (here)
• John Chiara artist site (here)
• Pierre Cordier artist site (here)
• Agnes Eperjesi artist site (here)
• Gundi Falk artist site (here)
• Curtis Mann artist site (here)
• Klea McKenna artist site (here)
• Amanda Means artist site (here)

Unique

Through July 12th

 

Von Lintel Gallery

520 West 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 1 of 3

In a single audacious shot across the bow, Frieze New York has decisively, at least in my mind, challenged the Armory as the king of the local contemporary art fairs. There is no changing the visual overload or the wearying onslaught of "merch" inherent at such a place, but the organizers have at least made a real attempt to get the surrounding details right. The overall art-seeing experience in meaningfully better: the halls are wider and less cramped, the booths are roomier and more open, and the light is bright and airy. Even when the fair got more crowded and the sun came out to raise the temperature and cook the occupants during my visit Friday, every few yards a blast of arctic air conditioning would whoosh up from a grate under my feet for a shuddering moment of relief.

Photography-wise, the key thing to note about this fair is that there are NO photography specialist galleries included. Not one. So the available photography is broadcast throughout the fair population like tiny seeds, to be searched out and discovered amidst the rest of the contemporary art. There are also very few secondary market photographic trophies on offer (unlike the parade of Shermans in seemingly every booth at the Armory). This is first and foremost a primary market show, with galleries and dealers showing (for the most part) the work they represent.

For each gallery below (grouped by color coded section, starting near the North entrance), I've listed the photographers/artists with work on view, with the number of images on display in parentheses. In some specific cases where something caught my eye, I've added additional information, pricing (watch for different currencies), and installation shots.


Blue Section

Wilkinson Gallery (here): Anna Parkina (3), Laurie Simmons (1), Jimmy DeSana (1)

Anton Kern Gallery (here): Anne Collier (1)

Art:Concept (here): Jeremy Deller (1)

Galerija Gregor Podnar (here): Ion Grigorescu (1), B. Wurtz (1, with paired sculptural object)

Simon Lee Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldmann (1 set of 70). A classic of 1970s conceptual ordering, showing the entire wardrobe of a woman, from shirts on hangers to pairs of shoes. Priced at €35000.

Friedrich Petzel Gallery (here): Robert Heinecken (9)

Team Gallery (here): Sam Samore (2), Cory Arcangel (1), Ryan McGinley (6). Death at the foot of a playground slide never looked so wacky and offbeat (Samore's 1973 image from The Suicidist, priced at $20000.) In a side room painted yellow/orange, a series of new cut photo collages by McGinley has a small solo show. The works are densely covered in his signature young men and women, Xacto knifed into a exuberant sea of tiny faces and bodies; this one was priced at $35000 and already sold.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery (here): Paul Graham (1 diptych, 3)

Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle (here): Thomas Ruff (2), Thomas Struth (2), Candida Hofer (1), Goshka Macuga (1). A all-over composition of pipes and pumps by Struth, from his recent series of scientific labs and facilities, priced at €85000.

Green Section

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (here): Uta Barth (1), Gillian Wearing (1), Phil Collins (1 set of 32). Wearing as a creepy rubber masked August Sander, priced at £35000.

Hauser & Wirth (here): Roni Horn (1), Rodney Graham (1 diptych)

Tomio Koyama Gallery (here): Mika Ninagawa (4). Ninagawa's unorthodox use of vibrant color continues to astonish. From her recent series Noir, priced at $1200.

Harris Lieberman (here): Matt Saunders (2), Lisa Oppenheim (3). The delicate lace photogram gets an update by Oppenheim, folded over again and again into a layered progression of increasing complexity. One from the recent series of five, priced at $6500.

Galleri Nicolai Wallner (here): Joachim Koester (6)

Galerie Sfeir-Semler (here): Wael Shawky (8), Akram Zaatari (1), Yto Barrada (1). A haunting set of portraits of crusader puppets by Shawky, priced at €6000 each.

The Approach (here): Lisa Oppenheim (4), John Stezaker (1 set of 3 collages, 3 collages)

Almine Rech Gallery (here): Taryn Simon (3), Curtis Mann (1). Unlike Mann's previous bleached images, in this recent work, he has scraped thin wavy lines across the surface of the emulsion in a completely abstract striped design, a bit reminiscent of Marco Breuer. Priced at $8800.

Timothy Taylor Gallery (here): Susan Hiller (1 set of 9)

Lehmann Maupin (here): Robin Rhode (1 set of 12). I'm a big fan of Rhode's set piece wall drawings. Here cartoon chairs and a curled piece of white tubing provide the raw materials for a flip book story. Priced at $70000, with a solo show at the gallery coming in 2013.

Galerie Jocelyn Wolff (here): Guillaume Leblon (1)

Broadway 1602 (here): Penny Slinger (2 collages)

Air de Paris (here): Sturtevant (5), Jospeh Grigley (3)

Altman Siegel (here): Trevor Paglen (3). A long exposure image of the striated trails of dead satellites and space junk flying across the nighttime sky. Priced at $12000.

Galerie Thaddeus Ropac (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Lelong (here): Alfredo Jaar (1 set of 5, 1 set of 3), Helio Oiticica (3), Cildo Meireles (1), Ana Mendieta (2). A Mendieta mud sculpture, printed large and priced at $75000.

Taka Ishii Gallery (here): Yuki Kimura (1)

Annet Gelink Gallery (here): Wilfredo Prieto (1), Yael Bartana (1 diptych), Ryan Gander (1)

Sies+Höke (here): Kris Martin (1 set of 10), Etienne Chambaud (1 set of 3)

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Goshka Macuga (1), Roe Ethridge (4)

Miguel Abreu Gallery (here): Liz Deschenes (2), Eileen Quinlan (3), Pamela Rosenkranz (1)

Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here.

Photography at the 2011 Armory, Part 3 of 4

Part 3 of our 2011 Armory summary covers the entire left side Pier 94, left from the entrance area. Part 1 of the review (which includes an explanation of the format) can be found here; Part 2 can be found here.

Lisson Gallery (here): Rodney Graham (1), Maria Abramovic (group of 20)

Victoria Miro (here): Idris Khan (1), Isaac Julien (1), Doug Aitken (group of 20). This striking purple and orange grid of Aitken images was on an outside wall of the booth; I didn't get a price.

Max Wigram Gallery (here): Slater Bradley (1), James White (1)

Museum 52 (here): Mariah Robertson (1)

Galeria Senda (here): Massimo Vitali (1), Ola Kolehmainen (1), Jordi Bernardo (2)

Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois (here): Alain Bublex (1)

Nicholas Robinson Gallery (here): Petros Christostoumou (1), Indre Serpytyte (1)

Sean Kelly Galley (here): James Casebere (2), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Iran do Spirito Santo (4), Marina Abramovic (1), Frank Thiel (2). I liked the textured geometric uniformity of this monochrome Thiel. It was priced at 23000€.

Galerie Barbara Wien Wilma Lukatsch (here): Mariana Castillo Deball (4)

Carlier Gebauer (here): Jean-Luc Moulene (1)

Baronian_Francey (here): Florian Maier-Aichen (1)

Galerie Georg Kargl (here): Andreas Forarasi (1), David Maljkovic (1)

Yvon Lambert (here): David Claerbout (5+1 diptych)

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): Zwelethu Mthethwa (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), Carrie Mae Weems (grid of 42), Richard Mosse (1). This was the first time I've seen one of Mosse's infrared images of the Congo in person. The pink tonality of the mountainous jungle is truly electric; I'm looking forward to seeing an entire show of this body of work at some point soon. The image was priced at $19000.

BlainSouthern (here): Mat Collinshaw (13)

Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie (here): Hrafnkell Sigurdsson (1)

Buchmann Galerie (here): Bettina Pousttchi (2)

Galerie Daniel Templon (here): James Casebere (1)

Kavi Gupta Gallery (here): Curtis Mann (2). I continue to be impressed by these bleached images by Mann. I like the yellowed surface distortions and the glimpses of narrative underneath. This grid was $22000, and there were others to look at in a binder.

Workplace Gallery (here): Marcus Coates (1), Matt Stokes (1), Jo Coupe (1)

Parkett Publishers (here): Paul McCarthy (1), Annette Kelm (1)

Bugada & Cargnel (here): Cyprien Gaillard (4)

Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska (here): Josef Hoeflehner (2), Giovanni Castell (2), Olaf Otto Becker (2), Axel Hutte (1)

Ingleby Gallery (here): Garry Fabian Miller (7), Peter Liversidge (2), Susan Derges (1 diptych). I've always been a fan of Derges' work, especially the River Taw series of photograms. These images of water over sand have an amazing sparkle up close. Unfortunately, I didn't get a price.


Galeria Enrique Guerrero (here): Olga Adelantado (2). Pablo Helguera (6+slides on lightbox)

Faria Fabregas Galeria (here): Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (1)

Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporaneo (here): Adriana Bustos (2)

Galeria Nara Roesler (here): Paolo Bruscky (2)

Lucia de la Puente (here): Edi Hirose (9)

Galeria Isabel Aninat (here): Denise Lira-Ratinoff, Collectivo Aninat & Swinburn (4)

Part 4 of the Armory review can be found here.

American ReConstruction @Winkleman

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing 24 works from 6 different photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung in the entry and main gallery spaces. The show was organized by collector Michael Hoeh, who writes the Modern Art Obsession blog (here). (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included in the exhibit, with the details of the works on view to follow:

• Matthew Albanese: 3 c-prints on plexi, unframed, sized either 20x30, 40x21, or 50x33, in editions of 10+2 or 5+2, made in 2009/2010.
• Jowhara AlSaud: 3 c-41 prints, mounted but unframed, either 30x40 or 50x60, in editions of 5+3 and 5+2 respectively, made in 2009.
• Jeremy Kost: 3 Polaroid collages, framed in white with no mat, ranging in size from 17x23 to 25x50, each unique, made in 2010.
• Mark Lyon: 4 archival pigment prints mounted to poly metal, framed in white with no mat, ranging in size from 36x23 to 36x54, in editions of 8+3 or 8+2, made in 2009/2010.
• Curtis Mann: 7 works made of synthetic polymer on bleached chromogenic prints, framed in white with no mat, each 19x23, each unique, made in 2010.
• Cara Phillips: A total of 4 works from two different projects. 2 of the works are digital c-prints mounted on cintra, framed in white with no mat, 30x38 or reverse, in editions of 5+1, made in 2006 and 2010. The other 2 works are gelatin silver prints, framed in black with no mat, each 30x24, in editions of 5+1, made in 2010.

Comments/Context: The abstract idea of constructing something - a truth, an identity, an environment, or a picture - has become an entire subculture of 21st century art and life. We're constantly building - walls, facades, worlds - recreating and seeing ourselves in ways that go beyond the simple outward appearance. We've been given the tools to remake ourselves and our surroundings, and we're busy doing it in a myriad of ways. This smart collection of new photography comes at this rather broad concept from a variety of angles, weaving disparate ideas and bodies of work back into a more complex fabric of current photographic practice.

The "constructions" in this show span both the literal and the figurative. Matthew Albanese's spewing volcanoes, angry tornadoes, and broken ice sheets are actually carefully built tabletop models, photographed in a way that mixes the appearance of truth and the obvious details of artifice. Curtis Mann's works are also deeply rooted in process; he takes images found on the Internet (in this case of the Golan Heights), and subjects them to bleaching, which alternately leaves parts of the picture visible and obscure. These particular works have been folded, creating elegant mirror image blobs and smears, allowing us to glimpse only portions of the underlying story.

Other works delve into the "construction" of self and personality. Jowhara AlSaud uses a darkroom process to eliminate the faces of her subjects, replacing them with large etched line drawings, soberly commenting on the practice of censorship (and how it affects the development of individuality) in Saudi Arabia. Cara Phillips comes at this same idea of creating an identity via her images of creepy plastic surgery offices (trying to change the surface appearance) and her unsettling ultraviolet portraits (uncovering what lies beneath the skin).

Jeremy Kost's collaged portraits of drag queens and young men have many layers of staging and construction: the staging of the scenes, the creating of new identities, and the Cubist layering of pictures reminiscent of David Hockney's photographic collages from the 1980s. And Mark Lyon's photographs of unlikely places covered by landscape mural wallpapers get at our desire to remake spaces in ways that mask their actual use; brightly colored outdoor scenes are oddly juxtaposed with the trappings of a nail salon, a laundromat, and a YMCA exercise room.

To my eye, the works by Curtis Mann, Mark Lyon and UV portraits by Cara Phillips are the most memorable and original of those on view. The others certainly fit the thematic structure of the show and interconnect tightly in terms of extrapolating on the main organizational idea, but impressed me less in terms of their ultimate durability. By design, group shows are supposed to bring together disparate works and provide alternate perspectives, nearly always leaving viewers with a sense of unevenness based on their own preferences. As such, I found this show to be thoughtfully organized and well "constructed", but naturally somewhat mixed in terms of the spread of likely longevity.

Collector's POV: The prices for the various works in the show are as follows, organized by photographer:

• Matthew Albanese: $1000, $1300 or $2000, based on size
• Jowhara AlSaud: $3500 or $6800, based on size
• Jeremy Kost: $3750, $4500, or $8000, based on size
• Mark Lyon: $1200, $1700, or $1800, based on size
• Curtis Mann: each $3000 (and most already sold)
• Cara Phillips: $2800 or $2900

None of these photographers has any secondary market history to date, so gallery retail will be the only option for interested collectors at this point. Curtis Mann was also included in the Whitney Biennial 2010 (here), and seems to be on a bit of a hot streak.

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

Transit Hub:

• Review: Conscientious (here)
• Matthew Albanese artist site (here)
• Jowhara AlSaud artist site (here)
• Jeremy Kost artist site (here)
• Mark Lyon artist site (here)
• Curtis Mann artist site (here)
• Cara Phillips artist site (here)

American ReConstruction: An exhibition of new photography
Through June 12th

Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Whitney Biennial 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transit Hub:

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

Whitney Biennial 2010
Through May 30th

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