2011 AIPAD Review, Part 1 of 2

For collectors like us, a visit to the annual AIPAD Photography Show in New York is like being a kid in a candy store; it combines countless moments of wonder with a mind-numbing case of weary visual overload. The show remains the single best annual gathering of photography in the United States, and this year's 82 exhibitors crisscrossed from 19th century to contemporary work, with a heavy dose of vintage black and white material in between.

Unlike previous years when I have had more time to linger, I only had one afternoon to enjoy the booths this year; no opening night gala, no intimate dinners or cocktail receptions, no leisurely repeat visits on succeeding days. So my experience of the 2011 version of AIPAD was more focused and less methodical than other incarnations; a targeted visit to those booths whose gallery owners I wanted to see or who had work I was particularly interested in, and a cursory swing through the rest. As the years pass, I am more and more struck by the sense of community to be found in these halls: collectors large and small, working photographers, museum curators, gallery owners/dealers, all slowly becoming a dense network of international friends to catch up with, all sharing a common passion for those pictures that make our eyes light up, wherever and whatever they may be. This blog has woven me into the fabric of this community more deeply than I had imagined, and I thoroughly enjoyed having a few quick moments with good friends from afar and putting faces with many personalities I had only known via email. I only wish I had had more time to sift through each and every bin.

This 2011 AIPAD Review will be split into 2 parts, with our customary booth reports, lists of the photographers on view (the number of pictures by each in parentheses) and some additional commentary or a specific image as further illustration. Given my limited time, I only tallied details on 33 booths; those that have been omitted were not necessarily any less compelling, I just didn't have the time to dive deeper and explore the fringes with more care. I'm sure there were great works hidden on interior walls, behind panels or in boxes that I missed in my haste. Overall, my selections inherently have some bias toward vintage black and white photography, given the dominance of vintage work on view. Anecdotally, the vintage dealers I talked to seemed to be having a more successful fair than their contemporary counterparts, but this was early in the run of the show, so who knows how it actually played out when the masses arrived over the weekend.

The galleries presented are in no particular order, and as always, apologies for the marginal images, as they are often marred by reflections or glare:

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here): Ola Kolehmainen (2), Monika Bravo (3), Bruce Davidson (2), Jim Campbell (1), Pertti Kekarainen (4), Shirley Shor (1), Niko Luoma (1). The Wolkowitz booth was the usual mix of Finns and new media photography. There was a terrific gridded Kolehmainen on the outside wall at the entrance of the show, but I was most surprised by the large scale Luoma. While I have seen these geometric line works before in a variety of colors and patterns, two details were new to me in this image: the monochrome black and white and the monumental size. Given it's density, it's a picture you can get lost in; it was priced at $16000.

Weston Gallery (here): Danielle Nelson-Mourning (2), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Oliver Gagliani (1), Imogen Cunningham (1), Pirkle Jones (1), Edward Weston (5), Wynn Bullock (3), Harry Callahan (2), Ansel Adams (4), George Ballagny (1), Charles Marville (1), Eugene Cuvelier (1), Francis Frith (1), Dr. John Murray (1), JB Greene (1), Edouard Baldus (1), John Thomson (1), plus two bins.

Weinstein Gallery (here): Alec Soth (16). The Weinstein booth was a single artist display of Soth's new Broken Manual work. Having not seen this body of work in person before, I was most impressed by the continuity of mood across the diverse set of images; it mixes melancholy, fear, anger, distrust, and isolation into a heady brew. I also hadn't realized that the images were printed in specific and different sizes, i.e. some are small and some are large, and they are not all available in all sizes; Soth has chosen how he wants each image to be sized, thereby creating a certain rhythm to the changes in scale when the works are hung together. The interleaving of color and black and white images also breaks up the natural flow, forcing the viewer to look more closely. The overall effect is controlled and powerful; it's certainly among his best work. My favorite image was actually a black and white work on one of the exterior walls, a picture of a solitary light bulb strung up in the forest (priced at $15500); the glare was so awful off the face of the frame that I couldn't get even a marginal picture. So instead, here's another subtle gut puncher - the white cave with empty hangers (priced at $20700).

Robert Koch Gallery (here): David Parker (1), Masao Yamamoto (3), Andre Kertesz (1), Helen Levitt (1), Imre Kinski (1), Eliott Erwitt (2), Hugh Brown (2), Jeff Brouws (4), Michael Wolf (5), Frantisek Drtikol (1), Joseph Ehm (2), Jusef Sudek (4), Karoly Danassy (1), plus two bins.

Paul M. Hertzmann Inc. (here): Richard Misrach (2), Andre Kertesz (2), Donald Ross (1), Minor White (2), Pim Van Os (1), Brett Weston (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Dorothea Lange (1), Edward Weston (2), Eugene Atget (1), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1), Roger Parry (1), Berenice Abbott (1), Antonio Garduno (1), Consuelo Kanaga (1), Arthur Siegel (1), Osamu Shiihara (2), GP Fieret (1), plus four bins. I liked the avant-garde jitteriness of this Shiihara multiple exposure nude from the 1930s; it was priced at $9500.

Joseph Bellows Gallery (here): Wayne Lazorik (2), Leroy Robbins (6), Bill Arnold (2), Todd Walker (2), Randal Levenson (3), Thomas Barrow (2), Bevan Davies (4), Terry Wild (1), Charles Johnstone (6), plus two bins.

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Irving Penn (4), Gregory Vershbow (2), Cig Harvey (1), Mario Gaicomelli (3), Alex Webb (2), Ilse Bing (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (3), Walker Evans (3), Minor White (1), Carleton Watkins (1), Baron Adolph de Meyer (1), Edward Weston (1), Lewis Hine (1), Ansel Adams (3), Aaron Siskind (2), Helen Levitt (1), Arno Rafael Minkkinen (1), Francesca Woodman (4), Paulette Tavormina (3). This Siskind is the kind of image that fits right in the heart of our own collection: a city architectural scene, with strong abstract contrasts of line and form. Priced at $40000.

Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): Alex Prager (1), Olivo Barbieri (2), Victoria Sambunaris (1), Masao Yamamoto (4), Mark Steinmetz (1), Sebastiao Salgado (1), Esko Mannikko (2), Andrew Moore (2), Laura Letinsky (2), Rachel Perry Welty (4).

Gitterman Gallery (here): Frantisek Drtikol (1), Andre Kertesz (2), Clarence White (3), Jessie Tarbox Beals (1), Seneca Ray Stoddard (1), Eugene Atget (1), Aaron Siskind (5), Harry Callahan (4), Minor White (1), Ken Josephson (2), Gita Lenz (3), Ralph Eugene Meatyard (3), Charles Traub (2), Dr. Dain Tasker (1), plus two bins. This was a Callahan multiple I hadn't seen before; elegant wavy grasses as squiggly lines across the surface of water. Priced at $35000.

Richard Moore Photographs (here): Percy Loomis Sperr (17), Weegee (1), Peter Sekaer (4), Walker Evans (1), Dorothea Lange (1), Ralph Steiner (2), Bill Owens (1), Karl Struss (1), Margarethe Mather (1), plus three bins.

Edwynn Houk Gallery (here): Sebastiaan Bremer (2), Vik Muniz (1), Man Ray (1), Bettina Rheims (2), Robert Polidori (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Edward Steichen (1), Paul Strand (1), Hannes Schmid (1), Brassai (1), Andre Kertesz (1), Edward Weston (1), Dorothea Lange (3), Bruce Davidson (1), Walker Evans (1), Sally Mann (1), Joel Meyerowitz (1), Stephen Shore (4). The Houk booth had an embarassment of spectacular photographic masterworks along its interior walls. Bypassing a few notable icons, I was most drawn to this stunning Lange of the SF waterfront strike of 1934. It's an amazingly nuanced print of a visceral image; priced at $165000.

Lee Gallery (here): Gustave Le Gray (1), Gertrude Kasebier (2), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Heinrich Kühn (11), F. Holland Day (1), plus four bins. This Kühn dahlia is one I hadn't ever seen before; I actually liked it better than the more famous rubber plant nearby. The texture and patina of the layered leaves is soft and tactile. Priced at $25000.

Deborah Bell Photographs (here): Andy Warhol (6), Marcel Broodthaers (1), Vito Acconci (1), Dennis Oppenheim (1), Marcia Resnick (7), Diane Arbus (1), Louis Fauer (2), Garry Winogrand (1), GP Fieret (4), George Gardner (2), August Sander (2), Susan Paulsen (2).

Amador Gallery (here): Bernd and Hilla Becher (3), Gabriele Basilico (3), Ryuji Miyamoto (1), Arnold Odermatt (8), Robert Voit (8). Basilico's 1980s images of Dunkirque are among my favorites from his whole career, so I was happy to see one on display in the Amador booth. I'm a sucker for silhouetted industrial forms, and this series is filled with contrasty cranes and traffic lights, abstracted into interlaced geometric lines. Priced at $4500.

Halsted Gallery (here): Irving Penn (2), Paul Anderson (1), Don Hong Oai (1), Kim Kauffman (1), Andre Kertesz (3), Edward Weston (2), Berenice Abbott (3), Arnold Newman (4), Brett Weston (3), Michael Kenna (2), Aaron Siskind (1), George Tice (2), Walker Evans (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), Leonard Freed (1), Ruth Orkin (1), Nicholas Nixon (1), August Sander (1), Karl Struss (1), JH Lartigue (1).

Catherine Edelman Gallery (here): Lucie & Simon (1), Myra Greene (15), Elizabeth Ernst (4), Julie Blackmon (3), Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison (8), Gregory Scott (1), Lori Nix (1), Lauren Simonutti (8). I've slowly been getting my head around Lori Nix' meticulous tabletop dioramas (and their place in the history of staged model building - Simmons, Casebere, Demand etc.), so I spent some time looking at this real but unreal laundromat more closely. The attention to detail is staggering, especially in the subtleties of aging and the nuances of light; priced at $4000.

Part 2 of our AIPAD Review is here.

Photography at the 2011 Armory, Part 1 of 4

If I have any takeaway from this year's photography scavenger hunt at the Armory Show in New York, it is that this show is evolving away from the heavy hitters and "best of the best" toward more of an international melting pot. As I wandered through the alleys of white booths that cover both Piers 94 and 92 (roughly 275 galleries in all), I saw very few million dollar prints or acknowledged contemporary icons, and instead encountered a satisfying diversity of work, much of it on the fringes or entirely new to me.

With a few years of doing these reviews under my belt, my approach to this show has now become ruthlessly systematic: back and forth, up and down the aisles, scanning each nook and cranny for photography. All in, I found 96 galleries showing at least one photograph (down from 115 last year); as always, I certainly missed or omitted a few, but I'd like to think I looked at nearly everything that was on view.

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I'm going to break my notes into four posts, roughly grouped by their physical location at the fair. Part 1 of this summary covers the booths in the area to the right of the entry at Pier 94 (if you are facing the registers) and continuing up along the far right side of the pier. In general, these reviews will list the photographers on view, with the number of works in parentheses. Additional commentary, price details, and the like will be added for noteworthy discoveries. As always, all of the galleries are linked back to their websites for further investigation and follow-up:

Studio La Città (here): Vincenzo Castella (2), Massimo Vitali (1), Gabriele Basilico (2). The angles and textures in this Basilico from Istanbul are subtly spectacular; it's also big enough to draw you into details. Priced at 10000€.

Angles Gallery (here): Augusta Wood (1), Ori Gersht (2), Soo Kim (1)

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Galleria Raffaella Cortese (here): Kim Sooja (1), Marcelo Maloberti (3)

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Hales Gallery (here): Sebastiaan Bremer (2)

Filomena Soares Gallery (here): Helena Almeida (2), Vasco Araujo (1 diptych), Pilar Albarracin (1), Joao Penalvia (2)

Corkin Gallery (here): Chad Gerth (22 as one installation), Frank Madler (1+1 diptych), Iain Baxter (2), Barbara Astman (7), NE Thing Co. (2), Andre Kertesz (9), Lazlo Moholy-Nagy (1), Margaret Bourke-White (1), Walker Evans (1), Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1), Brassai (1), Thaddeus Holownia (24). In addition to a wall of vintage work on the outside of the booth, the interior was a single artist installation of Holownia's Walden Pond Revisited, a suite of large scale black and white tree trunks on all four walls. I didn't get a price.

Galerie Grita Insam (here): Candida Hofer (1)
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Giorgio Persano (here): Michele Zaza (18), Per Barclay (1), Michelangelo Pistoletto (5), Mimmo Paladino (24 in a spiral)

303 Gallery (here): Stephen Shore (1), Rodney Graham (1), Collier Schorr (1), Florian Maier-Aichen (1)
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Ratio 3 (here): Mitzi Pederson (2), Ryan McGinley (1), Lutz Bacher (1 group), Geof Oppenheimer (1), Miriam Böhm (2). These visual puzzles by Böhm were among my favorites at the show. I liked the layered approach to simple art materials, photographing and rephotographing from slightly different angles to create echoes and spatial depth, while maintaining apparent alignment. There was a terrific article on Böhm in ArtForum a few months back. They are priced at $4500 each.

XL Gallery (here): Blouesoup Group (1), Igor Moukhin (1)
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i8 Gallery (here): Hrafnkell Sigurdsson (6), Olafur Eliasson (16 in grid), Sigurdur Gudmundsson (5). I never seem to tire of Eliasson's grids of images; this one captures windswept green plants in black rocky dirt. I should have also taken a picture of Sigurdsson's series of chucks of ice on the back side wall. There was no one around to get a price for the Eliasson.

Galerie Barbara Thumm (here): Sabine Hornig (1)

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Roe Ethridge (1), Peter Piller (12, pinned to wall), Andrea Bowers (1). I have been a bit of an Ethridge skeptic to date, but I found this double layer image to be more complex and compelling. It's priced at $10000.



Arndt (here): Vik Muniz (3), Sophie Calle (1)

Kerlin Gallery (here): Paul Seawright (1)

Murray Guy (here): Kota Ezawa (1), Moyra Davey (group of 25)

Rhona Hoffman Gallery (here): Vito Acconci (1), Robert Heinecken (9), Gordon Matta-Clark (1). I've always wanted to find a Matta-Clark photograph with dense layers of geometric cut aways for our own collection, so I was particularly covetous of this multi-image work. The price was $175000.

Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art (here): Ori Gersht (1)

Anna Schwartz Gallery (here): AES+F (1)

Galleri Charlotte Lund (here): Maria Friberg (1), Andres Serrano (2), Denise Grünstein (2). I very much liked the mix of performance and lushness in these images by Grünstein. The series uses hair to mask the model's face. I was shown another excellent image (in a monograph) where the model's head is being held by some kind of 19th century model posing contraption, once again, the tactile red hair blown across her face. They were $17000 each.

Clark & Faria Gallery (here): Scott McFarland (1), Greg Girard (1)

Part 2 can be found here.

Auctions: The Photographs Sale, May 19, 2010 @Bloomsbury London, Rome and New York

Rather than spread out its Photographs sales for London, Rome and New York across multiple months, Bloomsbury has taken the unusual step of scheduling all three back to back on one day (leveraging Internet bidding) and placing all the lots in one handy catalog. There are certainly some economies of scale with this approach and likely some cross pollination of geographies that wouldn't normally have happened.

In general, all three sales are filled with lower end material; there are no High lots in any of the sessions. Each sale has its own primary currency, which makes aggregating the financial data a bit trickier. In the London sale, there are a total of 120 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of £252100. In the Rome sale, there are a total of 178 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of 282050€. And in the New York sale, there are a total of 126 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of $490700. I've outlined the statistical details for each session separately below. (Catalog cover at right, via Bloomsbury.)

London: Session I

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 113
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £190100

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 7
Total Mid Estimate: £62000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate in this session is lot 27, Eugenio Courret, Vistas Monumentos Y Tipos De Lima, 1870, at £10000-15000.

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by three or more lots in this portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Willy Ronis (7)
Constantin Brancusi (4)
Harry Benson (3)
Bill Brandt (3)
Brassai (3)
Elliot Erwitt (3)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (3)
Leni Riefenstahl (3)
Orthon Von Ostheim (3)

Rome: Session II

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 175
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 243050€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 3
Total Mid Estimate: 39000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate in this session is effectively tied between lot 227 (the cover lot), Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, N.Y.C., 1976, at 10000-15000€, and lot 280, Elio Luxardo, Pietro Donzelli, Federico Vender and others, Con una piccola Rondine, 1951, at 12000-15000€.

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by three or more lots in this portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Edouard Boubat (5)
Willy Ronis (5)
Thomas Hopker (4)
Andre Kertesz (4)
Vincenzo Castella (3)
Denise Colomb (3)
Robert Doisneau (3)
Mario Giacomelli (3)
Luigi Ghirri (3)
Mimmo Jodice (3)
Federico Patellani (3)
Domenico Riccardo Peretti Griva (3)
Fulvio Roiter (3)

While not one of the top lots, lot 211, Gabriele Basilico, Rotterdam, 1986, at 2800-3200€, is one of our favorite images by Basilico. (image at right, via Bloomsbury)

New York: Session III

This session includes both photographs and photobooks.

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 123
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $438700

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 3
Total Mid Estimate: $52000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top photography lot by High estimate in this session is tied between lot 417, Imogen Cunningham, Nude, 1932/1960 and lot 426, Marilyn Minter, Mardi Gras, 2007, both at $15000-20000.

The following is the list of photographers represented by three or more lots in this portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

George Barris (3)
Elliot Erwitt (3)
Andre Kertesz (3)
William Klein (3)
Daido Moriyama (3)
Weegee (3)

Complete lot by lot catalogs are available for London (here), Rome (here), and New York (here).

Photographs
May 19th

Bloomsbury Auctions

24 Maddox Street
Mayfair
London W1S 1PP

Palazzo Colonna
via della Pilotta 19
00187, Roma

6 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036

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.