New York: A Bird's Eye View @De Lellis

JTF (just the facts): A group show including a total of 48 black and white and color photographs, mostly framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. All of the images are vintage aerial photographs of New York city, and were taken between roughly 1875 and 1960. (Installation shots at right.)

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

• Berenice Abbott (3 gelatin silver prints, 16x16, 14x10 or 16x5, 1932-1938, and 1 photogravure, 13x10, c1932/later)
• American Illustrated Stereograph (1 albumen print, 4x7, c1876)
• Anonymous (2 bromide prints, 6x8, 1884, 1 albumen print, 5x10, c1876, 1 albumen print, 9x16, c1900, and 1 group albumen prints, 6x8, c1876)
• Margaret Bourke-White (1 gelatin silver print, 9x13, c1930)
• Charlotte Brooks (1 gelatin silver print, 13x10, 1943)
• Harold Haliday Costain (3 gelatin silver prints, 9x20, c1930)
• John Paul Edwards (1 gelatin silver print, 9x20, c1925)
• Fairchild Aerial Surveys (1 gelatin silver print, 14x18, 1931)
• W. Gray (2 albumen prints, 6x8 or 7x9, c1890)
• Horsman's Cabinet Photographs (1 albumen print, 4x6, c1875)
• International News Photo (1 gelatin silver print, 10x8, 1930)
• J.S. Johnston (1 albumen print, 7x9, 1893 and 1 bromide print, 8x6, c1890)
• Keystone View Company (1 gelatin silver print, 5x7, 1937)
• Arthur Lavine (1 gelatin silver print, 13x9, 1965)
• Ben Judah Lubschez (1 gelatin silver print, 6x9, c1925)
• Nickolas Muray (1 gelatin silver print on gold paper, 4x4, 1927)
• Fritz Neugass (1 gelatin silver print, 10x8, 1947)
• Peyser & Patzig (1 gelatin silver print, 10x7, 1930)
• Press Photo (1 gelatin silver print, 7x10, 1945)
• George Rockwood (1 albumen print, 7x9, c1880)
• Charles Rotkin (2 gelatin silver prints, 10x13, c1950)
• Edward Scherck (1 gelatin silver print, 8x10, c1930)
• William Gordon Shields (4 gelatin silver prints, 14x11, 13x10 or 9x19, 1915-1917)
• Samuel Stebbins (1 gelatin silver print, 14x11, c1934)
• Fred Stein (2 gelatin silver prints, 14x11 or 9x7, 1940-1945)
• Howard Suchurek (1 chromogenic print, 19x9, c1960)
• Todd Webb (1 gelatin silver print, 8x9, 1947)
• Paul Woolf (5 gelatin silver prints, 8x6, 9x7, 8x7 or 8x10, 1935-1940)

Comments/Context: As collectors of city and industrial images, we're fascinated by the geometric patterns that are created by the interactions of architecture and by the density of built structures that make up all kinds of cities. This show brings together nearly a century of aerial views of New York city, providing both a rich historical record and an evolving survey of how landmarks and urban buildings were used as the raw material for photographic experimentation.

Chronologically, the show begins with 19th century views of the city, when the tallest structures were the church spires that poked up through the uniformity of squat warehouses and apartment blocks. With the advent of the skyscraper, the skyline took shape, and steep views downward into the concrete canyons below became more possible - instead of looking up into the sky at the outlines of famous buildings, artists were looking down into the chaos of the streets. Actual aerial surveys (shot from airplanes) were also taken from even higher vantage points, putting the tall buildings in wider panoramic context. As expected, the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building make repeated appearances in these photographs, providing a visual anchor against hazy clouds or the dark shadows of dusk.

My favorite images in the show are those that induce a bit of vertigo, where the angles get distorted and the walls of buildings bend in unexpected ways. They forgo the heroic romance of the broad vista and instead give us the frenetic, spine tingling energy of the city.

Collector's POV: For the most part, the prints in this show are reasonably priced, ranging from $150 to $8500, with a sweet spot between $2000 and $5000. The outliers are the vintage Berenice Abbott prints, which are priced between $18000 and $26000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: Gothamist (here), Wall Street Journal (here, scroll down)
• Feature: NY Times (here)

New York: A Bird's Eye View

Through November 20th

Keith De Lellis Gallery
1045 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Paul Himmel, 1914-2009, An Unerring Vision @De Lellis

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 black and white photographs: 11 larger modern prints of New York scenes, 6 smaller vintage prints of New York, and 3 large nudes. The large city shots are between 40x54 and 60x40, with original negatives between 1947 and 1950. The vintage works are all approximately 10x14, from the same time period. The nudes are tall and thin, 22x70, from c1950. All of the works are framed in black (the larger images without mats), and are hung in the main gallery and back into the office area. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Paul Himmel's images of 1950's New York combine a nostalgic look at the city with a shadowy, gumshoe noir. Most of the contrasty pictures feature silhouettes of men in overcoats and hats: on the Brooklyn Bridge, near the Third Avenue El, and streaming through Grand Central on the way to catching a train. Other images capture iconic New York moments: the blurred lights at Rockefeller Center, the parachute jump at Coney Island, or snow falling near windows and fire escapes.

While the large modern prints in this show are clearly eye catching, some of the enlargements have a hackneyed feel to them, these classic New York moments and landmarks having become overly familiar and a bit clichéd. The exception to this are the three images of the blurred masses at Grand Central, where the large scale reinforces the chaos of the environment and the swirling shape of the movement of the crowd.

Collector's POV: The large modern New York prints in this show are priced between $10000 and $12000. The vintage city prints range between $6500 and $9500; the nudes are priced at $8000 each. Very few works by Himmel have come up for auction in the past five years, so there isn't a defined pricing pattern available for reference. For our collection, I can imagine looking for one of the smaller vintage prints, perhaps with a little less romance and a little more dark abstraction.

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

Transit Hub:

• Paul Himmel monograph (here)
• Galerie fur Fotografie, Munich (here)

Paul Himmel, 1914-2009, An Unerring Vision

Through May 20th

Keith De Lellis Gallery

1045 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10075

Eugene De Salignac: Manhattan Bridge, Centennial Exhibition, 1909-2009 @De Lellis

JTF (just the facts): A total of 46 vintage cyanotype images, taken between 1913 and 1922, framed in black and displayed throughout the gallery. Many are annotated directly on the image.(Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Eugene De Salignac was a municipal employee, working for the Department of Bridges in New York in the first few decades of the 20th century, taking photographs to provide a record of the various construction projects undertaken during those years. His images were recently rediscovered and became the subject of a book and exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York in 2007. This small but comprehensive show traces the building of the Manhattan Bridge, one hundred years later.
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While the pictures clearly have a historical and documentary purpose, it is their surprising modernity that makes them memorable. There are plenty of roads and trolley tracks, spans and wires, fluttering flags and paving stones, all with strong lines and contrasting patterns. There are views of the plaza in Brooklyn, and from the tops of the suspension towers, densely striped with wires, looking in both directions. In the best of the images, De Salignac captured the romantic aura of those years (enhanced by the blue tint of the cyanotype process), the awe and pride in the face of what man could accomplish.

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Collector's POV: The images in the show are priced between $1200 and $4500. These images would make good companions for some of our early New York bridge scenes by Abbott and Bourke-White.

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

Eugene De Salignac: Manhattan Bridge, Centennial Exhibition, 1909-2009

Through February 28

Keith De Lellis Gallery

1045 Madison Avenue

Number 3

New York, NY 10075

Making It Real, Photomontage Before Photoshop @De Lellis

JTF (just the facts): A total of 41 images, of varying sizes and from various, mostly lesser known photographers, running from the mid 1860s up through the 1950s, displayed throughout the gallery. (See installation shot at right.) The show is a mixture of albumen and gelatin silver prints, some with hand coloring. Prices range from $1200 to $9500.

Comments/Context: Just when digital photographers have convinced themselves that their post capture manipulation is something new and startling, this smart show comes along to remind them that this kind of work has been going on since the early days of the medium. While truth has been a dominant mode for photography from the beginning, there seems to always have been an undercurrent of artists and designers who were interested in depicting the allegorical, the fantastic, or the staged.

In the mid 1800s, artists were plagued by the slow speed of the available materials; the exposure times were just too long for a staged scene of 20 people to come out without blurring. So they took to the darkroom and used multiple negatives to construct their scenes, and so doing, began the thread of montage and manipulation. There is an amazing image in the exhibit by Spencer y Cia (Untitled, c1870, see at right) which constructs an edge to edge image out of hundreds of individual shots of women's heads.

Staring in the 1920s, the combined influences of advertising and surrealism come together for a flowering of montaged images that will seem more familiar to most viewers. Most are constructed our of two or three negatives melded together to tell a story, evoke an emotion or sell a product. The historical backdrop for later artists (like Jerry Uelsmann, who took montage in new directions) is clear.

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Collector's POV: We actually like multiple exposure images, and think they work particularly well in depicting the movement and energy of cities. We have a few in our collection by Harry Callahan (here and here) and Peter Keetman (here), all from the late 1940s/early 1950s. From our view point and in this context, the best picture in the show was Edward Quigley's multiple of the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1942 (see at right). While there were not many other images that were a direct fit for us, this show is well worth seeing, if only to remind you that the careful and thoughtful manipulation of photography has been around a very long time.

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Rating: * (1 star) GOOD (rating system defined here)

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Making It Real, Photomontage Before Photoshop

Through November 1st

Keith De Lellis Gallery

1045 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10075