XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A group show of the work of 14 photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung in a series of 4 divided rooms on the 3rd floor of the museum. All of the works are recent acquisitions. (Installation shots at right.)

 

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

• Yto Barrada (1 set of 4 chromogenic color prints, 2004)
• Liz Deschenes (1 chromogenic color print, 2009)
• Robert Frank (7 gelatin silver prints, 1976-1998)
• Paul Graham (21 pigmented inkjet prints, 1981-1982/2011)
• Birgit Jürgenssen (1 gelatin silver print with applied ink, 1972, 1 gelatin silver print, 1976)
• Jürgen Klauke (1 set of 4 gelatin silver prints, 1974-1975)
• Běla Kolářová (4 gelatin silver prints, 1962-1963)
• Lynn Hershman Leeson (3 gelatin silver print, 1974-1978, 1 16mm film, 1978, 5 chromogenic color prints, 1976-1978/2003, 1 silver dye bleach print, 1976, 4 chromogenic color prints, 1975-1976, 1 chromogenic color print, 1977/1999, 1 modacrylic fiber wig, 1 pigmented inkjet print, 1978, 1 offset lithograph, 1974, 1 pigmented inkjet print, 1975/2003)
• Dora Mauer (1 set of 24 gelatin silver prints and graphite on paper, 1972, 1 set of 28 gelatin silver prints and graphite on paper with 1 map, 1979)
• Oscar Muñoz (1 set of 12 chromogenic color prints, 2007/2012)
• Mariah Robertson (1 chromogenic color print, 2012)
• Alan Sekkula (18 dye transfer prints and 7 text panels, 1988-1995)
• Stephen Shore (1 set of 32 gelatin silver prints, 1969/2013, 16 chromogenic prints, 1972-1979/2013, 4 chromogenic prints, 2012)
• VALIE EXPORT (3 gelatin silver prints, 1968/2011, 1 gelatin silver print, 1968, 1 set of 40 gelatin silver prints with pencil and pen on paper, 1968/1973, 1 gelatin silver print with package of cigarettes, 1970/2005, 4 gelatin silver prints, 1972)

Additional works by Taryn Simon, Phil Collins, Stan Douglas, Leslie Hewitt, and Hank Willis Thomas will be added to the exhibit on August 23rd.

Comments/Context: The everyday trade-offs that are faced by museum accession committees and curators are often much more complicated and multi-faceted than outsiders might imagine. Start with a fixed budget (and one that it is inevitably smaller than might be desired) and an existing permanent collection with its own particular strengths and weaknesses, and add to that mix a shifting set of priorities, personalities, and upcoming shows. Should precious acquisition dollars be spent on new and emerging work that is representative of the current trends, or should gaping holes in the collection be filled with key masterworks? And which gaps in the collection are most pressing (assuming a perfect "solution" could be found at the right price)? If we can ascribe intention to the acquisitions process (and not just the random arrival of donations and gifts), those works a museum acquires in any given period can tell us something about how these choices are being made.

This show brings together a selection of MoMA's recent photography acquisitions and mostly finds the museum shoring up its foundations and deepening its commitment to certain thematic ideas. It's clear that Paul Graham, Stephen Shore, and Robert Frank are critical photographers in the history of the medium, so it's not surprising to see the museum filling in their holdings of these three masters; perhaps what is more unexpected is that this work wasn't already in the collection. New acquisitions include a selection of prints (unfortunately recent) from Paul Graham's early 1980s color classic A1: The Great North Road, a set of Robert Frank's darker, more psychologically raw later multi-image works (1970s-1990s), and a sampler of Stephen Shore's work, from modern prints from American Surfaces and Uncommon Places to an early conceptual piece and some recent images from Ukraine.

Thematically, the intersecting circles of feminism, gender studies, performance, and female photographers continue to get a strong push from the museum, often with a European bent. Běla Kolářová's circular radiograms from the early 1960s are paired with Dora Mauer's 1970s conceptual studies in the opening gallery, and a few rooms later, VALIE EXPORT, Lynn Hershman Leeson and Birgit Jürgenssen are collected in more breadth and depth. It's undeniably clear that the museum is interested in the evolving aesthetic and conceptual ideas in this strain of photography, and in using these and other artists as a platform for more current discussions of female identity.

The last gallery in the current show (another room will be added in August when the Brandt show comes down) is a grab bag of more recent work, from Alan Sekkula's comprehensive documentation of global port cities and seafaring industries to Liz Deschenes' vibrating field of abstract dots. Both Mariah Robertson's looping expressionistic roll of photograms and the systematically woven portraits of Oscar Muñoz seem like strong additions to the collection. That said, I look forward to the inclusion of the final room later in the summer, as the current configuration seems woefully incomplete in terms of exciting new photography.

All in, this is a summer group show without a theme, a disconnected but high quality gathering of photographs that provide a trail of bread crumbs for those interested in charting the museum's point of view. As always, the new acquisitions look like a delicate balance of reinforcing the core strengths of the collection, following the interests of the curators, and attempting to capture the best of what's new.

 

Collector's POV: Since this is a museum exhibition, there are, of course, no posted prices for the works on view. As such, we'll pass on the normal discussion of pricing trends and secondary market history that would usually appear here.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: Opening Ceremony (here)

XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography

Through January 6

 

Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53rd Street

New York, NY 10019

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

This is Part 3 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I'm using for the the booth by booth details. Part 2 can be found here.


Purple Section

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (here): Barney Kulok (1)

Kaufmann Repetto (here): Shannon Ebner (1). Another entry in the "built to be photographed" category; this large graphic symbol in cinder blocks by Ebner was priced at $12000.

Rampa (here): Huseyin Bahri Alptekin (3)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Steven Shearer (3), Amy Granat (1). These floral photograms by Granat are reminiscent of similar images made by Kunie Sugiura, although these have been cropped, reoriented, and transformed into a repetitive, high contrast grid. The work was priced at $20000.

Regina Gallery (here): Nikolay Bakharev (5). I've seen a few of these engaging 1970s beach portraits from Bakharev of late, and they're starting to grow on me. They were priced at $3000 each.

Maureen Paley (here): James Welling (2), Wolfgang Tillmans (2), David Salle (1), Gillian Wearing (1). If there was any one photographer whose work was ubiquitous at this fair, it was Wolfgang Tillmans. This was the best image of his that I saw (due to the complex use of color), a new one priced at $57000 and already sold.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder (10)

Galerie Perrotin (here): Sophie Calle (4 diptychs)

Galleria Continua (here): Mona Hatoum (1 Polaroid triptych). A simple idea, well executed - deadpan portraits with hair exploded by static electricity. This unique set of three prints by Hatoum was priced at $30000.

Frith Street Gallery (here): John Riddy (1), Tacita Dean (1 set of 14). Extra large versions of these Dean film strip works were recently on view at the Tate Modern. The set of 14 prints (offset not photographic) was priced at £45500.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here): Vik Muniz (1). Washington Crossing the Delaware in Muniz' most recent style, a dense collage of magazine scrap imagery. Priced at $45000, and not surprisingly, already sold.

Galerie Bucholz (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Sam Lewitt (1 set of 10). I liked Lewitt's layered NY Times transparencies, algorithmically reconstructed and subtracted to zero. Priced at $18000.

Kukje Gallery (here): Candida Hofer (1), Jenny Holzer (1)

Alison Jacques Gallery (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (3). I had never seen these particular Mapplethorpe florals before. The single blossoms are bathed in ghostly, almost garish, colored light. Priced at $35000.

Sprüth Magers (here): Andreas Gursky (1), Astrid Klein (4 collages), Thomas Demand (1), John Baldessari (1), Cindy Sherman (1). The reason I included this $285000 Baldessari image in this review has nothing to do with the pig, or the hands, or the composition really. What is impossible to see in this installation shot is that the work had surprising depth; the different colored portions are built up in inch thick layers. Yet another example of reimagining photography with sculptural qualities.

Pink Section

Wallspace (here): Daniel Gordon (1), Shannon Ebner (1), John Divola (1). Textures and patterns abound in this new work from Gordon, playing with idea of the sculptural bust, priced at $5800.

Galerie Neu (here): Bernadette Corporation (3), Tom Burr (1)

Galeria Fortes Vilaça (here): Jac Leirner (1)

Victoria Miro (here): Alex Hartley (1), William Eggleston (1), Isaac Julien (1 diptych)

303 Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldman (4), Collier Schorr (1), Stephen Shore (1 set of 8). This is an early conceptual series by Shore from the late 1960s (recently reprinted), where he stands and rotates in a circle, the desert background changing in each shot. Probably been done before and since, but still effective. Priced at $25000 for the set.

White Cube (here): Jeff Wall (1), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Martin Janda (here): Roman Signer (1 set of 5, 1)

Auction Results: Photographs, May 19, 2011 @Phillips London

The results of the recent Photographs sale at Phillips in London generally met expectations. The overall Buy-In rate was over 30%, but a large number of positive surprises and decent performance by the top lots helped push the Total Sale Proceeds right into the middle of the estimate range.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 188
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £1177100
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1627600
Total Lots Sold: 125
Total Lots Bought In: 63
Buy In %: 33.51%
Total Sale Proceeds: £1420438

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 82
Low Sold: 49
Low Bought In: 33
Buy In %: 40.24%
Total Low Estimate: £279100
Total Low Sold: £189125

Mid Total Lots: 97
Mid Sold: 69
Mid Bought In: 28
Buy In %: 28.87%
Total Mid Estimate: £980500
Total Mid Sold: £920413

High Total Lots: 9
High Sold: 7
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 22.22%
Total High Estimate: £368000
Total High Sold: £310900

The top lot by High estimate was lot 94, Leni Riefenstahl, Nuba Portfolio, 2002, at £60000-80000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at £85250.

97.60% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 12 surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate).

Lot 5, Albert Watson, Yvette, Berlin, 7th July, 1990, at £5000
Lot 46, Stephen Shore, Beverly Boulevard and LaBrea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975/Later, at £16250 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)
Lot 65, Robert Frank, New York City, 1947/Later, at £37250
Lot 88, Josef Koudelka, Invasion by Warsaw Pact Troops, Prague, August, 1968/2008, at £13750 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)
Lot 96, Nick Brandt, Elephants Resting, Amboseli, 2007, at £17500
Lot 111, El Lissitzky, Hans (Jean) Arp, 1924, at £55250 (image at right, top, via Phillips)
Lot 112, Alexander Rodchenko, Rodchenko Museum Series Portfolio #2: Portraits, Various/Later, at £32450
Lot 115, Irving Penn, Alfred Hitchcock, New York, May 23, 1947/Early, at £51650
Lot 117, Norman Parkinson, Pamela Minchin, Isle of Wight for Harper's Bazaar, 1939/Later, at £6875
Lot 138, Dan Holdsworth, Blackout 08, 2010, at £23750
Lot 173, Christer Strömholm, Lago di Maggiore, 1950, at £10625
Lot 184, Toni Schneiders, Untitled, December, 1956, at £3000

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Phillips De Pury & Company
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 @Princeton

JTF (just the facts): A large group show, containing a total of 581 images/works by 36 photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung in an open lobby area and a series of densely packed, winding rooms. All of the works (except those in the prologue and legacy addendum sections) were made by American photographers between 1970 and 1980. The exhibit was curated by Kevin Moore and was shown first at the Cincinnati Art Museum earlier this year (here). A detailed catalogue, containing 304 images, with essays by Kevin Moore, James Crump, and Leo Rubinfien, has been published by Hatje Cantz (here) and is available in the museum shop. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed in the galleries, so there are no installation shots of the show; the images at right come from the exhibition website. (Stephen Shore, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, August 13, 1974, at right.)

The following photographers are included in the main exhibit, with the number of photographs or other works on view in parentheses:

Harry Callahan (12)
William Christenberry (15)
John Divola (10)
William Eggleston (17)
Mitch Epstein (10)
Jan Groover (8)
Robert Heinecken (18 lithographs on magazine pages, 1 video, 1 case containing 5 reconfigured magazine spreads)
Barbara Kasten (8, 2 cyanotypes)
Les Krims (9)
Helen Levitt (40 color slides, projected onto gallery wall)
Joel Meyerowitz (14 photographs from two different projects)
Richard Misrach (12)
John Pfahl (9)
Leo Rubinfien (12)
Stephen Shore (312 images from American Surfaces in lobby, 10 commercial post cards, 10 photographs)
Neal Slavin (6)
Eve Sonneman (6 diptychs)
Joel Sternfeld (16 photographs from two different projects)
plus a glass case containing press releases, invitation cards, news articles and related ephemera

Two additional sections bracket the main body of the exhibit, and are not included in the catalogue; most if not all of the images seem to be drawn from the permanent collection of the PUAM. The photographers with work on view in these sections are listed below (John Divola, Zuma #21, 1977, at right):

Prologue

Diane Arbus (1)
Harry Callahan (1)
Harold Edgerton (1)
Robert Frank (1)
Ernst Haas (1)
Dorothea Lange (1)
Eliot Porter (1)
Aaron Siskind (1)
Edward Weston (1)
Minor White (1)
Garry Winogrand (1)

Legacy

Tina Barney (1)
Uta Barth (1)
Philip-Lorca DiCorcia (1)
Rineke Dijkstra (1)
Nan Goldin (1)
Candida Höfer (1)
Thomas Ruff (1)
Cindy Sherman (1)

Comments/Context: The well-known story of American color photography is often spun as a simplified tale of three misunderstood protagonists (Eggleston, Shore, and Sternfeld), fighting the black and white establishment and paving the way for an entire generation of colorists. Simple is easy to remember, so many of us mindlessly spit out these three names whenever the color conversation comes around. The fact is, while these three were undeniably important and massively influential, the actual history is much more complicated, with many more meaningful figures participating in the 1970s melting pot of photographic ideas. (Jan Groover, Untitled, 1978, at right.)

This excellent show does several smart things. First, it limits the playing field to a manageable size: we're only discussing Americans (no one else), color photography (not anything concurrently happening in the world of black and white), and the fixed decade of 1970-1980 (nothing before or after). These boundaries force us to focus on those artists who were really part of the active dialogue around the growth of color photography, without getting distracted and sidetracked by tangentially related themes and activities. Second, it grounds the imagery in the social and political history of the time and the current events of the 1970s, including Vietnam, Nixon, economic crisis, and the general mood of confusion and indifference. And third, it broadens the discussion far beyond the best known names to consider the contributions of many who didn't achieve a permanently meteoric rise.

The result of this set of curatorial framing decisions is an exhibit that isn't a linear, "this came first" kind of argument about the mainstream emergence of color in American photography, but more a snapshot of the diversity of color approaches that were being explored during those specific years, with plenty of opportunities to see connections and exchanges between different modes of experimentation. The story is much less straight and obvious than we have been led to believe - while Eggleston's show at MoMA in 1976 was clearly a watershed, his work didn't just arrive from an alien spacecraft to enlighten the world; many related ideas were percolating around in the artistic community (and in society at large), manifesting themselves in differing forms.

The exciting opportunity this exhibit provides is the ability to compare the work of a variety of contemporaneous artists and to stand in front of each display and ask two critical questions: how did this particular photographer use the newness of color, and most importantly, why?

The answers to these two questions are tremendously varied and utterly fascinating:

• Callahan and Levitt add color like a top layer over an existing black and white aesthetic. Callahan's approach created planes of color from the volumes and voids of Providence houses. Levitt's color allowed her to explore pattern and contrast (in fabrics, clothing, and street architecture), giving her another tool around which to coalesce a composition. Both of their color work can be seen as an extension of their earlier imagery, with color creating new opportunities within the existing framework.
• Christenberry matches his use of color with the sense of Southern vernacular history he is trying to document. His color is derived from a specific, drugstore print patina, layering a sense of everyday faded memory across the locations he has visited repeatedly over time.
• Epstein, Shore, Meyerowitz, Sternfeld, and Rubinfein all use color as a way to get at new kinds of relevant subject matter. Whether employing a snapshot aesthetic or a more formal view camera sense of control, these photographers were closely looking at the world of the 1970s, with its mass culture, its suburbia, its new ironies and unexpected vibrant garishness. Epstein uncovers a riot of patterned dresses, a woman with a snake, and a man sleeping on a cot near the West Side Highway. Shore documents hotel rooms, weird roadside interiors, and a parade of top down still life meals, and later turns his camera toward parking lots, piles of oranges, and empty streets. Meyerowitz grabs shots from passing cars, and captures the colored lights of gas stations, fast food joints, and Cape Cod cottages. Sternfeld finds blurred heads flashing by, and more formal views of beached whales, aquatic theme parks, and a basketball hoop in the desert. And Rubinfein sees the beginnings of empty globalization found in airports, taxicabs, ferries, and trains. In each case, color is an enabler, a method for making a new kind of picture that touched on the realities of 1970s life, without seeming stuck in the purity of black and white.
• Heinecken and Slavin are particularly interested in the colors of rampant commercialism. Heinecken boldly juxtaposes a Vietnamese soldier holding two severed heads with women's fashion ads, and collages provocative nudes into otherwise normal magazine spreads. Slavin uses the vocabulary of commercial portraiture to get at the wackiness of our subculutres, from Star Trek fans to rod and gun club members. Both are leveraging the ideas of advertising, of serial imagery, and of biting cultural commentary.
• Kasten, Groover, Krims, Pfahl, Divola and Sonneman are all using color in much more conceptual ways, getting beyond the found documentary moment to constructions, performances, and new ways of seeing. Kasten builds intricate sculptures made to be photographed, where color combines with geometric lines and forms to create complex abstractions. Groover makes elegant still lifes of fragmented kitchen utensils, carefully arranging forks, egg slicers and pie tins into controlled, formal compositions. Krims experiments with colorful staged sexuality, adorned with goldfish, pickles and balloons. Pfahl disrupts landscapes with tin foil, colored string, and oranges, playing with our sense of visual perception. Divola combines staged destruction with natural perfection, juxtaposing a destroyed beach house interior (complete with broken windows and spray painted decorations) and the the lilting colors of pink sunsets. And Sonneman plays with the idea of cinematic vision, making diptychs of action taken seconds apart, using color to highlight the changes from moment to moment. In all these cases, color is a subtext to a larger set of ideas, a tool for enhancing the conceptual pay-off. (Barbara Kasten, Construct II-B, 1979, at right.)
• I think Eggleston and Misrach are the most radical in their use of color, and this may explain both the initial negative reaction to Eggleston's work and its ultimate rise to stardom. Misrach tries something entirely unexpected - he creates blasting, glare-filled pictures of lush green Hawaiian jungles. The images take the normal landscape and turn it on its head, entirely via a change in the approach to color. Eggleston goes one step further - he takes ordinary fragments of life and pares them down to studies of color. While we've seen many of the images on display here before, the context of the other color photographers exposes just how extreme and unconventional Eggleston was. The stove interior, the red ceiling, the peaches sign are experiments in making the known unknown, in seeing the colors of the world as something wholly divorced from subject matter, even when there is an undercurrent of narrative. This was what upset people the most, and what liberated so many later on.

The exhibit itself suffers from some unfortunate quirks of architecture, where the huge array of Shore prints is divorced from the flow of the show (out in the lobby), and the one-way rabbit warren of narrow galleries makes it hard to double back and explore non-adjacent connections and echoes. Also, the "prologue" and "legacy" groups of pictures that bookend the show are entirely forgettable, and therefore fail to deliver the historical context they were attempting to provide. But these are only minor faults with an otherwise terrific and thought-provoking show.

In the end, the reason to get in your car and make a special drive down to Princeton is that this show doesn't offer any easy answers or a pat summary for cocktail parties. The story of 1970s American color is a mixed bag of experimentation, with artists and photographers going in all kinds of different directions, looking for new doors to open based on their own ideas of what was important in photography. So it isn't just Eggleston, although the show certainly helps clarify why he was ultimately so influential. And it wasn't a "school" so much as a group of artists loosely linked by a confluence of ideas, some inextricably tied to existing approaches to photography and others off on new tangents. The show reminds us that the common thread in this confused insider narrative is the richness of seeing the world in vibrant, chaotic, living color, and in adapting our collective art making to capture the broad diversity of that magnificence.

Collector's POV: Given the popularity of many of the photographers included in this show, collectors can easily find representative samples of their work in the secondary markets. In the event a more specific search is required, I've listed the gallery representatives and artist sites below (Richard Misrach, Hawaii V, 1978, at right):

• Harry Callahan: Pace/MacGill Gallery (here), Stephen Daiter Gallery (here), Fraenkel Gallery (here)
• William Christenberry: Pace/MacGill Gallery (here)
• John Divola: Gallery Luisotti (here), artist site (here)
• William Eggleston: Cheim & Read (here), artist site (here)
• Mitch Epstein: Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here), artist site (here)
• Jan Groover: Janet Borden Inc. (here)
• Robert Heinecken: Pace/MacGill Gallery (here)
• Barbara Kasten: Yancey Richardson Gallery (here), Stephen Daiter Gallery (here), artist site (here)
• Les Krims: artist site (here)
• Helen Levitt: Laurence Miller Gallery (here)
• Joel Meyerowitz: Edwynn Houk Gallery (here)
• Richard Misrach: Pace/MacGill Gallery (here), Fraenkel Gallery (here)
• John Pfahl: Janet Borden Inc. (here), artist site (here)
• Leo Rubinfien: Robert Mann Gallery (here)
• Stephen Shore: 303 Gallery (here)
• Neal Slavin: artist site (here)
• Eve Sonneman: Nohra Haime Gallery (here), artist site (here)
• Joel Sternfeld: Luhring Augustine (here)

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: Wall Street Journal (here), NY Times (here), Daily Beast (here), CityBeat Cincinnati (here)

Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980
Through September 26th

Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton, NJ 08544

Pioneers of Color @Houk

JTF (just the facts): A group show of a total of 48 color works from three different photographers (William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, and Stephen Shore), all framed in white and matted, and hung in the entry, the main gallery space, and the smaller back gallery. The exhibit coincides with the publication of Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 by Hatje Cantz (here) and a larger survey at the Cincinnati Art Museum. (Installation shots at right.)

Details on the included works are as follows, with the number of images on display in parentheses:

• Stephen Shore (20): Most of the works on view are vintage chromogenic contact prints, made between 1973 and 1979. Nearly all of these prints are 8x10 or reverse (there is one that is 12x15). A few larger c-prints (20x24) have also been included, as well as a pigment print on rag paper of one of Shore's journal pages (18x14).
• Joel Meyerowitz (20): The vintage works on display are either 20x24 dye transfers or smaller 8x10 RC prints. Recent pigment prints from the older negatives have been made in three sizes 20x24, 30x40, and 48x60, in editions of 15 or 20, 10, and 5 respectively. All of the images were taken between 1963 and 1983.
• William Eggleston (8): Most of the works on display are 16x20 dye transfers from the Dust Bells 2 portfolio (taken between 1970 and 1974, published in 2004). Others are similar in size or slightly smaller (12x18).

Comments/Context: Even though the main thread of the 1970s color story is now well known, this vein of photography continues to be an active area for exploration and (re)discovery. Likely due to the predominance of color in today's contemporary work and the powerful influence of the early color photographers on those working today, there seems to be a consistent interest in going back to the roots of this narrative and revisiting the evolution of the major practitioners. This exhibit focuses on three of the main players (Eggleston, Shore, and Meyerowitz), while the related survey book covers a much broader selection of photographers (by the way, there was also a terrific exhibit at Julie Saul in 2008 here that collected some of these same artists).

While this show is directly making a case for Meyerowitz' rightful inclusion at the top echelon of the 1970s color establishment, I must admit that it was the Egglestons that really made me think. Placed in the side-by-side temporal context with Shore and Meyerowitz, Eggleston's images display a marked difference in photographic style. I found his approach to be significantly more radical: the compositions are skewed and off-kilter and the colors are much stronger and more saturated - I concluded that these works were less about their depicted subjects and much more about color itself. A room becomes orange, a wall is green, a car is red - the colors are purer and the aesthetic is more wholly new, an entire rethinking of photography based on how color really operates.

For Shore and Meyerowitz, these artists seemed to be using more established modes of picture making (drawn from various black and white traditions) and modifying them for the successful inclusion of color, more evolution than revolution. In these cases, the use of color transforms topographical images or motion-filled street shots in new ways; there are new compositional nuances and relationships to explore. Hotel rooms, shop fronts, clusters of people on street corners, TVs and dated furniture, clothing and patterned fabrics, they all present newfound opportunities to build color-oriented pictures. I particularly enjoyed the angles of Shore's striped rug and yellow bedspread at the Harbor View Motel, and Meyerowitz' colorful neon circles on the ceiling of a food stand at the Hartford county fair.

What I like best about this exhibit is that it has just enough depth to tease out the patterns and differences. Instead of just one or two pictures hung together sampler-style (which is often how early color is treated), this show allows for a more thoughtful and deeper comparison of contrasting approaches and experiments.

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

• Stephen Shore: The vintage chromogenic contact prints are either $18500 or $24000. The larger c-prints are $25000, and the pigment print of Shore's journal page is $6000.
• Joel Meyerowitz: The vintage dye transfers are either $32000 or $40000; the RC prints range between $14000 and $35000. The later prints are priced based on size, starting at $10000 for the 20x24s, moving to $16000 for the 30x40s, and ending at $24000 for the 48x60s.
• William Eggleston: Most of the available images are priced at $20000. Several (including the red ceiling and the drink on the airplane tray table) have been marked SOLD or NFS.

These prices seem generally on the high side (this is gallery retail after all), especially when placed in the context of recent secondary market sales of roughly equivalent material.

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

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)
• Joel Meyerowitz artist site (here)
• William Eggleston artist site (here)

Pioneers of Color

Through April 24th

Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10151

Stephen Shore @303

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 images on display in the main gallery and back room. In the front gallery, 15 modern prints from 1965-1967 negatives from The Velvet Years are on view. All are gelatin silver prints, 13x19 or reverse, in editions of 8, framed in black and matted. In the rear gallery, 2 panoramic black and white images of New York City streets are shown. These huge gelatin silver prints are 37x94, in editions of 4, and were made between 2000 and 2002. They are framed in black with no mat. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The Stephen Shore we are most familiar with as collectors is the one who took startling color pictures in 1970s America, who was one of the genuine pioneers in the use of color in photography. His books Uncommon Places and American Surfaces are now classics, well worn and dog-eared in our library.

The Stephen Shore on view at the current 303 Gallery show seems wholly unrelated to the Stephen Shore we know. Part of the show centers on work Shore did while hanging out at Andy Warhol's Factory during the mid-1960s, long before his forays into color. These are black and white snapshot-like images of Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, and others, in the wide open warehouse space/art studio, not unlike Warhol's own images of this same glamorous scene. While Warhol's ideas about found imagery and repetition may have influenced Shore's later interest in vernacular postcards and banal subjects, these isn't any evidence of these concepts in his documentary pictures of the Factory.

At the other end of the spectrum, but in many ways of a related approach, come some new works from Shore in the back room. These follow long after his color heyday, and have returned to action oriented black and white images of people on the streets (in contrast to his color work which was largely unpopulated). These works reminded me a little of Harry Callahan's Chicago city streets of the 1950s, but updated with 21st century styles and enlarged to mural size.

At some level, both of these subjects have become photographic cliches, so it's hard to find something new in either of them that stands out as a truly different vision of these topics. What I found most of interest in this exhibit was not so much the details of the work on display, but the reminder that as collectors, it is easy for us to pigeon-hole a photographer based on his/her most well known or recognizable work, when in fact, nearly all photographers have many bodies of work that they pursue (some artistic, others more commercial) over their long careers. Seeing the less well known work may not induce us to want to add it to our collection, but it certainly forces us to expand our view of the overall measure of the artist and his/her approach, hopefully teasing out connections and evolutions along the way that help provide a broader view of the entirety of the photographer's art, including those works we think we already understand.

Collector's POV: The recent prints from The Velvet Years series are priced at $10000 each; the large cityscapes in the back are priced at $30000 each. Shore's color work (vintage and later prints) is readily available at auction, generally ranging in price between $2000 and $20000. Nearly all of Shore's prints are smaller than 16x20 (there have been a few larger prints made more recently), with many as small as 8x10. Some of Shore's prints have suffered from color fading, and so those prints that have been locked away in cold storage since the 1970s tend to fare best at auction. For our particular collection, we continue to search for just the right image by Shore to fit into our city genre, to sit alongside 1960s/1970s Lee Friedlander et al.

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

Transit Hub:

• Interviews: Conscientious (here), Darius Himes (here), Seesaw magazine (here)
• Artist statement from Uncommon Places (here)
• NY Times review, 2007 (here)
• Video (here)
• iPhoto books in FOAM (here)

Stephen Shore
Through July 18th

303 Gallery
525 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction: Photographie, November 27, 2008 @Villa Grisebach, Berlin

If we take as given that photography is now a global and multicultural art form, it follows that the auction market for photography will also fragment into smaller, more local varieties that bring forward work that is altogether different than that offered by the major houses in New York and London. Yann Le Mouel has interesting sales in Paris, with a heavy dose of French photography. Bloomsbury's Rome office recently had a large sale of Italian photography. And we are now headed into the German auction season, led of this fall by Villa Grisebach in Berlin at the end of the month.

We find the German auctions to be excellent sources of unexpected, well priced (less bid up) material, and we have, in the past, bought from all of the leading houses that have dedicated photography sales. If you are a collector and previously unaware of Villa Grisebach (or of Lempertz, Van Ham, and Bassenge to be reviewed in the coming days), you really need to pay some attention. All of these sales have broad ranges of vintage and contemporary work (including American artists), with strength in European work, and not surprisingly, German photography.

This sale at Villa Grisebach has a total of 241 lots available, with a total high estimate of 822200 Euros. 92.5% of the lots fall in the Low range, so there is plenty of quality, affordable work on offer. There is a particularly large group of 14 Albert Renger-Patzsch images (mostly botanicals) up for sale. Here's the overall price breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below 7500 Euros): 223
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 545200 Euros

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500 and 35000 Euros): 16
Total Mid Estimate: 167000 Euros

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000 Euros): 2
Total High Estimate: 110000 Euros

Rather than presenting a laundry list of things we're interested in, we thought we might try highlighting just a few lots and commenting on them a bit further. So here are three lots we find of interest:

• Lot 1591 Werner Mantz, Limburg, 1928 (image at right, top) It seems that every time we go to a photography show, the Kicken Berlin gallery (site here) has a terrific Werner Mantz in their booth that we always admire, but never quite get around to buying. Mantz did some amazing, high contrast industrial landscapes in the 1920s and 1930s, which would fit well with our other industrial pictures. This looks to be a good one as well. The back and forth of the staircase is stunning. The image would also resonate well with some Gohlke grain elevators already in our collection (here).
• Lot 1665 Umbo, Rohre, 1950s (image at right, middle) We don't have an Umbo in our collection at the moment, and we've been looking for one that would fit well for a while now. We like this one, for its terrific graphic qualities and the unusual back lighting.
• Lot 1732 Stephen Shore, Dewdney Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, 1974 (image at right, bottom) We've seen this image before in a few places and we continue to think it is the Shore we would potentially add first to our collection, whenever it is that we actually have color as part of the mandate. While it is different than many of Shore's more famous images, it would pair well with a Friedlander we already own (here).

The specialists at Villa Grisebach are responsive and easy to deal with, and you can get an email condition report quickly, assuming you're not going to visit the preview in person. We have found their packing and shipping services to be thorough and professional as well. At a minimum, take a spin through the online catalog (linked below) to see what's available.

Photographie
November 27

Villa Grisebach
Fasanenstrasse 25
D-10719 Berlin