Shomei Tomatsu, Stories @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 black and white images, framed in dark brown and matted, and hung against cream colored walls in the book alcove (also known as the South Gallery). The works range in size from 7x9 to 11x15. Most of the images were taken in the 1960s, with most of the prints from the 1970s; the exhibit is therefore a mix of vintage and generally early prints. Nearly all of the images were taken from either Chewing Gum and Chocolate or 11:02 Nagasaki. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Coming from the exhibit of 1940s street scenes by Homer Page in the larger adjacent gallery, the works by Shomei Tomatsu on view near the photobooks are like a jarring slap in the face or a splash of cold water. Tomatsu's images of the harrowing effects of war and the menace of rampant Americanization are full of raw, harsh emotion (the burned face of a bomb survivor, the scorn of a GI, a howl juxtaposed with a Coke bottle). His combination of experimental camera angles and expressive subject matter generates complex pictures with a heavy dose of the hauntingly surreal. The works capture the clash of cultures and the trade-offs of modernization, and ask hard questions about how the influences from abroad have created uncertainty and unease in the everyday life of postwar Japan.

While there are quite a few memorable images in this small show, the exhibit itself suffers from a general lack of purpose; it seems to be nothing more than a gathering of Tomatsu prints brought out from a box in the back room, without much in the way of structure or point of view. Given how infrequently Tomatsu's work is shown in the US (even with the retrospective of a few years ago, linked below), I think a chance was missed to edit these images with a tighter hand and tell a crisper story about a subset of his career.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $30000 and $46000. Given Tomatsu's importance in the history of Japanese photography, it is altogether surprising how little of his work can be found in the secondary markets; his prints have hardly any price history. While many of his photobooks can be found regularly in auctions, very few of his best prints have come up for sale in the past decade.

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

Transit Hub:

• Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation @ SFMOMA, 2006 (here), exhibition catalogue (here)
• Features: NY Times (here), Washington Post (here)

Shomei Tomatsu, Stories
Through February 20th

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Homer Page, In Between: New York, 1949 @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 38 black and white images, framed in white and matted, and hung against light brown walls in a single room gallery space. All of the prints are vintage gelatin silver prints, and were made in 1949; most are sized 11x14 or reverse, although a few are slightly smaller (13x9, 11x11, 12x10). A glass case contains two unpublished book maquettes. A monograph of this work by Keith Davis was published by Yale University Press in 2009 (here). The side galleries and viewing rooms hold smaller mini-exhibits in support of the main Page show: 8 images by Dorothea Lange, 7 images by Robert Frank, and 8 images from a variety of photographers who were included in The Family of Man exhibit. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The second half of the 1940s (post World War II) was a time of transition for American photography. Prior to the war, the FSA/WPA photographers made pictures that mixed straightforward reporting (with remnants of spare Modernist compositions) with a more humanistic, socially conscious approach to image making. By the beginning of the 1950s, a more personal view of America was coming through. Abstract Expressionism was taking hold, and documentary photography became less formal, expanding into darker, wittier, more ironic, and more subjective modes of image making. While this general line of history is now well known and agreed upon, a puzzling set of questions remain: what happened during the transition? who were the important photographers who were in the middle? while we can easily put Dorothea Lange on one side and Robert Frank on the other, who goes in between?

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This exhibit (and an accompanying monograph) seeks to put the heretofore largely unknown and recently rediscovered Homer Page in this empty space (some might argue that Helen Levitt and Lisette Model successfully fill this area already). The works in the show are drawn from Page's photographs of New York during a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949-1950. Most of the images on view are stolen moments on the streets of the city: men in hats and suits, women in formal clothes on street corners, hot dog carts, cigar smoking, newsstands and men reading racing forms, heads taken from below with the silhouettes of the skyscrapers in the background. There are subtle gestures and stances, small movements and poses. The works capture the mixture of New York in the 1940s: the melting pot of American humanity and the beginning of advertising age. And unlike the photography of the 1930s, the life of the city is no longer adorned with romantic optimism or empathetic concern; there is a more diverse and authentic view of reality in these images, with small doses of cynicism and satire. A very thin layer of sarcastic banter (with equal measures of imperfection and absurdity) is hiding under the surface of many of Page's pictures.

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There is no doubt that there are quite a few strong works here, and that they capture a point in photographic history where the dominant documentary aesthetic was in flux. But the challenge with inserting an unknown figure back into the pages of history and changing the narrative on a forward looking basis is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that Page was a downstream influence on Frank (or Klein, Arbus, Winogrand, Friedlander or others). So while Page may indeed have been working on similar ideas prior to or contemporaneously with others, I think he needs to be seen more in isolation rather than as part of a continuum. (One could make a similar argument about the early color work of Saul Leiter and its reintroduction into the narrative of the history of color photography.) As an example, Page's New York heads bear a clear resemblance to Harry Callahan's Chicago heads of the early 1950s; but if Callahan never saw Page's work, what conclusions can we draw? Only that there were certain ideas percolating around the artistic community and various artists "invented" a new style at the same time, independent of each other. Page was clearly part of the overall period, but I'm not sure he can be characterized as any kind of a leader.

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If we look at Page's photographs simply based on their own merits (without the "missing link" narrative), there are many well crafted and memorable works in this project that resonate well with the work of the better known photographers both before and after him. Stylistically, he was experimenting with some intriguing and innovative ideas; it is too bad he didn't continue his explorations further, as perhaps then Page would have turned out to be something much more than a historical footnote.
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Collector's POV: All of the vintage prints in this show are priced at $7500. Since Page's work was recently rediscovered, no secondary market history exists for this work; as such, the gallery prices here seem to have been set with a mind to establish a market in Page's work anchored at a price point within shouting distance of his better known contemporaries. The images in the side galleries are priced as follows: Dorothea Lange - $7000-19000, Robert Frank - all "price on request", selections from The Family of Man - $6000-25000. While Page's works aren't quite geometric or abstract enough for our city genre, I did like the image of a dapper man leaning against the long brick facade of a building. (New York, May 28, 1949).
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• The Photographs of Homer Page @Nelson-Atkins Museum, 2009 (here)
• Features: Modern Art Notes (here), Looking Around (here)
• Book review: PDN (here)

Homer Page, In Between: New York, 1949

Through February 20th

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Sharon Lockhart, Lunch Break @Gladstone

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 photographic works (made up of 18 prints) and 1 video, framed in black with no mat, and hung in a series of 5 chopped up gallery spaces (reception, main, project, back and corridor), including a darkened viewing room. The photographs on view can be organized into three groups:

• Lunch box still lifes: There are 5 still life works, each consisting of 2 or 3 chromogenic prints. Each individual print is 24x30, and all of the images were made in 2008. The works are titled by the owner's name and job function. No information about edition sizes was readily available.
• Snack shops: There are 5 images of worker-run snack shops. All of the photographs are 40x50 chromogenic prints, made in 2008.
• Workers eating: There is one larger image of workers eating at a metal picnic table. This photograph is a 48x68 chromogenic print from 2008.

The video, entitled Lunch Break, is 83 minutes long, from 2008. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In our fast paced, attention starved world, Sharon Lockhart's films and photographs are a remarkable example of what is to be discovered when even the most mundane of subjects is given in-depth consideration and acute study. In these works, Lockhart has meticulously observed the daily routines at the Bath Ironworks in Maine, capturing the minute human details and overlooked nuances of a wearying life of labor.

The cornerstone of this exhibit is the film, Lunch Break, where the camera moves at an agonizingly slow pace down a long, narrow passageway, lined with aging metal lockers and benches, surrounded by the ambient hum and growl of the machines. Workers sit alone or in pairs, quietly eating, reading a book, or talking. The relentless closing in of the camera is so drawn out that each and every tiny movement is given full attention; if you think you've ever really watched someone eat a sandwich, think again - in this film, the action is so deliberate that every gesture and fidget is highlighted. The effect is meditative, but also sadly melancholy; even though these people have found small moments of personal time, their feelings of isolation, boredom, repetition, and fatigue are palpable.

The still photographs on display in the exhibit take these themes and expand them in varying directions. Still life images of the workers' lunch containers have been taken in an objective commercial fashion; the battered metal pails, dirty picnic baskets, and plastic personal coolers sit against blank backgrounds, often opened up to display the contents. Each is a small vignette of a single life: the decorative stickers, a sandwich in tinfoil, a pack of cigarettes, bottles of medications, newspapers, they all tell the story of a unique person, toiling in obscurity in this factory. A second group of photographs depicts the improvised snack carts and coffee stands run by the employees. Friendly hand lettered signs announce Dirty Don's Delicious Dogs or John's Java Hut, with candy and donuts arrayed on battered tables and folding work benches, unruly wires trailing down from the ceiling; each is a small attempt to make this monotonous place more personal. A final image of a group of workers clustered around a metal lunch table tells the hidden stories of subtle social relationships, hierarchies and connections amidst what appears (from the outside) to be one large, uniform group of faceless workers.

Overall, although the work has a conceptual bent, Lockhart finds a way to inject a feeling of anthropological fascination and genuine concern into a dreary and depressing subject, uncovering surprisingly poignant moments of humanity in the everyday rituals and objects of ordinary people.

Collector's POV: Although I didn't get a look at an actual detailed price list, I was told the works in this show ranged in price between $9000 and $30000; I'm not sure if that spectrum that includes the video itself. Lockhart's photographs have been intermittently available in the secondary markets in the past five years or so, selling between $5000 and $35000. Blum & Poe is her West coast representative, and recently had an exhibition of this same body of work (here).

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: Artforum (here), Artslant (here)

Sharon Lockhart, Lunch Break
Through January 30th

Gladstone Gallery

515 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

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ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: There will be no posts on Monday, due to the MLK holiday in the US. Back Tuesday.

Shirin Neshat on a Taxi

The plastic tents on the top of New York city taxis are usually reserved for instantly forgettable ads for travel destinations, movies, and strip clubs. But if you look closely these days, you just might catch a glimpse of some fine art photography. Having kept my eyes peeled for days, I finally saw the images by Shirin Neshat on a cab today.

I had to run out into the middle of the street to get a picture of the other side of the banner; the people in the throng of cars and trucks waiting nearby must have thought I was completely insane.

More background can be found in the NY Times here.

Margaret de Lange, Daughters @Foley

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 black and white images, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the single room gallery. All of the prints in the show are chromogenic prints, made between 1994 and 2004, in editions of 10. Most of the prints are 18x24 or reverse, with a few sized 20x20 or 24x24. A monograph of this project has recently been published by Trolley Books (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Sally Mann's provocative photographs of her children have cast an amazingly long shadow across the the subject matter of childhood, particularly that of young girls. I almost didn't come to to see this show because the announcement showed an image of two scantily clothed girls playing in the forest, and my first reaction was "Sally Mann derivative". This was entirely unfair and ignorant on my part, but nonetheless, I was surprised to be confronted by just how strongly Mann's work has created the playing field on which others now have to play.

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Margaret de Lange's black and white photographs of her daughters travel over some of the same childhood terrain that Mann's images did, but with a much grittier and wilder feel. The images are dark and grainy, with deep shadows and contrasts that make the summertime setting seem that much more feral and unruly. The girls make the most of the warm days in the woods by creating their own imaginary games and outdoor adventures, using animal skins, wildflowers, a feather headdress, discarded nylons, a swing, and an old window screen as props. A dead squirrel is hung by a string, while a black dog seems to have been rescued from the water's edge. Dirty feet, skinned knees, and a casual disregard for clothing are the norm. The fur wolf hoods give the entire scene a Where the Wild Things Are authenticity, just on the edge between fun and little animalistic and out of control.

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One of the main criticisms of Mann's work was that it was potentially exploitative, a bit too stagy and posed; as a result, some found some of the nudes altogether too explicit and confrontational. De Lange has avoided this trap in two important ways. First, while there are a handful of images where her daughters stare right into the camera (a few that are quite startling and mezmerizing), for the most part, the pictures are indirect glances and sideways views, where the girls have been captured in play without undue influence or obvious direction. Second, de Lange refrained from publishing the work until she could get the assent of her now grown daughters, who could do so with the adult knowledge of what the display of the pictures might mean. So while there are nudes on view here, the idea that the girls have been misused in some inappropriate way is entirely (and thankfully) absent.

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Overall, these pictures seem like illustrations from a modern day Scandinavian folktale of growing up: two girls wander out into the forest to play, survive a series of exciting and harrowing adventures (large and small), and emerge on the other side as strong, confident, grown women.

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are reasonably priced at $1800 each. De Lange's work has no history in the secondary markets, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail. While these works don't fit into our particular collection, I think de Lange's images would form a nice foil to Mann's work (an intriguing back and forth could be set up via some smart pairings) and would obviously fit more broadly into collections of childhood/portraits.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews: British Journal of Photography (here), Examiner.com (here)

Margaret de Lange, Daughters
Through January 30th

Foley Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

A Few Thoughts on Herb and Dorothy

This past weekend, we watched the terrific documentary Herb & Dorothy (here), about the legendary art collectors, Herb and Dorothy Vogel. I came away with quite a few conclusions and lessons about collecting from hearing their story once again (we had of course heard about them before seeing this movie):

1.) Even when the walls of your house look full, there really is room to jam in much more.

2.) If you don't have kids, you can go to a lot of midweek art openings and become happily embedded in the community.

3.) If you don't have kids, there is more disposable income available in your budget for purchasing art.

4.) Collecting as a husband and wife team makes the collecting much more fun. (We already knew this.)

5.) Picking an out of favor (or "emerging") area to collect makes the collecting easier and cheaper (for them it was conceptual and minimal art). The artists who are unknown or under appreciated will be particularly glad to see you.

6.) Buying directly from artists (who become your friends) gets you a better pick of the best of what's available and makes your money go substantially farther. (It will also almost certainly anger the dealers who you are going around.) Coming cash in hand makes the process much smoother.

7.) If you build a huge collection (the Vogels had 4000 pieces), even an institution like the National Gallery cannot (and will not) absorb it all. Better to develop a back-up plan for the ultimate resting place of the artworks just in case. (After the NGA took 1000 works off the top, the Vogels developed the 50x50 plan, where every state in the union gets 50 works from their collection.)

8.) The whole narrative that the Vogels are "unlikely" collectors seems a little insulting/condescending I think. Collectors of all kinds are driven by the wonder of seeing; the Vogels are no different. That they successfully maximized the buying power of their limited budget over a long period of time is a testament to their determination as collectors.

All in, even though it is not photography per se, the film is certainly worth putting in your Netflix queue.

David Levinthal, I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq @Stellan Holm

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 color images, framed in white with no mat, and hung in the front and back gallery spaces. All of the works are archival pigment prints on polyester film, sized 43x56, made in 2008 and printed in editions of 10. All of the images are untitled. A monograph of this project has recently been published by powerHouse books (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: After a number of years of full time conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we have all become accustomed to (some might say overloaded by and numb to) images of war; they appear daily on our television screens, on the Internet, and in newspapers and magazines. Pictures of troops in desert fatigues, toting machine guns, and fighting from Humvees in dusty barren lands or rubble strewn cities and towns have become uncomfortably commonplace, as have the reports of bomb blasts and casualties.

David Levinthal's images of these wars were not made as an embedded reporter, perilously riding along with a front-line army battalion; on the contrary, they were made in the safety of his studio using the toy soldiers produced as patriotic merchandise for children. His fictional images are however hauntingly similar in look and feel to the works made by our most celebrated photojournalists and war correspondents, creating a powerful sense of dissonance when standing in the white walled gallery.

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Levinthal has been making images using toys for decades now, so he has clearly mastered the use of cropping, camera angles, shadow and blur to mimic the hectic action and movement he wants to recreate. Most of the images in the show are wrapped in a choking yellow/orange haze, dusty and atmospheric. Within this sandstorm, the fragments and details of war - a bloody head, a car on fire, leaders yelling, a set of goggles perched on a helmet, a group of soldiers piling out of a Humvee ready for a house to house fight, the barrel of a machine gun - are singled out and used to build small, tense, open-ended narratives. A second set of images use the spooky green glow of night vision to pick out the close-up movements of a tank, the silhouette of a rocket launcher, or a disorienting battle in the dark. Squint your eyes and you're watching CNN.
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A scholarly reading of this work might focus on the "disassembly" or "deconstruction" of photojournalism, and on how the ubiquity of media imagery has changed the way we see and process war-time images; indeed, these pictures can certainly be seen as a kind of satire of photojournalism. But I think a related way to read these pictures is to see them as a reminder that fiction can be just as powerful as truth in shaping our emotions and reactions. Sure, these are simplistic and imaginary constructions, but they are oddly successful in tapping into real "memories". What I like best about these works is that they take the age old argument about truth in photography and turn it on its head; fact and fiction have been satisfyingly muddled, and we are forced to step back and reconsider how the images around us construct our view of reality.

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Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at $25000 each, which to be honest seems pretty high. Levinthal's photographs have been intermittently available in the secondary markets of late, with a handful of lots selling each year, ranging in price from $1000 to $10000. Levinthal is officially represented in New York by Gering & López Gallery (here). While these works don't fit into our particular collection, they will certainly find strong resonance and interplay with other images of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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

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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Bad Barbie @John McWhinnie, 2009 (here)

David Levinthal, I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq

Through February 13th

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Stellan Holm Gallery

524 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

Who Printed For Whom?

At the end of last year, many of you might remember a lively discussion that we had about digital craftsmanship and how we might go about evaluating it (original post here). At many points during the course of that conversation and the subsequent comments, names of people who printed for various photographers (or who were key darkroom assistants, apprentices, outsourced commercial labs and the like) came up in the context of the separation and specialization of different skill sets.

For quite a while now, Lorraine Davis has been working on a thorough updating of the 1979 classic The Photograph Collector's Guide by Lee Witkin and Barbara London, to be published by Marquand Books. When she noticed that this topic of who printed for whom was coming up tangentially, she contacted me to see whether she could seek help from our readers to gather more detailed printing data on a larger list of photographers/studios.

Below is an edited list of photographers (a subset of all the artists who will be included in the revised guide) that she would like to get better information on, in terms of who assisted with printing, either during the photographer's lifetime or posthumously. She has added a few comments to some of the names to guide the search. Should you know definitively who helped out with printing, have a more uncertain idea of who might have lent a hand (that she can then follow up and confirm elsewhere), know for sure that there were NO assistants, or know that something here is clearly wrong, please add the information to the comments, or email Lorraine directly at lorraine@lorrainedavis.com. I have no idea why some names are on this list and not others; take that issue (and any other objections or criticisms you might have) up with Lorraine directly if you must. Think of this as an experiment/exercise in photographic crowd-sourcing, that might be of interest to us all along the way.

Aarons, Jules
Adams, Shelby Lee commercial lab digital large prints/2009
Adams, Robert
Adams, Ansel John Sexton (?) Alan Ross
Alvarez Bravo, Manuel Lola?
Araki, Nobuyoshi
Arbus, Diane Posthumous: Neil Selkirk
Arnold, Eve
Avedon, Richard Laura Wilson (dates?)
Baldessari, John
Becher, Bernd & Hilla
Bellocq, E.J. Posthumous: Lee Friedlander
Bernhard, Ruth Michael Kenna
Bourke-White, Margaret Posthumous by estate (who)
Brandt, Bill
Brassaï
Breitenbach, Josef
Burtynsky, Edward
Capa, Cornell
Capa, Robert
Cartier-Bresson, Henri
Clark, Larry
Clergue, Lucien
Close, Chuck
Coplans, John Postumous edition
Crane, Barbara
Cravo Neto, Mario
Crewdson, Gregory
Cunningham, Imogen
Davidson, Bruce
diCorcia, Philip-Lorca
Disfarmer, Mike vintage: local labs in Heber Springs Posthumous prints?
Divola, John
Doisneau, Robert
Drtikol, Frantisek Posthumous: Suzanne Pastor
Eggleston, William Commerical dye-transfer printer?
Erwitt, Elliott
Essaydi, Lalla
Evans, Walker Digital enlargements by ?
Faurer, Louis
Fontcuberta, Joan
Franck, Martine
Frank, Robert Sid Kaplan (dates?)
Friedlander, Lee
Funke, Jaromír Posthumous portfolio, Suzanne Pastor
Fuss, Adam
Garduño, Flor Platinum from digitized analog negs?
Gerlovina/Gerlovin, Rimma and Valeriy Commercial
Giacomelli, Mario
Gibson, Ralph
Gohlke, Frank
Goldin, Nan Commercial (?)
Gonzalez Palma, Luis
Graham, Paul
Gursky, Andreas
Halsman, Philippe Studio
Heath, Dave
Hine, Lewis W. Late lifetime and posthumous, Walter Rosenblum, Strand (?)
Ho, Fan
Hockney, David Commercial (?)
Höfer, Candida
Hosoe, Eikoh
Ishimoto, Yasuhiro
Iturbide, Graciela
Jackson, William Henry
Kahn/Selesnick
Karsh, Yousuf Studio - who?
Keetman, Peter
Keita, Seydou
Kertész, André Robert Gurbo
Klein, William
Klett, Mark
LaChapelle, David Commercial
Lange, Dorothea
Lartigue, Jacques-Henri Late prints?
Leibovitz, Annie Studio - who?
Levinson, Joel
Levitt, Helen
Lux, Loretta Commerical?
Lyon, Danny
Lyons, Nathan
Man Ray Berenice Abbott
Mapplethorpe, Robert Martin Axon, Tom Baril
Mark, Mary Ellen
Matta-Clark, Gordon
Meiselas, Susan
Metzker Ray K.
Meyerowitz, Joel Studio/Commercial?
Michals, Duane
Ming, DoDo Jin
Minkkinen, Arno Rafael
Misrach, Richard
Model, Lisette Aperture
Modica, Andrea
Modotti, Tina Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Morath, Inge
Morell, Abelardo
Morgan, Barbara
Muniz, Vik
Munkacsi, Martin
Newman, Arnold
Newton, Helmut
Nicosia, Nic
Nixon, Nicholas
Orkin, Ruth
Outerbridge, Paul
Papageorge, Tod
ParkeHarrison, Robert & Shana
Parks, Gordon
Parr, Martin
Penn, Irving
Plachy, Sylvia
Polidori, Robert
Porter, Eliot
Prince, Richard
Ray-Jones, Tony
Renger-Patzsch, Albert
Riboud, Marc
Richards, Eugene
Rio Branco, Miguel
Ritts, Herb
Rogovin, Milton
Ross, Richard
Rubinstein, Eva
Ruff, Thomas
Ruscha, Ed
Salgado, Sebastião
Samaras, Lucas
Sander, August Postumous Gunther/Gerd Sander
Schneider, Gary
Serrano, Andres
Sherman, Cindy
Shore, Stephen
Smith, W. Eugene
Solomon, Rosalind
Sommer, Frederick
Soth, Alec
Starn, Doug and Mike
Steichen, Edward late prints?
Strand, Paul Jon Goodman gravures, Richard Benson
Struth, Thomas
Sugimoto, Hiroshi
Sultan, Larry
Tseng Kwong Chi
Uelsmann, Jerry
VanDerZee, James
Vishniac, Roman
Walker, Todd
Wall, Jeff
Waplington, Nick
Weems, Carrie Mae
Wegman, William
Weston, Edward Posthumous prints: Brett and Cole (dates?)
Weston, Brett
Winogrand, Garry Posthumous
Witkin, Joel-Peter 21st century
Yavno, Max

Paolo Ventura, Winter Stories @Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, 13 drawings in watercolor/ink, and 1 glass case containing a variety of miniature props, displayed in the entry and first two gallery spaces. The photographs are digital c-prints, framed in black and not matted, and were made between 2007 and 2009. The prints come in two sizes: 30x40 in editions of 10, and 40x50 in editions of 5. The watercolor/ink drawings are framed in black and matted, and were all made in 2007. Each one is unique; they range in size from 8x8 to 16x12. While in many cases there is both a preparatory watercolor and a final photograph of a particular scene in the show, there is not a perfect 1-to-1 correlation in the pairings and some of each are shown without their match. A monograph of this body of work has recently been published by Aperture (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Recently, I've been thinking quite a bit about the applicability of various labels for different categories of photography. Two of the terms I have been considering most carefully have been "fiction" and "non-fiction", as they are used to characterize the printed word. Without going into the full explication of why I think these labels might be of use in understanding the broad sweep of photography (we'll leave that for another day), let it suffice to say that Paolo Ventura's Winter Stories images are a perfect example of the genre of photographic "fiction", fitting neatly into the traditions of Italo Calvino and other Italian writers, painters, and filmmakers of the 20th century.

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One of the basic tenets of literary fiction is the idea of using real memory as raw material that is then used to construct an original (and fictional) narrative. This conversion from memory to "reality" allows for the artist's imagination to evolve the content in new and unexpected ways, often paring down the events to their most elemental forms and evocative emotions. We've talked about this idea before (most recently in the context of the photography of Amy Stein); Paolo Ventura's work also follows an overtly painterly path, beginning with a watercolor and ink drawing, which is then transformed into a meticulous three dimensional tabletop diorama (complete with strict attention to the tiniest of details) and ultimately thoughtfully photographed to produce his large prints.

Watching the various videos linked below and hearing Ventura talk about his process, it becomes clear that photography is really the end point of his creative cycle. The watercolors are like a sketchbook of ideas that capture moods, ideas and the framework of potential vignettes and stories. After the miniature sets are painstakingly built, the "characters" experiment with different poses and compositions, as if they were actors on a tiny stage. Only after a variety of subtly different installations have been tried does a final image get taken.

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In this body of work, Ventura has recreated the magical and melancholy world of the wintertime carnivals and traveling circuses that set up on the outskirts of Italian cities and towns during his childhood. Tiger tamers, jugglers, clowns, fire eaters, and sword swallowers wearily display their skills for thin (or non-existant) crowds, standing in the cold slush under grey skies. While the images are in color, the palette has been meaningfully toned down; muted and worn colors dominate, creating a darker and earthier nostalgic feeling. And yet there are mysterious moments of magical wonder and surreal amazement taking place, or just about to: a bird man appears, a man is lifted into the air by a jumble of colorful balloons, two men in polka-dot horse costume make an entrance, as does a man with a drum on his back; what might happen next (or why) is left to our imagination.

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Ventura's images show us both the gritty, dirty "truth" of these pedestrian fairs, and also give us the sense that something special and unknowable might be going on. Together, each of the small vignettes helps to construct a well-rounded and surprisingly believable and timeless story (an entire world really), made with equal parts strange fairy tale and personal history. In the end, these are successful works of photographic fiction, with echoes of the books and paintings that transport us somewhere else in space and time and take us on a journey outside our own mundane reality.

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Collector's POV: The photographs in the exhibit are available in two sizes, and thus, two prices: the 30x40 prints are $4500 and the 40x50 prints are $7500. The watercolor/ink drawings are $5000 each. Ventura's work has really only entered the secondary markets in the past year or two, and only a few lots have come up for sale. Prices have ranged between approximately $4500 to $16000, although with so few data points, it is hard to chart a reliable line.

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While these works don't fit into our particular collecting genres, I was impressed with both the overall craftsmanship of all the steps in Ventura's artistic process and the ultimate ability of many of the images to suspend my disbelief and draw me into their dreamlike story.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Art in America, Jean Dykstra, 2008 (here)
• Videos: Aperture (here and here), Conscientious (here)

Paolo Ventura, Winter Stories

Through January 23rd

Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

537 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

Milton Rogovin, In Celebration of His 100th Birthday @Danziger

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 photographic works (including 1 triptych and 1 quartet) and 1 limited edition poster, framed in black and matted, and hung in the single room gallery space. Except for the poster, all of the photographs are square format (no dimensions were given, but each is roughly 8x8) vintage gelatin silver prints. The works are drawn from a variety of projects: Store Front Churches (1958-1960), East Side, Buffalo (1960s), Lower West Side (1967-1973), Triptychs (1970s-1990s) and Quartets (1960s-1990s); most of the images on view come from the Lower West Side body of work. The signed poster comes from the 2007 show at Danziger, in an edition of 50. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: I think that when the history books are written, Milton Rogovin will ultimately be remembered for his ability to capture the subtle joy buried in the lives of everyday people. Unlike the vast majority of the photography we categorize as "social documentary", his work isn't full of the depressing stares or guarded poses of those being inspected, even though the circumstances in 1960s and 1970s Buffalo, NY, were certainly no rosier than most working class towns in America at the time. Instead, his straightforward, surprisingly formal portraits of ordinary folks have a warmth and authentic casualness, giving the work an aura of genuine and optimistic sympathy rather than indirect critique.

This small show, organized in honor of Rogovin's 100th birthday, brings together a sampler of vintage material from across his long career. The exhibit itself is too small to make a compelling and thorough case for the value of Rogovin's art; instead, it serves as more of a reminder that Rogovin can and should be relevant to today's contemporary photography; his portraits have plenty to teach contemporary artists about how to tell stories with trust and compassion, and can set a good example for how reassuring comfort and real concern can be used to uncover moments of grace in the midst of potentially dispiriting and gloomy environments.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are mostly priced at $4500, with a few at $5000, $6000, or $7000; the triptych is priced at $10000 (the quartet was already sold) and the poster is $1000. Rogovin's work is surprisingly absent from the secondary markets, given his long career. Only a handful of lots have come up for sale in the past few years, selling between $2000 and $10000, but I wouldn't say this has really been a representative sample of his work.

Rogovin's frontal portraits bear obvious comparison with those of August Sander, albeit with a more funky American feel. I found the triptych which begins with a portrait of a couple (the man sporting a big afro, a turtleneck sweater, and plaid pants with suspenders) and ends with the now older parents surrounded by a gaggle of children of various ages to be a classic American story told in just three images. Rogovin's work also reminds me of Hiroh Kikai's portraits of Japanese temple-goers, where the quirkiness of the individuals comes through with acceptance rather than oblique mockery.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interview with Robert Hirsch, 2004 (here)
• Lens feature, 2009 (here)

Milton Rogovin, In Celebration of His 100th Birthday
Through January 16th

Danziger Projects
534 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Andrey Vrady, Reconquista @Sputnik

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 color works (13 single images and 1 triptych), mounted but not framed, and hung in the single room gallery and the small back office area. All of the images are archival digital inkjet prints on Baryta paper, made in 2009, and printed in editions of 3, 4 or 5. The works come in a variety of sizes, but no dimensions were available. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If we ask ourselves where the largest wide open white spaces for experimentation in contemporary photography reside, the use of digital manipulation must clearly be among the most promising territories for new exploration. I'm not talking about the now ubiquitous digital clean-up, color correction, and sharpening (which we tend to lump into "photoshopping" with a mix of anxiety and disdain); I'm referring to a complete rethinking of how photographic imagery can be used as a starting point for computer-constructed picture making, where photography moves back toward painting, with digital files taking the place of paints on a palette.

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Andrey Vrady has stepped out into the digital unknown by borrowing a relatively simple but powerful idea found in centuries of Islamic art: begin with a straightforward geometric form and multiply it out into a kaleidoscope of complex ornamental patterns. But instead of using delicate hand painted flowers or lattices of carved lines as his raw material, Vrady uses snapshots of everyday city streets and parks, employing mirroring and refraction to make cars, buses, crosswalks, snowy trees, and airplanes in flight into complicated arabesques. His photographs are like walls of Iznik tiles: up close, the spare forms come into focus, but from ten feet, the images are transformed into dense, hyperactive abstractions, full of kinetic energy. While most of the works are rigidly symmetrical, a few take the copying of geometries further into lacy whorls that spin off like Persian fractals.

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Calling an artwork decorative is often considered the ultimate backhanded compliment, an ugly slap from the more high minded toward work that is deemed too pretty and/or vacant of more profound ideas. Vrady's photographic geometries are indeed overtly eye catching and decorative, and yet, I think there is a nugget of an intriguing conceptual framework hiding here as well. While not every image in this show is completely successful, the best of the works are those that push the limits of complexity, that multiply the repetitions into rushing cascades of pattern. The reason they are interesting is that they go beyond what the masters of Islamic art did in stone, mosaic and paint; they use the digital tools to make images that resonate with the traditions of the past, but in a wholly modern form. This is a show that seems like a prelude, an appetizer that makes you look forward to the main course; Vrady has made a good start with these images, but with further refinements and evolutions of the main concept, I think where he goes next may be even more surprising.
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Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $1300 and $5000 (for the triptych), with nearly every image having a different price along this spectrum, apparently roughly based on size. Vrady has no secondary market history, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail. In general, I think these images would fit well into collections of contemporary city/street photography (like ours), as well as more cutting edge collections of digitally manipulated contemporary work.

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

Transit Hub:

• Principles of Islamic Art and Design (here)

Andrey Vrady, Reconquista

Through January 16th

Sputnik Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

Book: Man Ray: Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2009 by Steidl (here). 370 pages, with 320 images and drawings. Includes a preface by the author (John Jacob) and an introduction by Merry Foresta. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

Comments/Context: I think it is actually fairly common practice that after an artist/photographer dies, the estate is often quickly picked over in search of the remaining images that might be saleable to collectors, museums and the like. Once this cream has been skimmed off, it is often the case that hundreds if not thousands of less recognizable images remain, gathering dust in boxes, until the next person comes along who wants to dig through the archive with a fresh set of eyes.

This book is an excellent example of what can be rediscovered when someone applies some hard work, scholarship, and editing to a large body of "left over" images. The works in this volume were drawn from the Man Ray Trust and have been thoughtfully grouped and sequenced by subject matter. As the title indicates, there are not only Trees, Flowers, Insects and Animals, but also Landscapes, Landmarks, Churches, Castles, Bridges, Boats, Waterways, Waterworks, Hats, Masks, and Automobiles.

There are virtually no "greatest hits" in this book, although there are a few variant images of works that might be easily recognized. What is collected here is a broader collection of often unspectacular photographs that formed the raw material of his approach to art making. What emerges is an eclectic bunch of experiments and snapshots, ideas that were explored and then ultimately reworked or discarded, outtakes and documents of places visited and things seen.

While this might sound boring and thoroughly less than surreal or witty, in fact, seeing this selection of works helps to add some much needed depth and context to his better known and iconic images. Dozens of random portraits (including quite a few of people holding their dogs) help to fill in the gaps of how Man Ray was able to create so many memorable images of people in his career; he was constantly experimenting with poses, looks, and props, many of which didn't quite work, but obviously became the fodder for next shot down the line. There are lots of experiments with light and shadow in all forms, mixed with straightforward images of natural history specimens (butterflies and bugs, feathers and seahorses); both tell the story of an artist interested in underlying form and shape - it doesn't take much to see the connections to his Rayographs.

While many of the images here are entirely forgettable, after looking through the entire thick volume, I certainly felt like I had a better grasp of Man Ray's eye, and how he approached the making of his art. In many ways, I wish that many more master photographers would get this kind of archival exploration, as I think there is much to be learned from sifting through what has been overlooked. In any event, this book gets better with age; at first glance, its subtleties may be missed, but dig a little deeper and look a little closer, and the complexities and contradictions of Man Ray start to emerge.

Collector’s POV: I have been unable to locate the official gallery representative of the Man Ray estate/trust. His photographs are however consistently available in the secondary markets. His most recognizable works (vintage Rayographs and iconic images like Noir et Blanche) are routinely priced between $100000 and $450000. Lesser known works and later prints can be as inexpensive as $3000-5000, with most of his better known work ranging between $10000 and $40000.

For our particular collection, many of the excellent floral still lifes in this book would fit perfectly into our existing genre. We already own one Man Ray flower (here, and illustrated on page 59 of the book), but could certainly imagine adding others (including the terrific cover image) if we could actually ever find them.

Transit Hub:

• Book review: Independent (here)
• Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention @Jewish Museum (DLK COLLECTION review here)

2009 Photography Auction Summary

With the 2009 auction season now completely closed up, it is now the time to go back and slice and dice the numbers a bit to see if we can derive some insights about the recent market for photography.

As regular readers know, we write preview and results post for most of the major photography auctions around the world, and also do preview and results posts for contemporary art and other auctions that contain a meaningful amount of photography. Additionally, we report on photobook auctions, and sales that offer both photographs and photobooks. Last year, we covered 67 different sales, from 14 different auction houses.

A couple of quick caveats. The auctions we have covered have taken place in Dollars, Euros and Pounds; for the purposes of these calculations and to smooth out the data a bit, we have converted everything into Dollars (where 1 Euro = 1.43 Dollars and 1 Pound = 1.59 Dollars). Also, it is clear that photographs and photobooks were offered for sale in many more auctions than we have covered here, perhaps in smaller houses, or in secondary and tertiary markets. As such, I think this data likely captures 85-90% or more of the actual sales, but certainly not everything.

Across the photography auction market for the entire year, the total sale proceeds taken together were $74,612,997. If we take as a hypothesis that the auction market is roughly half of the entire photography market (the rest is in galleries and elsewhere), then the size of the market in 2009 was approximately $150M. In the past, I have often heard the number $200M thrown around as the size of the entire photography market, so given the economic downturn, $150M doesn't sound too far from the likely reality. In contrast to the massive contemporary art market, the total photography market is indeed still quite small.

Here's how the sale proceeds for photography were divided up by auction house in the past year:

Sotheby's: $25,428,318
Christie's: $21,231,561
Phillips De Pury: $15,957,910
Swann: $4,061,690
Bonhams: $1,326,872
Villa Grisebach: $1,283,385
Lempertz: $989,540
Bloomsbury: $981,542
Galerie Bassenge: $880,234
Van Ham: $781,558
Millon: $742,298
Yann Le Mouel: $513,330
Heritage: $434,795

There was also one sale at Argenteuil (the Cami and Sasha Stone atelier), but I have not included this data, as I didn't ever locate lot by lot results. (For those of you who like to do quick math, take roughly 20% of the numbers above, and you'll get the approximate amount of total premium that the houses earned as fees.)

These dollar figures can then be turned into dollar-based market share numbers, tabulating the percentage of the photography proceeds in the market which fell to each house. I have added the actual number of individual sales that took place in parentheses as background. (As an aside, it would be fascinating to do this same exercise for the retail galleries to see where the share of market really resides; this is of course impossible to do, as the data isn't readily available, but an individual gallery could conceivably tabulate its own share by taking its top line photography revenues as a percentage of something like $75M.)

Sotheby's (12): 34.08%
Christie's (17): 28.46%
Phillips De Pury (14): 21.39%
Swann (4): 5.44%
Bonhams (2): 1.78%
Villa Grisebach (2): 1.72%
Lempertz (2): 1.33%
Bloomsbury (4): 1.32%
Galerie Bassenge (2): 1.18%
Van Ham (2): 1.05%
Millon (1): 0.99%
Yann Le Mouel (2): 0.69%
Heritage (2): 0.58%

So 83.92% of the photography market in 2009 was held by the top three houses (Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips De Pury), with Swann the only other house to capture more than 2.00% of the market.

There were a total of 10,530 photography lots on offer this year across the market. (The Top 10 photography lots of the year can be found here.) 6,173 of these sold, while 4,347 failed to sell, making the industry-wide buy-in rate 41.28%. The data below is the house by house overall buy-in rate, compiled from all the sales at that house. It is interesting to match each house up or down against the overall industry benchmark; it was tough year for many. (Millon and Argenteuil have been omitted, as there was only one set of sales data for each house.) I have added the total number of lots on offer for each house in parentheses as background.

Christie's (1495): 28.29%
Bonhams (317): 31.86%
Swann (1278): 31.92%
Villa Grisebach (380): 33.42%
Phillips De Pury (1619): 36.75%
Sotheby's (1100): 38.00%
Galerie Bassenge (906): 41.28%
Heritage (480): 42.50%
Lempertz (556): 55.22%
Yann Le Mouel (605): 59.83%
Van Ham (663): 60.33%
Bloomsbury (845): 64.62%

Another intriguing statistic is the $ per lot sold. One might call this an average selling price, for those lots that actually sold. (This would be fun to tabulate for retail galleries as well.)

Sotheby's: $37,285
Christie's: $19,806
Phillips De Pury: $15,584
Bonhams: $6,143
Villa Grisebach: $5,073
Swann: $4,723
Lempertz: $3,974
Millon: $3,639
Bloomsbury: $3,283
Van Ham: $2,972
Yann Le Mouel: $2,112
Galerie Bassenge: $1,655
Heritage: $1,575

While most of the major auctions houses provide both a low and high estimate for each lot, not all houses do, so it is impossible to tabulate industry-wide data for estimates. For those houses that do provide both a low and a high estimate, only Sotheby's and Christie's were able to bring in total proceeds (across all sales) higher than the total of the low estimates. All other houses failed to cover the low on an aggregate basis. The data for the two who did accomplish this feat:

Sotheby's:
Total Low Estimate: $23,711,484
Total Proceeds: $25,428,318

Christie's:
Total Low Estimate: $20,887,757
Total Proceeds: $21,231,561

Overall, I'd say that the weaker economic environment helped the bigger players stay dominant (even if their total revenues shrunk considerably) and exposed the weaknesses of the challengers a bit more; in a "flight to quality" world, the lower end competitors (especially those without deep, established client lists) got squeezed. With some glimmers of optimism on the horizon, perhaps 2010 will be a growth/rebound year for all.

As always, comments, clarifications and critiques are welcome.

Top 10 Photography Lots at Auction in 2009

According to our statistics on 67 different auctions across the globe in 2009 (covering both focused photography sales and the photography buried in contemporary art and other compilation sales), these were the top 10 photography lots in terms of overall selling price last year. No works crossed the $1 million dollar mark in public secondary market transactions. Some might argue that Gilbert & George, John Baldessari, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres do not fall under the label of "photography"; they have been included in the list as the works detailed here are all made up of photographic prints. Prices all include the buyer's premium and have been converted to dollars/rounded to the nearest dollar where appropriate (1 Euro = 1.43 Dollars; 1 Pound = 1.59 Dollars).

1.) $902500: Gilbert & George, The Moon, 1978, Lot 45, Sotheby's New York, May 12 (image below, via Sotheby's)

2.) $822428: Andreas Gursky, Monaco, 2006, Lot 12, Sotheby's London, February 5

3.) $775000: Edward Curtis, The North American Indian, Portfolios 1-20 and Text Volumes 1-20, 1907-1930, Lot 719, Christie's New York, October 8 (This lot sold immediately after the auction, but was included as part of the post auction press release by Christie's, so we include it here, even though it technically did not sell during the auction itself.)

4.) $770500: Jeff Wall, Sunken Area, 1996, Lot 10, Sotheby's New York, May 12

5.) $707948: Andreas Gursky, Dubai World II, 2007, Lot 10, Sotheby's London, June 25

6.) $635993: Eugene Atget, Femme, 1925, Lot 15, Sotheby's Paris, November 20

7.) $554500: John Baldessari, Two Compositions (Dynamic/Static; Red/Green), 1990, Lot 303, Sotheby's New York, November 12

8.) $542500: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1994, Lot 6, Phillips De Pury New York, November 12

8.) $542500: John Baldessari, Life's Balance, 1986, Lot 40, Sotheby's New York, November 11

10.) $517148: Richard Prince, Untitled (four women with hats), 1980, Lot 23, Phillips De Pury London, February 12

It is altogether possible (though not likely) that a photograph could have sold outside our coverage area, in a smaller house or in a secondary market location, but could still have reached the top 10 in terms of price, so please, if we've missed something somewhere, please add it in the comments.

A Contrarian View: A Collector’s Thoughts on Photobooks

For the past month or so, there has been a far reaching discussion on the future of the photobook going on at RESOLVE/Livebooks (here), with dozens of interested parties (photographers, publishers, critics/writers, curators etc.) contributing their ideas. After reading quite a few of the posts, it became clear that the voice of the photography collector has been generally absent from this otherwise broad and thoughtful conversation. For the most part, the discussion to date has been mostly artist and publisher centric (supply), with a primary focus on how changes in technology (digitization and websites, low cost print-on-demand, etc.) might impact the ability of artists/publishers to make/sell amazing books or use new replacements to achieve some of the same end goals. The view from the other end of the pipe (demand) has been covered with somewhat less detail. So it is from the position of collector (and active user of photobooks) that I pass along a few disconnected thoughts:

1.) The primary reasons to buy a photobook for a photography collector are two-fold: reference and education.

I have yet to meet a large and serious photography collector who doesn’t also have a deep library of photobooks (numbering in at least hundreds if not thousands of books). These books are constantly being purchased and carefully read/reviewed as a method of increasing the volume of “seeing” that we do. This is a completely separate activity from “collecting” photobooks (rare or otherwise) – we are not searching for mylar covered signed first editions that will increase in value in and of themselves as objects; we are actively engaging with the content of the photobooks as the background work required to make educated collecting choices. Books in our library (old and new, monographs, exhibition catalogues, greatest hits collections, museum inventories, catalogues raisonne etc.) are not languishing on a coffee table gathering dust; on the contrary, they are constantly being reread, dog-eared, reconsidered and marked with paper slips as we look at new work, as new connections and contexts arise. We hardly ever buy a photograph without first tracking down a monograph (or exhibition catalogue) of the photographer’s work and then spending time looking over the entire project/output; our goal is to winnow down all the available images into a short list of pictures we find most exciting (or not), having spent the effort to actively look at them all. From there, we can then enter the marketplace (at a gallery or at auction) with a much sounder understanding of the work, hopefully making a confident beeline for just those images we have fallen in love with. We also buy books from all kinds of genres and photographers that don’t fit into our particular collecting tastes, as further reference on the trends and important figures in the medium and to keep current on what’s fresh. In short, books are for us the primary vehicle (beyond going to see photography in person) for our photo education.

2.) The purpose of the photobook is the photographs. Period.

We buy books so we can reference the pictures, now and in the future. Detailed image lists and specs are always welcome. If there are well-written, helpful essays (written by the photographers themselves, scholars, or whomever) that provide some understandable back story to the work that will increase our appreciation of what is contained in the images, so much the better. (The indecipherable, artspeak essay is a tragic waste of space.) Of course, we thoroughly enjoy lush paper, superlative reproductions, elegant design, thoughtful sequencing and the like; but top quality production values won’t increase our appreciation of bad photographs. Conversely, great images will make up for lots of deficiencies of publishing, at least for our purposes. Some of the photobooks we come back to again and again have small images or even thumbnails, but this obvious weakness is made up for with additional completeness or increased depth (more work shown). Old photobooks still have plenty of resonance, even if the printing technology or design aesthetic in use at the time wasn’t as effective.

3.) Multiple viewpoints make for a richer discussion.

Once the blocking and tackling of initial immersion in a photographer’s work has been done, the nuanced contrasts of multiple books become important in solidifying our education. The balance point to consider is author control.

A monograph published by or with the cooperation of the photographer is a document to how the artist wants to display the work; the control lies in the hands of the photographer (with the assent and collaboration of the publisher) to present the work as he or she sees fit. As a collector, this vantage point is highly useful to understand: which pictures were selected and sequenced in what order, what size was thought to be the best size, what was left in or taken out etc. Nearly all photobooks about early career artists and photographers come from the artist’s point of view; as artists move along in their careers, more books of this type are published on a project by project basis.

Third party photo books (monographs, exhibition catalogues, group/thematic collections, etc.) put the control in the hands of a scholar or curator, who makes all the display decisions through a slightly different lens. These books provide a collector with a more distanced or distilled view of the work; it’s less raw and more processed, but often provides more historical context or analysis. As photographers progress in their career, more of these kinds of books are produced.

As collectors, we really need (and want) both sets of “eyes” in our library; this gives us a better chance of developing a more nuanced understanding of the work at hand. Our desired outcome is to have more of both, with a weight towards more in-depth scholarship (as it is less broadly available at this point).

4.) For photography collectors, innovation in photobooks isn’t a huge issue.

One part of the thread of this discussion has centered on innovation in photobook publishing or the lack thereof. As a consumer of photobooks, I’m sorry to say that innovation in book design isn’t generally what I’m looking for; I’m nearly entirely focused on the quality of the photography. If the pictures are great, it is my hope that at a minimum, the rest of the package will be good enough not to distract me too much from the images.

Of course, there are the 5% of the books that are so meticulously conceived that the photographs, essays, design, paper, slipcover, etc have all been carefully orchestrated together into a real art object, a collaborative effect that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is truly sublime and wonderful when this occurs, and the impact of the photographs is meaningfully enhanced. No matter what happens in the electronic world in the future, there will always be room for this kind of creative effort (with a small but enthusiastic audience of potential buyers ready and waiting). With costs of self-publishing coming down, creativity will likely be unleashed in ways we can’t yet imagine. That said, I don’t need a library full of these kinds of (often expensive) books - a few treasures from our very favorite photographers here and there will suffice. Perhaps a different way to think of this is that the super special limited edition print run of 500 with an accordion fold and fancy slip case isn’t likely aimed at collectors like us (it’s likely aimed at "photobook as object" collectors, a smaller group of photography/art collectors who have a special interest in the specific artist/project, and potentially other fellow artists); we’re actually in most cases much happier with the run of 3000 that does a high quality job of showing us the work with a minimum of fanfare.

5.) We are likely the last generation of collectors who will rely so heavily on the physical photobook for our photography education.

We are in our 40s, and began our collecting a decade or so ago. So while the Internet has certainly become an integral part of our lives during that time, our collecting has been largely rooted in the traditions of the pre-digital age. We have thus been trained to love the tactile quality of a great book page, and to venerate it above the fleeting image on a computer screen. Even if we are not photo book fetishists, we’re still among the paper based Luddites. This will be impossible to change for us, even if artist websites and online archives/databases become orders of magnitude more compelling, pervasive and useful.

I’m not as certain however about how future collectors who are now in their 20s (or younger) will see photobooks, if their electronic equivalents are ratcheted up in overall quality. Social networking has already begun to transform how we communicate to each other about the art we find of interest. If I was in college today, would I go out and plunk down $100 bucks for a thick, beautiful monograph (much less a lavishly produced artist’s book) if I could see the hi-res images anytime, anywhere on the artist’s website? Wouldn’t I just get my education as a straight feed from the net, bringing in a multitude of voices from the artist, to curators, to the chaos of the blogosphere?

While I have no concrete predictions for the future, I think this brings us back to the underlying question at the core of this whole conversation: what is the purpose of the physical photobook going forward and who is the target audience? An interesting thought to consider is that maybe the photobook will evolve (or some might say return) to having no defined consumer at all, beyond those in small specialized niches/long tails - maybe it will be made by the photographer/curator in a DIY (or self funded) manner solely because the effort of making the physical book is an important part of the overall artistic/scholarly process or is the best venue for the work itself. For us as collectors, the photobook is and always will be a required reference resource; for those of the future who have been weaned on bits, it may be a “nice to have” or an artistic talisman.