We love New York! The big apple has so much to offer, and eager to indulge in the wonderful and somewhat confusing world of Fine Art Photography we took our bite when the AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers) show was on.
The AIPAD 2009 had 76 of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries presenting a wide range of museum quality work by contemporary, modern and 19th century masters at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street and Park Avenue.
The AIPAD show has been described as ” divided between vintage prints and forward-thinking contemporary work, with a gulf in between. Celebrating its 30Th anniversary, AIPAD aimed to give a context to contemporary photography, and make it all of a piece by presenting INNOVATION, an exhibition within the exhibition, showcasing milestones in the history of photography – from daguerreotype to digital. Each AIPAD member was asked to select an image that represented a “milestone” in photography, illustrating its innovative potential.
Here, we focus on work by some of the most interesting contemporary artists presented in INNOVATION – the selection is made from a very personal point of view. We are interested in contemporary artists that use photography as the end product of their work. The work itself is a process, many times, of building, constructing, finding, and using recycled materials, and I like to think of the images as mirrors of the artists own memories.
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Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta chose Vee Speers (Australian, born 1962, based in Paris) to represent the gallery in the INNOVATION exhibition with her series “The birthday party” presenting a blend of old and new photographic technology. Speers uses a traditional large-scale camera and black and white film to capture her images, and gives them their hues working on the images in Photoshop. The palette is timeless, and the final image is printed on Ilfochrome paper, which preserves the clarity and color purity of her images. Speers captures the children far away from the stereotypes of childhood. She gives us no happy birthday smiles – her images are beautifully unsettling. Mr Masao Yamamote was also on at Jackson Fine Art in New York, have a look at the Paris Photo’san report from November for more information on this artist. Yamamoto creates pure photographic poetry, I simply love his work.
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Another interesting gallery is The Nailya Alexander Gallery who chose St. Petersburg artist Alexey Titarenko (born in Leningrad 1962) – and images from “City of Shadows” series; street pictures that embrace the present and the past, as well as mirror the human condition. Titarenko put his camera on a tripod and altered the range of his time exposure: from one second to several minutes . One of the obstacles was having an exposure of himself and people’s reaction to him included in the image. He reduced this by using the passing people as a screen or shield.
Nailya Alexander Gallery also featured work by Pentti Sammallahti (born 1950 in Helsinki, Finland) – an amazing photographer who in his photographs often include animals, particularly dogs, who reflect our existential experience and shared nature, sometimes with an earthy, but gentle, humor.
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Apart from throwing AIPAD’s most fun party, the Silverstein Gallery (NY) chose to focus on Shinichi Maruyama, a Japanese photographer (born 1968 in Nagano) presenting the series “kusho” – the Japanese word for “writing in the sky” featuring images showing the interplay of black ink and water. Liquids colliding the millisecond before they merge into gray. The INNOVATIONS catalogue quotes the art historian Maurice Berger “we do not know what we have until we look at the actual photograph. If these images are fundamentally graphic, even painterly, they are also a meditation on the material properties of photography.”
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The Joel Soroka Gallery presented works by Béatrice Helg (born in Geneva, Switzerland 1956) , an innovator in combining matters and theater, reality and vision. She creates a vibrant world of neglected industrial beauty echoing a timeless archaeological resonance. She prints on Cibachrome, which in combination with her subtle use of light on her found materials creates the illusion of monumental spaces.
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Eric Franck Fine Art of London exhibited Lottie Davies’s Quints from her ongoing series Memories & Nightmares. Davis (born in UK, 1971) aims to “try and tap into our notions of nostalgia, visual convention, and subconscious looking habits”. The picture is inspired by a dream a friend had, in which she gave birth to quintuplets. Davis is inspired by color and the lighting from classical and modern painting, cinema and theatre.
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Contemporary Works/Vintage Works Ltd chose the British born, Dutch based multi talented and very charming Lisa Holden as their representative for the INNOVATION exhibition. I have no problems in understanding why. Her images are truly breathtaking. In her work, Holden integrates performance art, painting and drawing, lyrics, photography and video, and the digital manipulation of these combinations of art forms.
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Mary Mattingly (born in Rockville, Connecticut 1978) was represented by the Robert Mann Gallery. In her images she creates outherworldly landscapes by combining virtual and real locations. She projects into the future while recalling our recent past at the same time. Her work is worth looking into – please visit her website.
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Abelardo Morell (born in Cuba 1948, based in America) makes photographs using camera obscura techniques. He covers the windows with black plastic, and makes a small hole in the material allowing an inverted image of the outside view to be cast onto the walls and focuses his large-format camera on the incoming image and exposes the film for hours.
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A gallery that did not participate in INNOVATION, the Bruce Wolkowitz Gallery, has a fresh approach. The gallery’s program illustrates the growing influence of technology on our lives and on the ever expanding contemporary art scene. I especially enjoyed Jim Campbell’s installations in black and white - Campbell has for nearly twenty years been creating innovative technology-based work. His installations and sculptural work has established him as one of the pioneers of the new media art. The pieces shown at AIPAD were black and white photographs with peoples shadows moving over the screen – link to the gallery and Jim Campbell’s work HERE.
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I appreciate the effort made by AIPAD to bridge the gap between vintage and contemporary photography with INNOVATION exhibition. The current market turmoil has most likely had a huge impact on the overall curating of the show – it is probably safer to focus on early vintage, rather than contemporary photography.
I am overwhelmed by the visual impact of the fair, with loud coulourful contemporary work side by side with the small black and white early vintage gems. AIPAD might consider concentrating the most innovative galleries in one area of the Armory building, and encourage them to focus on their contemporary work. This could make a more interesting show, both for the early vintage work enthusiasts, and visitors aiming to identify trends in contemporary photography.
A quick comparison with Paris Photo which attracted 40.000 visitors last year while 8.000 attended the AIPAD show. 120 galleries exhibited at Paris Photo, as opposed to 76 galleries at the AIPAD.
The INNOVATION catalogue is downladable HERE.
