The 39th edition of The Photography Show, presented by AIPAD (The Association of International Photography Art Dealers), took place earlier this month at Pier 94 in Hell’s Kitchen. Galleries from approximately a dozen countries and 41 U.S. cities exhibited fine art, vintage, modern, and multimedia photography as well as video. Amid the bustle of additional booksellers, press, and airport-style security, the hustle included the perfumed set ready to spend big bucks, tense sellers exhibiting commission smiles, and running commentaries from all sides on emerging talent. Some of the star photographers, in particular the Brit Pack, could be seen and heard wandering the premises and lamenting the show’s former venue at the Park Avenue Armory, where, if they are to be believed, the atmosphere was a lot more louche and the free drinks handed out less selectively.
It stands to reason that there is a lot more of what has been than what is up and coming, and so vintage photography dominated the show, running grey and sepia through pre-war poverty, street life, music icons and high fashion. A punk line-up can fill most gaps in the credibility catalogue and the DIY street peacocks of the mid-to-late 1970s, distilled in various corners of the show for an antique taste of disaffected youth, did not disappoint. The gaunt, crane-like figures of 1970s-era Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith never go out of fashion and appeared with pop-up frequency among the ninety-plus gallery participants.
From the previous decade, Elliot Landy’s 1968 print of Bob Dylan, Outside his Byrdcliffe Home (Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco), puts a post-electric Dylan in a troubadour pose bordered by fitting infrared. Tony Vaccaro’s Eartha Kitt and Givenchy, Paris, France, 1961 (Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe) has a similar effect in reverse. Kitt, reacting to her couture reflection in the mirror, is the epicenter of color, rendering the fashionista minions around her, dull and blurred.
The Mash Up (Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles), conceived of and curated by Def Jam Creative Director Cey Adams, has revisited the early work of British photographer Janette Beckman and remixed her images of hip-hop DJs and MCs with added layers by iconic graffiti artists. The graffiti and 1980s hip-hop synchronize naturally, while the blasts of freestyle color mark a tribute, as with the Adams’ Haring icon - the red and yellow angel accession to Beckman’s black and white Haring portrait. Another late graffiti art kinsman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, cuts a timeless, handsome, effortlessly chic figure in a series of 1984 portraits by Richard Corman (Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica). In this writer’s view, their editorial quality seizes Basquiat’s bright light before it was extinguished all too quickly.
Humorous street-smart oddities could be found in Brooklyn-born street photographer Bruce Gilden’s untitled New York City 1970/80s series (Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London). Caught unawares in deliberately awkwardly compositions, Gilden’s New Yorkers are wickedly funny and fit into the Diane Arbus camp of wide berth sidewalk characters. The same goes for Marvin Newman’s striking Rue Saint-Denis, Paris, 1960 (Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago), of two side-by-side women, strong in symmetry and scoping out the street in the French capital’s red light district. Elsewhere on the streets, New York photographer Khalik Allah’s pigment print Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013 (Gitterman Gallery, NY) captures the potent moments of lonesome individuals. There is a dream-like after-dark film quality to Allah’s work in which life seems to rapidly slow down around a dramatic point of focus.
AIPAD’s special exhibition, A Room for Solace: An Exhibition of Domestic Interiors, curated by Alec Soth, delves into private indoor spaces in an effort to escape the stress of current affairs gathering pace outside. Among the isolated seated figures and disheveled empty beds, the most mysterious photograph in this exhibition is by an unknown, circa 1900 (Interior of an American Home – courtesy of Richard Moore Photographs) and ties together moments of solitude between a man and woman in different areas of a home, together in one image. Ahead of its time, the stiff, peculiar human subjects could easily insert themselves into the realm of science fiction.
Burrowing deep into otherwise camera-shy areas of the self or significant other is Lissa Rivera’s Votive Portrait (Prayer Closet), part of The Silence of Spaces, 2018 (ClampArt, NY), which portray herself and her lover and muse, BJ Lillis. They are equally feminine and carefully and guardedly juxtaposed with their chipped blue surroundings. This is an arresting slice of storytelling and whatever information it is that the two central figures share, the space that they inhabit must endure it.
Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray’s photographs of Frida Kahlo (Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc, NY), taken during their 10-year love affair, are as luminous as Kahlo’s colorful embellishments. Her forthrightness, much more complex than mere confidence, translates, undiminished, through Muray onto his color carbon prints.
The fashion-focused Staley-Wise Gallery has an additional embodiment of Frida Kahlo by Paul and Linda’s photographer daughter Mary McCartney. The model is the enfant terrible of the 1990s Young British Artists, Tracey Emin, who tries on Kahlo with a slippery transfer of scrupulous color while retaining her brash sensibilities. The generational lending of high-profile talent is worth pondering here – Mary does Linda doing Tracey doing Frida.
Too Many Blackamoors, 2015, (James Hyman Gallery, London) a series of in-character self-portraits by British Ghanaian Heather Agyepong, is immediately eye-catching. Posing as Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a Yoruba princess who became the adopted Goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Agyepong’s defiant poses in Victorian dress and docs explore her personal experiences of racism while challenging the strong, black female narrative. Her interpretation of ideas, in this writer’s view, is compelling, with every successive closer look summoning more questions.
British photographer Cig Harvey’s Jessie in the Fog, Pink Coat, 2018 (Robert Mann Gallery, NY), at first glance, is a romantic image. Upon further inspection it takes on a Lynchian behind the picket fence uneasiness, in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary. In this case, a woman adorned in a wide span of pink pursues the edges of water and sand. From behind, the pink-coated woman is reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy putting her mournfulness to rest.
The Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta, GA) specializes in images of and by African Americans. Three huge mixed media portraits by Chicago artist Ervin A. Johnson, part of a series entitled #inHonor, pay tribute to lives lost to police brutality. Johnson’s distressed, inescapable close-up faces are both abstract and vivid and identify him as a rapidly rising star.
In the animal kingdom, White Ibis with Fish, 2014, (PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX) provides a welcome relief from multiple human conditions. Santa Barbara photographic artist Cheryl Medow has made a career in finding imaginative visual tools to draw attention to wild birds, and her ibis carries as much slapstick comedy appeal as its frame-filling character. The fish in its beak is a triumphant catch, while its mid-stride motion has an anthropomorphic quality. The majestic zebras in Brief Encounter, Palazzina Cinese, 2018, by Karen Knorr (Augusta Edwards Fine Art, London) are poised in neat, elegant symmetry. They are regal, decorative, and fun. Conversely, photographer and filmmaker Stephen Wilkes’ Grizzly Bears, Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada, 2018 ( Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, NY) depicts the natural world far from the domain of human manipulation and post-production, and yet the stunning landscape that the bears occupy brings to mind a Tolkien fantasy.
Further afield, English photographer and photojournalist Jimmy Nelson’s XVII, Samburu, Kenya, 2010, a rear view of three Samburu tribe warriors (Atlas Gallery, London), is as lively an image of people with their backs turned can be. The tribesmen’s long scarlet hair is a hypnotic block of color. They are bound by their proximity to one another, a reminder of whatever it is that we’ve lost in the Western World.
In a strange U-turn, Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre photograph the transitional ruins of America as if they are New World European explorers. For nearly fifteen years the Parisian duo have made a professional habit of stalking North America’s abandoned spaces and decadently wasted interiors. The results resemble the sacking of the neoclassical world with the thrill of spectacle overriding the sadness of abandonment. Paramount Theater, Brooklyn, 2008 (Polka Galerie, Paris), secures the meeting of two time loops, a rescued movie palace-turned-Long Island University gymnasium and basketball court. Saved from the wrecking ball, it is bewildering to see an interior fulfilling a potential far-removed from its original purpose, with two worlds inhabiting a timeline of decision making beyond the dimensions of a building.
For more information and to keep track of plans for next year’s show visit the AIPAD website.
Youtube movie photo credits:
Todd Webb, Half Way, Kinsley, Kansas, 1955. Archival pigment print, 10 x 10 inches. © Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine
Reine Paradis, Tower, 2018
Archival pigment print face mounted on a non-reflective plexiglass, with see-through fluorescent lime color frame; 2 formats in limited editions
© Reine Paradis / Courtesy of Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris
Gustave Le Gray, Effet de soleil dans les nuages –
Océan, Normandy, 1856-1857
Albumen print from a wet collodion negative, 31.1 x 40.2 cm
Courtesy of Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc., New York
Janette Beckman, CEY, Keith 2.0, 1985/2014
Archival pigment print, 40 x 30 inches
Courtesy of Fahey Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
Elliott Landy, Bob Dylan, Outside his ByrdCliffe Home, infrared color film, Woodstock, NY, 1968. Cibachrome print; printed 2013, 16 x 20 inches
Courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco
Danny Lyon, Cal, Elkhorn, Wisconsin, 1966
Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches
© Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos, Courtesy of Etherton Gallery, Tucson
Mickalene Thomas, Les Trois Femmes Deux, 2018
Chromogenic color print, 48 x 60 inches
Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
Dorothea Lange, Ex-tenant farmer on relief grant in the
Imperial Valley, California, 1937. Gelatin silver print with graphic
hand shading, ca. 1964, 6 1/2 x 5 5/16 inches
Richard Moore Photographs, Oakland, CA
Jane Evelyn Atwood, Self-Portrait, New York, 1979
Gelatin silver print, printed 2014; 12 x 9 1/4 inches
- Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York
Tony Vaccaro, Eartha Kitt and Givenchy, Paris, France, 1961
© Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe
Guy Bourdin, Charles Jourdan Advertising Campaign, 1968. Fujiflex Crystal Archive print, 88.3 x 86.9 cm Copyright The Guy Bourdin Estate 2019 Courtesy of Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Cervo, Italy / Los Angeles
Khalik Allah, Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013
Pigment print, 14 x 21 inches
Courtesy of Gitterman Gallery, New York
Richard Corman, Basquiat A Portrait V, 1984/printed 2018
Archival digital C-print, 30 x 40 inches
© Richard Corman, Courtesy of Peter Fetterman Gallery
Joel Meyerowitz, Red Interior, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1977
Chromogenic print; printed 1980, 7 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches
©Joel Meyerowitz. Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Lissa Rivera, Votive Portrait (Prayer Closet), 2018
Archival pigment print, 45 x 33 ¾ inches
Courtesy of ClampArt, New York
André Kertész, Pont des Arts, Paris, 1929/1960s
Silver print, 13-11/16 x 10-3/4 inches
Courtesy of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, Chalfont, PA
Cheryl Medow, White Ibis with Fish, 2014
Archival pigment print, 37 x 30 inches
Courtesy of PDNB Gallery, Dallas
Doug and Mike Starn, Structure of Thought 25, 2001-2013
MIS and Lysonic inkjet prints on Thai mulberry, gampi and tissue papers with wax, encaustic and varnish. Art size: 127 x 182.9 cm / 50 x 72 inches
Frame size: 148.6 x 204.5 cm / 58.5 x 80.5 inches
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art Ltd., London
Bogdan Dziworski, Untitled #6, Lodz, Poland, 1965
Silver gelatin print, 12x16 inches
Courtesy of Duncan Miller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre, Paramount Theater, Brooklyn, USA, 2008
Cibachrome print, 100 x 150 cm, Courtesy of Polka Galerie, Paris
Lewis W. Hine, The view onto Lower Manhattan from
the Empire State Building,1931
Toned gelatin silver print; 1930's print, 14 x 11 inches
Courtesy of Joel Soroka Gallery, Aspen, CO
Cig Harvey, Jesse in the Fog, Pink Coat, 2018
Chromogenic dye coupler print, multiple formats available
© Cig Harvey / Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery, New York
- Aubrey Bodine, Stevedores, 1955
Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches
Courtesy of Alan Klotz Gallery, New York
Meryl McMaster, Calling Me Home, 2019
Chromogenic print on archival paper flush mounted to Dibond, 40 x 60 inches
© Meryl McMaster / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto,
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montreal
Arthur Tress, Woman with Binocular Viewers, San Francisco, 1964
Gelatin silver print, 40 x 40 inches, printed later.
Courtesy of Morehouse Gallery, Laredo, TX
Eamonn Doyle, K13, 2018. Archival pigment print, 75 x 56 cm
Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery, London
Ervin A. Johnson, Joshua, 2015. Photographic mix media, 56 x 42 inches.
Courtesy of Arnika Dawkins Gallery, Atlanta
William-Furniss, Queens-Plaza, 2016
Archival pigment print, 14.5 x 20 inches. Courtesy of VRG, Hong Kong
David Taylor & Marcos Ramírez ERRE, DeLIMITations Obelisk 12, 2014
Archival pigment print, 29 1/2 x 36 inches.
Courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York
Albert Rudomine, Les jambes de Suzy Solidor, c.1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, 29.7 x 19.7 cm
Courtesy Gilles Peyroulet & Cie, Paris
Carla Jay Harris, Narcissus in the Garden, 2019
Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches. Courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles
James Ransom, Desks #2, 2019
4 x 30.5 inches
Courtesy of ASMPNY, New York
Grant Mudford, Irvine, 1976. Vintage gelatin silver print, 16 x20 inches
Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA
Florian Ruiz, The White Contamination series, 0,412 Bq, 2017
Pigment print on Japanese Mulberry paper, 15 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches
©Florian Ruiz courtesy galerie Sit Down
Nancy Richardson, Anemone, 2012-15
Archival pigment print, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of Voltz Clarke Gallery, New York
Evandro Teixeira, Actress and model Luisa Maranhão posing for a fashion campaign, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1966
Vintage gelatin silver print, 6 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches. Courtesy of Utópica, São Paulo
Stephen Wilkes, Grizzly Bears, Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada, 2018
Archival C-print, 50 x 92 inches
Courtesy of Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York
About the Author:
K. Krombie is a writer, reviewer and incidental performer living in Astoria, NY.
