YIP Ghost

Don't Miss This Show - Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks

2011-12-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

The one exhibition not to miss before Christmas is Nan Goldin's show at the Matthew Marks Gallery. Juxtaposing images from decades of her own work with her recent shots of artworks in the Louvre, the show is divided into two parts – one a display of prints, and then in the darkened almost cinema-sized screening room, one of Goldin’s trademark slide shows.

For much of 2010, The Louvre allowed Goldin access to its collections on Tuesdays, when the museum is closed to the public. Goldin wandered through the galleries, focusing on the paintings that most spoke to her, revisiting certain pieces again and again, to the point where she started to see them as human rather than historic objets d'art. The connection that developed became "one of the most sensuous experiences" of Goldin's life – which is saying something because Goldin is primarily a sensualist (secondly a colorist, and thirdly a natural born photographer).

My favorite part of the experience was the slide show where in picture after picture one can only marvel at Goldin’s ability to turn everyday moments into vibrant works of art.

DO NOT MISS!

night At The Museum

2011-11-16T00:30:00.000-08:00

Paris Photo

2011-11-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

The Grand Palais seen from the Pont Alexandre II.

Simply put - Paris Photo was amazing!

This year the long running French art fair moved from the basement of The Louvre to the Grand Palais and the event was transformative. 150 dealers from all over the world gathered in the turn of the century building whose original purpose was in fact to house the great artistic events of Paris. The main space - the length of two and a half football fields, was constructed with an iron, steel and glass barrel-vaulted roof (needed for large gatherings of people before the age of electricity).

The light, the scale, the space, and an incredible run of good weather seemed to put everyone in the best possible mood and from both my own personal experience and what I gather from colleagues, business was booming as collectors and curators from Brussels to Beijing made the rounds.

The fair also signaled Paris' increasing dominance in the world of photography. Once New York was where it all happened, and not to be self-promoting here - but other than New York's photography dealers (who still dominate the medium) - the interest, commitment, visibility, enthusiasm, discovery, and love for photography all seem greater in Paris. Correct me if you think I'm wrong.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the event and a few highlights. As a participant rather than an observer, I was busy all the time so there are fewer snaps than I would have liked. Sorry.

The sign says"Your waiting time is about an hour from this point" and people were lined up well past here!

The interior of the Grand Palais.

My booth.

My fantastic assistant Charlotte, and our helper Pascal.

Every year the fair celebrates the photography of one culture and this year it was Africa. Here the late Depara from Kinshasa, Congo - another revelatory discovery in the field of African photography.

James Barnor - who took fashion photographs in London for the African magazine, Drum.

Shomei Tomatsu from “Acqua” an exploration of the theme of water in photographs sponsored by Giorgio Armani - one of several non-selling booths at the fair.

An Andy Warhol "stitched" photograph. Warhol's inventiveness never ceases to amaze.

An extraordinarily vivid new super-sized Massimo Vitale at Brancolini Grimaldi.

The "Acqua" booth from outside.

And inside an interesting dialog between Garry Fabian Miller's seminal 1976 horizon pictures and Hiroshi Sugimoto's 1980s prints (recently printed large).

And to end - a beautiful Paolo Roversi of Natalia Vodianova.

See you next year?

A Group Shot to Remember

2011-11-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

Left to right: Yolanda Sacristan, Spain; Kirstie Clements, Australia; Anaita Adajania, India; Christiane Arp, Germany; Angelica Cheung, China; Franca Sozzani, Italy; Mitsuko Watanabe, Japan; Anna Wintour, America; Emmanuelle Alt, France; Alexandra Shulman, Britain; Victoria Davydova, Russia; Anna Harvey, representing Brazil and Greece; Seda Domanic, Turkey; Myung Hee Lee, Korea; Rosalie Huang, Taiwan; Eva Hughes, Mexico and Latin America; and Paula Mateus, Portugal.

Last week Vogue's 17 international edition editors gathered in Japan to celebrate Tokyo's Fashion's Night Out and sit for a rare photo opportunity. Again I can't find a credit other than Getty but I imagine it was quite an experience getting the group posed together (unless a famous iron hand was at work)!

Seen in London

2011-11-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

In London on my way to exhibiting at Paris Photo.

I was a little surprised to walk into the underground and see this poster for a painting show at The National Portrait Gallery. It certainly caught my eye, but I wonder what the conservatively inclined would make of it back home! It always perplexes me when the land of liberty is more conservative than the land of the monarchy.

Karen Knorr's India Song

2011-11-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

THE JOY OF AHIMSA. TAKHAT VILAS. MEHRANGARH FORT. JODHPUR

You’re all invited. Next up at Danziger Gallery is the opening of the Karen Knorr show “India Song” – this Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m..

Knorr, who is a well known artist in England, has been working on different series since the mid 1970s – initially chronicling London’s punk scene, then moving into a combination of social observation and commentary of England’s upper class, and then being increasingly drawn to creating her own tableaux in the interior spaces of historic homes and museums. Knorr’s artistic and conceptual journey is an exemplary model of how one body of work leads to another to build a career. And to cap it off (not that the end is anywhere near) Knorr was just nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize - Europe's most prestigious award "for a living photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the medium of photography over the past year".

Much of this acclaim has centered on Knorr’s latest work – a series of Indian tableaux transposing wild animals into the opulent interiors of some of Northern India’s most beautiful private homes and palaces.

Like the pioneering early photographers who found in India a wealth of exotic subject matter, Knorr celebrates the visual richness found in the myths and stories of northern India using sacred and secular sites to highlight caste, femininity and its relationship with the animal world. She considers men's space (mardana) and women's space (zanana) in Mughal and Rajput architecture - be they in palaces, mansions, or mausoleums. These interiors are meticulously photographed with a large format analogue camera. Knorr's own photographs of live animals are then inserted into the diverse rooms and sites, fusing high resolution digital with analogue photography. The results create original and stunning images that reinvent the Panchatantra (an ancient Indian collection of animal fables) for the 21st century and further blur the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Sometimes a show we do takes on a resonance beyond the norm and Knorr’s photographs have certainly provoked this response. We’ve had inquiries (and purchases) from museums and collectors from the minute we posted the work. Come and see for yourselves.

THE QUEEN'S ROOM, ZANANA, UDAIPUR CITY PALACE.

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM, DURBAR HALL, DUNGARPUR.

THE PRIVATE AUDIENCE, AAM KHAS, JUNHA MAHAL, DUNGARPUR.

THE GATEKEEPER, ZANANA, SAMODE PALACE.

Pleasure

2011-10-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

As regular readers will know, one of my great pleasures is seeing memorable pictures in the New York Times, and this week brought some excellent ones. Above - and gracing the front page of Thursday's Arts section was this photograph by Nan Goldin (left) paired with an 1855 painting by Ary Scheffer from Goldin's new show at Matthew Marks - the result of Goldin being given free rein to browse The Louvre on the days it was closed to the public.

Next up, this joyful victory dance in the women's 4 x 100 meter relay captured by Mark Ralston. It's so balletic it could be a dance photograph!

On a more serious note, Magnum newcomer Mark Zachmann photographed a boat carrying 158 Libyan refugees shortly before it was stopped by the Italian coastguard. (Italy has the closest European shore to Libya.) It has the gravitas and compositional power of a great history painting.

And lastly, this week's magazine picks up on this very blog - highlighting the Kenneth O Halloran's Irish Horse Festival photographs I ran last February. Just to let you know we're sometimes ahead of the curve!

Weekend Video

2011-10-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

One last tribute.

Tokyo ctd.

2011-09-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

Hisaji Hura

For me there's nothing quite like Tokyo. I love the way that form follows function in both the design sense and also in the sense of the formality and functionality of the place. I love the Tokyo subway. The museums. The stores. The enthusiasm and politeness towards strangers, and most of all the people I had the pleasure of meeting or dealing with. In three trips I don't think I've ever had a bad or rude experience.

To me Tokyo is a city of innovation. Everything seems to work and there are always new ideas of how do things. Cabs are plentiful. The airport buses are a model of efficiency. We all know about the toilets. Recently Tokyo introduced "Women Only" carriages on the subway so that women going to work didn't have to be hassled. Now why don't more places do that?

But back to photography. For my third Tokyo Photo fair, I tried to bring things that I thought would interest my hosts. A wall of work by 11 different western photographers new to art fairs. A Kate Moss selection. Sartorialist prints. Warhol polaroids. And a new Susan Derges piece. I'll show these later but for this post I'll concentrate on some of the many Japanese photographs that struck me as particularly good.

Above and below - the work of Hisaji Hura. A graphic designer and film-maker by background, over the last few years Hura has obsessively translated the work of the already obsessive painter Balthus into extraordinarily original photographs. As a concept, nothing could interest me less than copying painting but Hura's work has such a unique sensibility and the photographs have such a timeless feel that they are completely successful.

Hisaji Hura

Ken Kitano

Ken Kitano's work has consistently dealt with time and layering. Here one of his sunrise to sunset pictures wherein he literally stands by his camera for a day as it captures the passage of time and light. This one is of Ground Zero at Hiroshima.

Ikko Narahara

Also new to me was the work of Ikko Narahara. This surreal but un-manipulated shot was credited by the British photographer Chris Shaw, whose work was being shown at the fair by The Tate, with inspiring him to be a photographer. More on Chris and his work later.

Anon. by way of Fiona Tam.

These anonymous photographs of Japanese schoolgirls were found at a flea market by artist Fiona Tan and became the basis of a complex video piece. But as a refection of pure Japanese visuals and culture I think they're stunning - a study of uniformity, diversity, and seriality.

Taiji Matsue

I remember liking Taiji Matsue's work two years ago. Matsue photographs from a great distance and then blows up telling details of seemingly random incidence into little squares. This was a nice installation.

Tokihiro Sato

Tokihiro Sato creates his pictures by opening the lens and moving around with a flashlight to create mysterious and magical effects. One of the ideas I heard in Tokyo (from Yoshiko Suzuki at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) was the idea of a post 9/11 - post 3/11 (the Japanese Tsunami) sensibility in art. This works for me in that way.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto

A Chicago picture by the great Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto from when he was at The Art Institute. If you click into it you'll see it's a picture of cars in a parking garage. One of my favorite individual pictures in the show.

Rinko Kawauchi

A section of the fair was given to photographs specifically of the after effects of 3/1. The always reliably mystical Rinko was photographing the devastation when a black and white pigeon appeared - flying away only to return again. To her they symbolized life and death, hope and despair, light and dark, Adam and Eve.

Mika Ninagawa at Tomio Koyama gallery

And last but certainly not least - a group of Mika Ninagawa photographs in a back room at Tomio Koyama gallery. I have been wanting to meet Ms. Ninagawa - one of (if not) Japan's most popular photographers - for quite a while. I love her super-saturated pop take on flowers and fish and whatever else crosses her lens. She's sort of Nan Goldin meets Andy Warhol but in a completely original form. This trip I finally got the chance to go to her studio and home and I am pleased to say that I will now be representing and showing her in the U.S..

Tokyo

2011-09-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

After being diverted overnight to Hokkaido by Hurricane Roke, I arrived in Tokyo last night with 2 hours to hang 33 pictures in my booth at Tokyo Photo 2011! I made it thanks to some great help from my translator/assistants, but there was not a second to check out the other booths, which I will make up for shortly.

In the meantime, I always find hotel views interesting whether urban or picturesque. This is clearly the former but looking out of my window in the Nagatacho district looks like contemporary photography to me!

Fashion Week

2011-09-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

As Fashion Week in New york comes to a close - a great aerial shot of the backstage preparations from London's Daily Mail. Unfortunately the photograph is only credited to Getty Images so I can't give the resourceful photographer their due credit. Please write in if you know.

Save The Date - September 15

2011-09-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

Joan Crawford, 1924.

You're all invited to our opening show of the season. Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m..

The show features 80 iconic Edward Steichen 8x10 contact prints made by the renowned photographer George Tice who was Steichen's last printer. In addition to the Steichens we are showing 12 rarely seen George Tice photographs in our Print Room, and George - who is truly one of photography's living legends as well as an incredibly nice guy - will be there. More on George later.

Gary Cooper, 1928.

VOGUE Fashion. 1920s.

Gertrude Lawrence, 1928.

Charlie Chaplin, 1928.

9/12

2011-09-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about the proliferation of 9/11 images that have flooded the airwaves and print media these past few days. Nearly every story and image is powerful and moving but at a certain point you can begin to feel you're being used.

I was looking for a photograph that meant something more than re-visiting the past when Len Prince sent me this picture. It's an iPhone snap of a contact sheet that he had never tried to print or publish but ten years later the picture makes a lot of sense.

It was taken on 9/12/01 near Ground Zero and is of the back window of a smashed-up police car that had been blown on top of another car. Someone had scrawled the date in the dust of 9/11 as both a record and - I like to think - a hope. 9/11 as we know changed everything, but it's what we do with 9/12 that counts.

For a moment it seemed like 9/12 had brought about an amazing togetherness and spirit in this country, but it didn't take long to disintegrate and go awry. Let's try to make this 9/12 something better.

Irene

2011-09-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

Of all the snaps I've taken, this one seems to provoke the most visceral response!

It was taken around noon on August 28th as Hurricane Irene hit the south shore of Long Island. It's the view from the living room of our house on The Great South Bay, and amazingly, the water stopped about 1/4 inch short of flooding the house. What you see in this picture is The Great South Bay, and then what little lawn we have between the house and the bay.

We were very lucky.

Weekend Video

2011-08-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

I was listening to an interview on NPR with Greg Mottola, the director of "Superbad", when they played the scene where Fogell gets his fake i.d. - one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite summer movies. Listening to it on the radio with just the sound, I was knocked out by how good the dialog was and how one sharp line follows another. So try listening to it first without watching.

I generally have pretty highbrow/artsy taste in movies, but if you haven't seen the film I can't recommend it highly enough. It may be a teen "gross-out" comedy, but it's a near perfect movie with a great narrative, a great script, and wonderful performances from a cast who if not famous at the time have nearly all gone on stardom.

What You See is Not Always What You Get...

2011-08-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years, New York Magazine has established itself as one of the leading exponents of great photography. Mixing photo-journalism, pick-up, and the creative commissioning of fine art photographers, the magazine can regularly be counted on to deliver eye-catching images. Under Director of Photography Jody Quon (a longtime deputy to the New York Times Magazine's Kathy Ryan) and Editor Adam Moss the art of matching subject and photographer is both astute and surprising.

A great example is last week's memorable picture of gender-bending model Andrej Pejic by the renowned French photographer Valerie Belin. Belin does not usually do editorial work so the choice was as inspired as the result. On the surface, it's a photographic Gainsborough portrait. A beautiful person beautifully rendered in a distinctive style, but when you understand that the subject is in fact a man, you can't help but be drawn back to study the picture in greater detail to see what clues, if any, you missed. It's "The Crying Game" in a single frame. A picture worth at least the thousand words that you can read here.

New Photography

2011-07-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

If MoMA was really looking to break ground in their New Photography series, they couldn't do much better than this amazing self-portrait taken by an un-named Indonesian macaque. I'm pretty sure he hasn't exhibited before.

David J. Slater, a British wildlife photographer, was shooting in one of Indonesia's national parks when the mischievous black-crested macaque snatched his camera equipment and became enthralled with the reflection in the camera lens. Slater shoots wildlife with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and his DSLR lens was large enough for a clear reflection.

The macaque shot a couple hundred pictures before Slater was able to recover the equipment. And while many of the shots were out of focus, the majority of the pictures showed the monkeys showing off their teeth as it’s likely the first time they had seen their reflections. Slater said that the group of monkeys was initially frightened by the clicking sounds of the camera, but they all eventually returned to check out the gear.

Inadvertent or not, I'd still rank it as one of the most powerful and moving photographic self-portraits.

Here is the un-cropped image:

Another Gratuitous Video

2011-07-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

While we're in the Hamptons doing the Art Hamptons art fair (this Thursday through Sunday), a little video showing that Kate has lost neither her good looks or her sense of humor!

And if any one would like to visit the art fair (it's in Bridgehampton) here's a link to get you a free pass for two: click here.

July 4th.

2011-07-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

We all take firework pictures but not many as successful as those by Pierre LeHors, a young American (in spite of the name) photographer I was introduced to by David Strettel of Dashwood Books.

I was looking for some unusual pictures for a client's summer house and Strettel pointed out LeHors' book "Firework Studies".

As LeHors says in his artist's statement, "By constraining nearly all tonal values to stark blacks and pure whites, the trails, explosions and clouds of debris are reduced to a series of simple repeated formal elements: arced lines, spherical bursts, and randomly dispersed particles. i made no effort to limit digital artifacts resulting from pushing the image files past their conventional range; the resulting noise becomes hard to distinguish from the texture of the fireworks themselves."

We ended up selecting a group of 8 to hang in a grid, but rather than print them photographically LeHors chose to make silkscreens of each image thereby pushing the tonal values and painterly qualities even further. Anyway, it worked out really well and if you're interested, the book can be purchased at Dashwood. Just click here.

And happy 4th!

One Thousand Pictures

2011-06-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

At 8pm tomorrow, HBO will premiere the documentary, "One Thousand Pictures" - a film by Jennifer Stoddart that tells the story of Robert Kennedy's funeral train through the stories of many of the people who waited to see it, and in particular, through the recollections and photographs of Paul Fusco who was on the train tirelessly taking pictures of the vast cross section of Americans who came to pay their respects to the assassinated Senator and hope of many.

As I never tire of saying, Fusco's pictures are to me the greatest series in American photography, so it's interesting that the film doesn't see things from a photographic perspective. But that's its strength. It simply tells a deeply moving, sometimes shocking, and improbably nostalgic story. It's a worthy companion to Fusco's masterwork and should not be missed.

The Variations

2011-06-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

Two weeks left to see the latest development in the ongoing and fascinating career of Edward Mapplethorpe at the Michael Foley Gallery in New York.

In a career now entering its third decade, Mapplethorpe (the younger brother of Robert) has continually pushed the boundaries of what constitutes a photograph - moving from classical black and white portraits and still lives (which I have to remind people were as influential to his brother as his brother was to him) to photograms, to what is essentially painting with photographic material.

In his current work, titled "The Variations", Mapplethorpe has moved into Pollockian territory dripping and pouring photographic chemicals onto black and white photo paper with a mixture of spontaneous and controlled action. The densely layered abstractions were in part inspired by the artist's fascination with the classical pianist Glenn Gould and his iconoclastic re-interpretation of J. S. Bach’s "Goldberg Variations". When you enter the room you can feel the energy and dynamism that comes with breaking barriers.

Dog Days

2011-06-04T04:35:00.000-07:00

Growing up, one of the sweetest dogs I knew was a Pit Bull named Oliver. So I was pleased to find via Yahoo and Yonah Ward Grossman a photographic reminder that the Pit Bull was not always the feared dog it is these days. Apparently in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the Pit Bull was even known as "The Nanny Dog" because of its steadfastness and reliability.

This is a case where photographic evidence presents the most convincing proof. And the further you dig, the more supporting data you find. So here just a few images in defense of the breed.

The Dance Goes On

2011-06-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Some of you may remember this post I did a few months ago about the above Muybridge gravure. Well so did the folks at 20 x 200 - a great web business which specializes in high quality but low cost photographs and prints. Founder Jen Bekman (we're mutual admirers) read the post and asked me if they could do an edition and as: a) it's long been in the public domain, and b) I believe it's an image well worth sharing - I agreed, thus launching their first reproduction as opposed to original art edition.

20 x 200's formula is simple - they create an edition with large numbers of small prints at a super-reasonable cost, and as the print gets bigger the edition size decreases while the cost goes up. So you can get an 8 x 10" print for $20 and larger prints anywhere from $200 to above $2,000 depending on the work and size.

The Muybridge sold out immediately in the 8 x 10, is close to selling out in the 16 x 20 (at $200), but there are still a number available in the 11 x 14 size (at $50). If you're interested you can click here to view and/or buy. As I say in their text - it's now going to be my own go-to wedding present for friends embarking on married life!

Sardelis

2011-06-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

P.S.

As so often happens, while Googling around on the subject I came across these pictures by surf photographerChris Sardelis. Nice work.

Echo Beach

2011-06-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

While New York was witnessing the birth of Hip Hop in the 80’s, Newport Beach was experiencing a counter culture of its own. A small stretch of the coast was given the name “Echo Beach” and there a new movement in surf emerged in conjunction with the more aggressive direction the sport itself was taking. Neon colors and pattern replaced the boho look of the 1970s. The Californification of the world was beginning.

Photographer Mike Moir was there recording the scene. And now in the publishing equivalent of a super-group Quicksilver and Chronicle Books will be releasing “Eighties at Echo Beach,” written by Jamie Brisick, and designed by none other than frequent guest contributor to this blog, surf archivist, design superstar, and my good friend Tom Adler.

The book is not coming out until later this summer, but for those who can't wait, Partners & Spade are previewing the book and have a few advance copies at their Great Jones Street office/gallery. There's an opening tonight and the space is open to the public on weekends. There will also be a sneak peak at Adler and Danziger Projects' latest collaboration - a set of four new surf related graphic works about which more later.

Weekend Video

2011-05-29T07:21:00.001-07:00

Happy Memorial Day!

2011-05-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

Some things come into your mailbox and make you smile. For me it's this collage announcing Duncan Hannah's forthcoming show at Half Gallery. The juxtaposition of this sexy summery profile with the stodgy Country Life - and their Christmas Number, no less - make for a funny and surreal jolt!

Duncan Hannah, who is best known as a talented realist painter, is one of those artists who I see making their way around the galleries, checking out what's on. I always think this is a good sign - someone not so locked in their garret (or studio) that they can't engage with the world.

Anyway, the show opens June 1 and I certainly plan to check it out. In the meantime, to those in The States - have a happy Memorial Day Weekend!

If I Had A Million Dollars

2011-05-19T05:17:00.000-07:00

Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) Bateaux quittant le port du Havre, 1856 or 1857.

If I had a million dollars - or more precisely $115,000 - $175,000 (or possibly more) - I would want to bid on this striking seascape by Gustave Le Gray. Coming up in the Vendôme Photo Auction in Paris on June 18, it has the rare distinction of coming directly from a collection of one of the photographer’s peers, the 19th century shipping magnate Charles Denis Labrousse.

Gustave Le Gray is an interesting figure in photography. Barely recognized until the late 1970s, a cache of Le Gray's at the Victoria and Albert Museum led to the late recognition of the mastery of his work. And while Le Gray mastered many genres of photography, he is justly celebrated for his seascapes and the technical innovation of using multiple negatives to produce works where the sky was as well exposed as the sea. (Until Le Gray you rarely see skies of any note in 19th Century photographs.)

One of the pioneering practitioners of the medium, Le Gray made his first daguerreotypes by 1847. His early photographs included portraits, scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest, and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley. He taught photography to students including Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, and Maxime Du Camp. In 1851 he helped found the Société Héliographique, the first photographic organization in the world. He also published one of the first treatises on photography.

In 1855 Le Gray opened a lavishly furnished studio in Paris, becoming a successful and noted portraitist while at the same time beginning his first seascapes. In spite of his artistic success, however, his business was a financial failure. The studio was poorly managed and ran into debt at which point Le Gray closed his studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled France.

In 1860 he traveled around the Mediterranean with Alexandre Dumas, but they parted ways after a clash over a woman they both fancied. Le Gray moved on to Lebanon, then Syria, and Egypt. In Alexandria he photographed the future Edward VII of England. He established himself in Cairo in 1864 where he remained for about 20 years, earning a modest living as a professor of drawing while retaining a small photography shop. He sent pictures to the universal exhibition in 1867 but they failed to catch the public's attention. He died in 1884.

While the Le Gray market was slow to develop, in October 1999, Sotheby's sold a Le Gray albumen print "Beech Tree, Fontainebleau" to an anonymous buyer for £419,500, setting a world record for the most expensive single photograph sold at auction. Later that day at the same auction, an albumen print of "Grande Vague, Sète" also by Le Gray was sold for a new world record price of £507,500 or $840,370 to the same anonymous buyer. The buyer was later revealed to be Sheik Saud Al-Thani of Qatar. The record stood until May 2003 when Al-Thani purchased a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey for £565,250 or $922,488.

Over the past eight years the record has continued to climb and just last week the world record for the most expensive photograph sold at auction went to Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #96″ from 1981, when it sold for $3.89 million at Christie’s.

So that million isn't going to get you far in the contemporary art photo game, making the Le Gray an even more appealing buy!

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #96. 1981.

Now It Can Be Told

2011-04-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

There's always a fairly legitimate reason when there's a long delay between posts. And the reason this time is that I was deep in the planning and negotiations for moving the gallery to a new space three times the size of my current gallery and one block south.

The new address is 527 West 23rd Street and we will be opening on May 12 with an exhibition based on a portfolio we created with Kate Moss featuring pictures of her by 11 of the world's leading fashion and fine art photographers. As this show was originally planned when we were going to be in our current space, in addition to the portfolio we will be showing other great photographs of Kate Moss dating from 1988 (by Gene Lemuel) to a picture taken just a couple of weeks ago by Terry Richardson. Not to be missed are pictures by Glen Luchford, Herb Ritts, Mary McCartney, and British pop artist Peter Blake.

You can preview the show here. And as always, all blog readers are welcome to come to the opening which runs from 6 to 8 p.m. on May 12.

Now please excuse me, we need to get back to packing and unpacking!

Return of The Weekend Video

2011-04-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done a Weekend Video but the song "Price Tag" by Jessie J certainly has me boppin' and looks to be the catchy song of the summer! I particularly like the anti-materialistic lyrics - a nice antidote to the designer label references in so many hits.

Seems like everybody's got a price,
I wonder how they sleep at night.
When the sale comes first,
And the truth comes second,
Just stop, for a minute and
Smile

Why is everybody so serious
Acting so damn mysterious
Got your shades on your eyes
And your heels so high
That you can't even have a good time

Everybody look to their left (yeah)
Everybody look to their right (ha)
Can you feel that (yeah)
We're paying with love tonight
It's not about the money, money, money
We don't need your money, money, money
We just wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price Tag
Ain't about the (uh) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price Tag.

Spring Reading

2011-04-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

I do apologize for the gap in posting. Travel does that as it's often difficult to blog on overseas trips and then there's all the work to catch up on when you get back. There's also a lot going on gallery-wise which I'll update on soon, but it's all good.

One thing travel does afford me is the chance to catch up on reading. Something I'm really bad it during the normal course of events. Of course the books I read are usually photography related and this trip enabled me to catch up with two of the best books I've read in a long time.

The first - The Alice Behind Wonderland - by Simon Winchester is a short book but an engrossing and highly detailed account of the backstory and creation of Lewis Carroll's famous image of Alice Liddell as a beggar girl. Winchester's prose is somewhat breathless, but intentionally so, reflecting the pent-up emotions of both the artist and his time.

Winchester paints an engrossing portrait of Charles Dodgson, his Oxford milieu, and the Liddell family - Alice in particular. He also does an excellent job describing the evolution of photography in it's early days. Carroll's famous picture was taken in 1858, not far from the first days of fixing photographic images on paper. So it's an all round illuminating read as well as breezily entertaining.

The other book, which I'm about halfway through, is Patti Smith's recollection of her friendship and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I've never been a big follower of Patti Smith so it has taken me a while to get to the book in spite of its winning a National Book Award. However, Smith is a natural and highly gifted writer and the book is not what you would expect. It's really an account of growing up, of being poor and struggling artists, of living in downtown New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s, of finding your voice, and it's a love story that's complicated in the way love stories are where the love is real but there's something there to stop it from ever working out.

Shot

2011-03-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Photograph by Robert Beck/SI

The above photograph of Brigham Young University's Jimmer Fredette graces the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated and is justly being hailed an instant classic. Taken by SI's Robert Beck during BYU's third-round win over Gonzaga, it captures the 6' 2" leading collegiate scorer as he soars to make a three-pointer.

It has it all! The impossible height Fredette seems to achieve, the domination of the Gonzaga defender, the dramatic light that echoes the ball as it prepares to make its way to the hoop. The greatest sports photographs are always works of art.

AIPAD Reader Favorites

2011-03-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Nobuyoshi Araki. Untitled, from the series "Mythology", 2001

Two people were kind enough to send in their AIPAD favorites. Above - from photographer Frank Schramm with this explanation:

Here is my favorite image from this years AIPAD Show 2011. The Galerie Priska Pasquer, who specializes in Japanese Photography and, who was effected not getting all the images it wanted from some of there newer artists, due to the Tsunami, I was very taken by a photograph by one of my favorite photographers, Nobuyoshi Araki. This being from his series "Mythology" 2001 - I have never seen this image before. It is not the style one would expect from Araki's - other work. It's interesting to me because of it's - classic style of a young japanese woman dressed in traditional kimono attire. I really love this image, because, I see it as Araki - "Inside - Out" in reflection of his traditional images.

Photograph by Esteban Pastorino Diaz

And these two images (above and below) from Lane Navares without any comment.

Photograph by Rita Bernstein

AIPAD 2011

2011-03-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

It's the weekend of AIPAD (the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers show) at the Park Avenue Armory, and while it didn't work out on our gallery schedule to participate, there are plenty of great things to see. Given a busy travel schedule, I haven't able to do my usual aisle by aisle round-up, but one of the great pleasures of AIPAD is discovering that gem of a photograph by some unknown or little known photographer and this year, the always reliable David Winter came through again.

For those not in the know, David is a private dealer specializing in vernacular, press, 19th century and other great images not in the usual high-end or big name price range. It's the image that matters to him and his booth is always bursting with a hyper-salon style floor to ceiling hanging.

I caught this image there of Coretta Scott King and while I don't know the exact details, it seems to have been taken at a rally in the 1960s (that's Harry Belafonte in the back) or perhaps a funeral. It looks a little like a William Klein of the period but the composition with King's face framed by the two military helmets, the drama of the foreshortening, and the incredible nobility of King's face make for a memorable and powerful image.

AIPAD runs through tomorrow afternoon so if you're anywhere near the city do go see it. And feel free to send me your own favorite find. (To info@danzigerprojects.com.)

Observed

2011-03-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

Lunching at The Standard Hotel today, I noticed that every single person at the tables around us was on their phones. This touching father/daughter scene was a wry comment on communication in the digital age (and made for a pretty good iPhone snap). FYI - I was not on my phone. I'm not a fan of texting while dining with others.

Terry Richardson

2011-03-10T04:03:00.000-08:00

I was surfing the web looking at Terry Richardson pictures when I came across these pictures that the photographer shot for Reebok last year. The brief was to revitalize the brand's "Classics Collection" with a campaign that would run in VICE Magazine and I think he did an amazing job. All he's working with is a girl in a room, rather basic clothing, and the sneakers, but look what he brought to the job with his humor and verve.

The legendary art director Alex Brodovich famously instructed his student Richard Avedon to "Astonish me!". I've always thought my mantra would be more about delight, but originality, energy, wit and surprise are in there too. Maybe Brodovich did say it best.

A further example of Richardson's work can now be seen around New York on these billboards of Richardson's new campaign for the skateboard and clothing company Supreme. Chelsea being Chelsea, these pictures have now been integrated into street art by an unknown artist who's been pasting up half-tone details of famous artist's portraits including the famous Mapplethorpe self-portrait. I'm pretty sure Robert would have approved of both Lady Gaga and the street work.

The Galliano Affair

2011-03-08T04:29:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write about the John Galliano affair because as a Jew with an English accent and a posh education (St. Paul’s School and Yale) people often assumed I wasn’t Jewish and were therefore more open about their prejudice. I’ve stopped counting the number of times people have inadvertently talked to me about some place being “too Jewish” or “jappy”, or bemoaned the power/stinginess/grubbiness of the Jews. Most of the time I say something. Sometimes I let it pass appreciating that the person has revealed themselves.

The Galliano affair is both an old and a new type of story. Old because prejudice is as old as civilization and new because it was new technology that did Galliano in. A video recorded on a cell phone showed his anti-semitic rant was a habit, not an isolated incident and confirmed the inevitability of his firing.

After the first account of Galliano’s restaurant behavior surfaced and he was suspended but not fired, a friend of mine who is the p.r. for The Met Costume Institute said “there must be other things out there for them to have suspended him so quickly”. And lo and behold the next day the “I love Hitler” video surfaced and Galliano was fired. But Christian Dior and LVMH must have known about Galliano’s habit of drunken tirades so no great credit to them. The only person to have come out with any integrity was Natalie Portman who refused to wear her planned Galliano dress to the Oscars. This was the only thing that made me deal with her Oscar for what I thought was one of the worst films of the year. (Yes – I’m afraid I’m anti-Black Swan!)

Prejudice, I believe, is an ingrained characteristic. There’s nearly always some “type” you tend to internally react against. Rich, poor, fat, skinny, gay, black, Jew, WASP, etc.. I know as many people who don’t like bankers as bankers who don’t like welfare mothers. And while we should all work to fight this feeling and respect everyone, our prejudices - like our likes - are part of what makes us an individual.

The line is when private prejudice crosses into public prejudice. A private prejudice acknowledges that there is something wrong about prejudice. A public prejudice mistakenly assumes it is acceptable.

What Makes a Good Photographer (or a Photographer Good)

2011-03-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

I was surfing the web looking at Terry Richardson pictures when I came across these pictures that Richardson shot for Reebok last year. The brief was to revitalize the brand's "Classics Collection" with a campaign that would run in VICE Magazine and I think he did an amazing job. All he's working with is a girl in a room, rather basic clothing, and the sneakers, but look what he brought to the job with his humor and verve.

The legendary art director Alex Brodovich famously instructed his student Richard Avedon to "Astonish me!". I've always thought my mantra would be more about delight, but originality, energy, wit and surprise are in there too. Maybe Brodovich did say it best.

Pier 24

2011-03-04T05:29:00.000-08:00

The entrance to Pier 24 in San Francisco.

Word has slowly been getting out about a new photography space in San Francisco that is quite literally a game changer. The result of one man’s relatively new-found passion for photography, Pier 24 is a 28,000 square foot private museum that is open to the public on a by appointment only basis. The back story is extraordinary.

In 2002, Andy Pilara, a San Francisco businessman, went to see the Diane Arbus show “Revelations” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was, to understate it, deeply moved. Without having ever bought a photograph, he delved into the medium – learning, looking, listening to experts and ultimately acquiring over 2,000 pictures to date. His collection became so large he began to look for a space to house it and after a fruitless search a friend suggested he contact the San Francisco Port Authority which owned a number of piers that were unused but in disrepair. Two years later, Pier 24 opened in the spring of 2010. Beautifully finished and constructed and designed to be a series of 17 interconnected spaces that flow engagingly from one gallery to another, I am sure it must be the largest space devoted exclusively to photography in the world.

The opening show was a selection of works from Pilara’s collection. The just closed second show highlighted work from the collection of Randi and Bob Fisher (of the GAP). Next up will be works relating to San Francisco - either pictures of S.F. or pictures by S.F. based photographers.

To get in you have to e-mail in advance to set up an appointment. Admission is free. The museum admits only 20 visitors per two-hour time slot from Monday through Thursday, along with a few small school or museum groups. A glass door at the entrance is unlocked after your appointment is confirmed via intercom. From then on you have the place to yourself. There are no wall labels as Pilara wants visitors to have a "quiet and contemplative" encounter with the work on view. It is in many ways a place very much for the photographic cognoscenti, but Pilara takes the justifiable point of view that too many museum visitors spend more time looking at labels than at art.

In any case, Pier 24 now firmly establishes San Francisco as a center of photography to rival anywhere in the world. Between Pier 24, SF MoMA, the Fraenkel Gallery and the numerous smaller galleries that dot the Geary Street area, as well as the recent appointment of Julian Cox (formerly of the Getty and The High Museum) as Founding Curator of Photography for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Chief Curator at the de Young, there is more than enough and at the highest level of quality to justify a special trip for any photography lover.

Below - a few snaps from my recent visit to Pier 24. Unfortunately, this show closed right after my visit but the new show should be opening at the end of March. And rather than show room after room, these pictures are just to give a flavor of the space.

As you walked into the Fisher Collection show at Pier 24, you were greeted by this assemblage of vintage Edward Weston's from his nude on the dune series.

A Struth "Museum" picture leads to a room of Bechers.

The Becher room.

The Eggleston room.

A corner of the Winogrand room.

Andy Pilara's office with a view of the Bay Bridge.

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

2011-03-04T03:25:00.000-08:00

What do you think!

Observed

2011-03-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

A number of people have commented on the cover image of Salma Hayek on our spring women’s fashion issue. The cover story was a piece that, as the reporter Gaby Wood mentions in her opening paragraph, took as its starting point some iconic ’60s and ’70s images from the history of fashion. The cover portrait of Hayek was inspired by an image taken by the fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky. It has been brought to our attention that the contemporary artist Josephine Meckseper produced a similar image in 2003. The photographer and T’s editors were unaware of that work.

Weekend Video

2011-02-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Women in Art by Philip Scott Johnson from Bruce Livingstone on Vimeo.

There was a piece similar to this making the rounds a year or so ago, but this one is actually done better.

Observed

2011-02-26T14:40:00.000-08:00

What Artists Give Us

2011-02-25T20:00:00.000-08:00

Sze Tsung Leong. Alameda, México DF, 2009

First, please excuse the current lapse in posts. I was away on the west coast - about which more to come as soon as I get a chance.

Just before I left, however, I went to see the just opened show "Cities" by Sze Tsung Leong (at Yossi Milo) and was much taken by the craft and consistency of vision of this relatively new to the scene photographer. Leong - as you will see from his website produces vast serial bodies of landscape work sticking to a fairly rigid compositional format for each series. This in itself is nothing new, but Leong travels so far and to so many places that his encyclopedic breadth crossed with his pictorial skill combine to take us somewhere new.

A sure sign of this is that when I looked out of my hotel window in Los Angeles, I felt I was seeing a Leong picture! And as I thought about this, I realized that one of the things artists give us is a way of defining and ordering what we see. A sea horizon
can be a Meyerowitz or a Sugimoto. A random gesture in a park can be a Winogrand. A tackily colored interior can be an Eggleston. And rather than taking away from the pleasure of seeing these things, for those of us who are not artists I think it actually adds pleasure. Recognizing the association is in itself a creative gesture. Thus the realization that the scene outside my window (below) was like a Leong was both a gift from the artist and a gift from and to myself.

Weekend Video

2011-02-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

This week I had the pleasure of seeing the Academy Award nominated documentary "Wasteland" and meeting its director Lucy Walker. The film follows the Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz as he sets out to create a body of work rendering portraits of the garbage pickers of Rio's Jardim Gramacho - the largest landfill in the world - out of the garbage they sift through every day. The idea was that all the money Muniz made from the sale of these pictures would be given back to the pickers and their union. However it also turned out to be a shining example of how doing the right thing can bring as much to the giver as the receiver.

For those not familiar with Muniz's work, it is largely comprised of renditions of iconic images done in unusual material like chocolate syrup or paint swatches and then photographed by the artist. You can see a lot on Muniz's own site here.

Following the unusual, dangerous, and daunting project, Walker focuses on a handful of Muniz's truly memorable subjects and by the time the film is over you not only feel you've gotten to know them, but you care deeply about them. Subtextually, the film also addresses the often complicated issue of what makes something a work of art in a refreshingly clear-headed way. It's moving, entertaining, and illuminating. It's playing here and there, but obviously if the film gets an Oscar it will be easier to access.

Whatever happens, don't miss it.

Love Lost (& found)

2011-02-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

An occupational hazard of my profession is that given the number of prints we show, store, etc., - things go missing. It's not like a painting gallery where an artist might drop off a dozen paintings for a show. We literally deal in hundreds of images and prints. Some are consigned, some are owned, others get dropped off and never picked up.

There's a slightly different story regarding the picture above, however. Many years ago, I was browsing in the Museum of Modern Art's bookstore and came across a french book on motion in photography with this Muybridge of a couple dancing on the cover. Muybridge is best known for his studies of animals in motion. (He was the person who proved that a horse's four legs do all leave the ground at once but not as previously assumed in the legs out rocking horse position. After Muybridge set up his cameras to settle a bet between two rich San Franciscans, his pictures revealed that the only time a horse's legs all leave the ground at once are when they are tucked under the body.) But I digress.

Muybridge less frequently photographed the human body in motion, but I found this image particularly pleasing and very romantic. So I set out to try and buy a print. Calls to all the Muybridge specialists proved fruitless. Trips to galleries and art fairs yielded no leads. Then one day about six years ago, I was at Photo L.A. and saw a booth with Muybridges. The booth owner didn't have it but thought he had seen it in another booth. That booth didn't have it but thought he had seen it in another booth. On and on this went until the last possible booth where the dealer dug into a stack of gravures and produced the image!

I brought the print back home and eventually took it to Washington D.C. for my friend David Adamson to scan so I would always have a copy and could in fact sell reproductions if I wanted to. (Being from the late 1800s there are no copyright issues.)

After leaving it there for a few months I forgot about it. I was probably busy opening Danziger Projects. And when I finally inquired about it David thought it had been returned to me. I thought I had misplaced it. Several searches at Danziger Projects and Adamson turned up nothing. I had a horrible half-memory of taking it on the train from D.C. to N.Y.C. and leaving the package on the train.

On my last trip to Adamson a week ago, I asked David if he could at least locate the scan so I could have a copy. And then he thought he might have actually seen the print in a drawer. We opened one drawer after another and again when we got to the last drawer the original print of the dancing couple reappeared! It's now back in the gallery. After what must be a at least a seven or eight year odyssey from first seeing the image in a book, clearly the only solution is to get it framed and hang it on the wall. Things that go into boxes and shelves have a way of hiding themselves!

Hope I haven't bored you with the story. But this post is my valentine to all Year in Pictures readers. Happy Valentine's Day. As I never tire of saying - "Photography is love"!

Hi and Lo

2011-02-11T04:53:00.000-08:00

Call me superficial! I can't help admiring Lindsay Lohan's fashion sense and knack for visual theater. At this week's court appearance, the dress that Lohan wore made front page news while subliminally signaling her innocence (legally) as well as a few other things. But as far as news pictures go, it's a welcome break to see pictures as outrageously stylish as these.

Lohan is, of course, no stranger to courtroom dramatics. Her facial expressions and demeanor could fill an entire blog with every expression except contrition.

There was the previous court appearance where this message to the judge failed to go unnoticed.

But in a sign of new-found maturity, this week Lohan's message to herself was "Shhh"!

A Matter of Time

2011-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

There are special moments when the art world comes together to acknowledge the impact and zeitgeist of a particular show and for New Yorkers, that moment is the current Christian Marclay exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery at 534 West 21st Street.

From now until Feb 19, the gallery is showing Marclay's extaordinary 24 hour video piece "The Clock" - a real time assemblage of hundreds (if not thousands) of film clips all dealing in some way with timepieces and time. In other words, if you come into the gallery at 3:04 p.m., the film might be showing a sequence in which, say, Cary Grant will be looking at his watch and it will say 3:04. Ten minutes later, a clip from a german expressionist film of the 30s might have a clock in the background where the time will be 3:14. It might be better explained in the video below.

If you have any opportunity to see this piece, I highly recommend it. You can, of course, dip in and out as you wish. The gallery has an enormous screening room full of very comfortable chairs and couches and the most surprising thing is how entertaining and gripping the work is. Most significantly, this weekend and next (the last two weekends of the show) the gallery will be open from Friday until Sunday 10 a.m. in order to allow the hardiest souls to watch the entire 24 hour cycle.

You can read some background here. And for those outside of New York, it's probably only a matter of time (no pun intended) until "The Clock" comes to a museum near you.

2011-02-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

Stone Nudes

2011-02-05T07:23:00.000-08:00

One of the many qualities of Bruce Weber is his generosity towards other photographers. As an enthusiast, collector, and publisher, Weber has brought a number of lesser known photographers to light, mostly through his self-published magazine "All-American" - now in its 10th volume.

In the most recent issue of "All-American" Weber has included a portfolio of photographs by Dean Fidelman which combine the schools of climbing photographs and the nude in a skilled and original way. I particularly like how unsalacious these pictures are. They're more about athleticism and have a kind of hippy/back to nature vibe linking them to the "Stone Master" photographers of the 70s.

My friend Tom Adler, another great discoverer of photographers, recently put together a terrific book on the Stone Masters which I somehow missed blogging about, but you can get it here.

Below: a few more pictures by Fidelman,

Kenneth O'Halloran

2011-02-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

Another picture which stopped me in my tracks. This photograph from Kenneth O' Halloran's "Fair Trade" series (on Irish Fairs) is a stunner! I love its Heironymous Boschian composition, its dabs of color, and the way your eye is pulled back into the ever denser concentration of horses and figures at the back of the frame.

It's atypical of the rest of the series' Sanderesque portraits, but those are pretty strong too as you'll see below. I'm beginning to feel that the Sander to Sartorialist composed portrait is becoming almost too prevalent these days but what's interesting to see is how in the hands of someone with a distinctive vision, it still has some kick. But I'd love to see O'Halloran try to come up with more pictures like the top one.

Football Ads

2011-01-23T16:46:00.000-08:00

671 and counting

2011-01-20T15:36:00.000-08:00

Milton Rogovin 1910 - 2011

2011-01-19T19:31:00.000-08:00

Milton Rogovin passed away this week at the surprising age of 101. I was lucky enough to represent Milton and put on two shows of his work and over the last few years I wrote about him a number of times on this blog. Re-reading what I wrote, I hope that much of it bears repeating.

"Sometimes life gets in the way of the art. This is one of the few plausible explanations of why Milton Rogovin is not more widely know or celebrated than he is. I have been lucky enough to represent Milton’s work for the last few years and I hope you’ll check out all the pictures on the Danziger Projects website. (Click here to view.) Hopefully you’ll see why he’s such a photographer’s photographer – a particular favorite of Alec Soth and Tanyth Berkeley amongst many others.

Rogovin’s pictures consist almost entirely of portraits of workers and the working class. His prints are nearly all a modest 8 x 10 inches – a size that suits his commitment to activism above art world recognition and his dedication to social issues, most notably the plight of the miners around the world; the decline of the American steel industry, and the struggle of the working people of his home town of Buffalo, New York.

Deceptively straightforward, Rogovin’s photographs reveal a personal style that up-ends the usual balance between a great photographer and the subject. While most masters of photography wittingly dominate the picture, in Rogovin's work the subject commands equal strength. The photographic style is deadpan. The camera simply provides a stage for his subjects to present themselves as they see fit. Rogovin trusts them and their ability to present themselves as the unique individuals they are. Whether because of his respect and empathy for his sitters or the sincerity of his humanism and politics, this seemingly simple concept re-addresses the delicate balance of power between the observer and the observed.

My favorite example of this is his 1973 picture of Lower West Siders Johnny Lee Wines and Zeke Johnson. "It's a picture of pure happiness" said one viewer. So to spread the feeling, here are some unpublished and unseen shots of Johnny from that day."

Morning Light

2011-01-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

Long Meadow North. 2005. Photograph by Joseph O. Holmes.

Jan 17, according to a recent study, has been deemed the "most depressing day of the year". This finding by social psychologists was made by calculating how long it takes for us to break our New Year's resolutions, for the holiday bills to pile up, and the effect of the weather and the dark. Not surprisingly, January is also considered the most depressing month and according to my own highly unscientific study, this January in particular is dragging along at a much slower pace than most Januaries.

There are, however, a few metaphorical (as well as actual) bright clouds and one of them for me is walking my dog in the morning when Central Park is still blanketed with white snow and before the dirt of the city turns everything to grey slush. I try to time my walk so that I get into the park just as the sun is rising and this week with its pale blue morning skies and golden red sunrises has been particularly beautiful.

Add to this that after 11 years our semi-wild collie/lab/sheperd/chow mix has finally mellowed enough to be let off the leash and not take off for parts unknown and you get a morning walk that is at once serene, invigorating, and joyful. There's nothing quite like seeing a happy dog bounding through snow!

Another bright cloud is seeing a good show by a friend and I finally got the chance this week to catch up with Joseph Holmes current exhibition “The Urban Wilderness” at the Jen Bekman gallery in Soho. It’s up until January 23 so there’s still time to catch it.

Joe’s pictures were taken in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, not Central Park, but they convey the same magical feeling of the urban metropolis transformed into a wintery Eden. And they’re nearly all about dog walking! (As well as about light, and color, and composition.) Joe values may be old-fashioned – he’s someone looking to find the sublime or the memorable in the everyday – but his pictures have a nice contemporary feel due to their color and scale. And the show is a sure cure for those January blues!

Above and below from the current show:

Nethermead

And two brand new photographs from this December:

Long Meadow North No. 2

The White Oaks.

A Cautionary Tale

2011-01-05T18:14:00.000-08:00

Recently sent to me, this picture posted by Russell Brand on his Twitter page shows his wife, Katy Perry, waking up without a scrap of make-up. As you can see below, this is not Ms. Perry usual look. Apparently, she was less than pleased with the posting, as it was quickly deleted from Russell's Twitter page. But as most of us hopefully know, the internet is an unforgiving environment. Once posted, never forgotten.

The 2010 Top Ten list

2010-12-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

What is December 31 without a top ten list?

It’s been an odd year. A recovery year where it seemed like there were fewer highs and lows as everyone hunkered down with fingers crossed. Photographers being the creative people they are, however, signs of life could not be kept down and so in no particular order here are my top ten visual pleasures of 2010.

1. Richard Learoyd.

Working with a self-made camera that creates highly detailed near life-size images by projecting an image directly onto photographic paper without any interposing negative – Learoyd has invigorated at least three genres at once – cameraless (or more accurately film-less) photography, portraiture, and still life.

2. Auctions.

Continuing to make inroads into what was traditionally gallery territory, the auction houses (particularly Christies and Phillips) are putting on more interesting, original, and varied sales. And for the astute collector there are always bargains. This Irving Penn self-portrait from 1948 went for what I’m sure will be seen as a buy at $45,000 at Christies in London this past spring. I'd say it's worth at least double.

3. Mickalene Thomas.

The connections between contemporary art and traditional photography continue to intertwine as seen here in Mickalene Thomas’ bad-ass tribute to Seydou Keita. Jumping between painting, appliqué, and photography, Mickalene Thomas is just one of the new breed of hyphenates making waves as the art and photography world continue to grow closer together.

4. Susan Derges.

After a relatively quiet period, Susan Derges – one of the fab four of British camera-less photography – has re-emerged with a series of new photograms based around the idea of rock pools. In this image, Jackson Pollock meets Turner as light, color, and line intersect in a glorious mixture of fresh photographic ideas.

5. Tokyo Photo.

Gaining strength and energy – Tokyo Photo is fast emerging as the go-to fair of the east. Founder Tomo Harada, pictured above, has made it his mission to make the event a must see and entering year three the mix of American and Japanese dealers is creating an ever more exciting cultural exchange.

6. Patrick Smith.

Top of the list of new(ish) names that have emerged in photography this year is French photographer Patrick Smith. While clearly working in the tradition of Vitali and Niedermayr, Smith’s pictorial eye and immaculate exposures have a purity all their own.

7. Surprises.

No matter how much you think you know about photography, there are always surprises. Going through Art Miami I came across a group of pictures of Elizabeth Taylor by Frank Worth. I don’t know how I had never seen or heard of these images before but that is what makes life so interesting. (And boy, was she a beauty!)

8. Bruce Weber.

One of the best museum shows around (and up through February 13), Bruce Weber’s photographs of the residents of Miami’s “Little Haiti” neighborhood at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami are a reflection of Weber’s outstanding skill and diversity. To those who only think of Weber as a fashion photographer, the work may be a surprise, but to any one who has followed his career closely, the humanism and warmth of the work should come only as a welcome treat.

9. Jim Krantz.

One of the few disappointments of this gallery year for me was putting off a show of Jin Krantz’s work when we couldn’t get the releases we needed. Krantz is probably the most distinguished of the Marlboro photographers whose work was appropriated by Richard Prince for his “Cowboys” series. But Krantz is back in the saddle making new images strictly for himself of which the above image shot in 2010 is just the beginning. Stay tuned.

10. Teresa Vlckova

Noted as one of the highlights of Aperture’s latest round-up of new talent - reGeneration 2 – Teresa Vlckova creates pictures that pull us into her otherworldly universe of flying girls and Brothers Grimm-like twins. Born in 1983 in Vsetín, Czech Republic. Vlčková’s work will be seen in the U.S. for the first time in January when Aperture exhibits a selection of work of the 80 photographers featured in the book "reGeneration 2".

Unexcused Winter Absence

2010-12-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

Yuji Obata. Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #1. 2005 - 2006.

It has been a long time hasn’t it? That’s the problem with doing art fairs (PULSE Miami) and having a gallery. And a family, And a dog. NO TIME FOR BLOGGING!!!! Anyway, I just checked and saw that I’ve been blogging since November 2007 so bear with me. I won’t let anything really good go un-noticed.

So where were we? Michael Wolf. The answers to the question of which were Wolf’s pictures and which were other Google Earth grabs is: Michael Wolf – numbers 1, 3, 5, 6. Nobody was fooled!

Speaking of good things, my latest enthusiasm is for the work of Yuji Obata who we are now lucky enough to represent. I was introduced to Obata’s work by Yoshiko Suzuki, curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, who was kind enough to give me a rare copy of Obata’s study of winter in the Hokkaido Province titled “Winter Tale”.

Yuji Obata was born in Japan in 1962. He attended the Nihon University College of Art and currently resides in Tokyo. In 2003, Obata was compelled to photograph winter scenes in Japan as he stood in front of Pieter Bruegel's painting "The Hunters in the Snow" in Vienna's Museum of Art History. Upon returning to Japan, he traveled to the country's northernmost island, Hokkaidō, known for its cold and snowy winters. As he worked there photographing ice skaters at a middle school rink and a local speed skating team, his enchantment with images of winter deepened. Traveling around different regions of the island in winter, he began noticing the varied qualities of the snow itself, and finally became fascinated with the unique challenge of photographing snowflakes in motion as they fell from the sky.

Obata was inspired by the story and works of W.A. Bentley, an American farmer and photographer who adapted a camera and microscope to photograph a single snow crystal for the first time in 1885. Bentley went on to photograph more than 5,000 snowflakes in his lifetime, and his technique was so successful that it continues to be used today.

Like Bentley, Obata was obsessed with the challenge of doing something no one had done before – in his case photographing snowflakes in freefall rather than on a flat surface without digital or any other manipulation. It took Obata five years to achieve but his breakthrough resulted in the capture of pictures that allow the snowflakes to relate to each other in space and size, creating dynamic compositions and scenes. Obata chose to shoot the series in the mountains of Hokkaidō, based on its extreme cold and its history as the place where Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya did research that led to his invention of artificial snow. And while Obata is properly reverent to those who inspired him in this project, his photographs stand alone as fresh and original works.

I hope you enjoy them and if I don’t get around to posting again for a while I hope you'll find these pictures seasonally cheery and appropriate. Happy Holidays!

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #4. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #10. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #7. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #8. 2005 - 2006.

Weekend Video

2010-11-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

The new single and video from Antony and the Johnsons.

Weekend Video

2010-11-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

Antony and the Johnsons performing on David Letterman.

From my iPhone - L.A.

2010-04-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

To my pleasure and surprise, when I checked in to the Sunset Tower Hotel, I was informed I was being upgraded to a suite with a balcony and city view. But best of all, when I got in from dinner, the view from my room was this spectacular moonrise over L.A.!

Kick-Ass

2010-04-25T19:55:00.001-07:00

This weekend I went to see "Kick-Ass" which turned out to be one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. Best described as teen comedy meets Quentin Tarantino, it kept me riveted with its sheer film-making brio, story telling, interesting characters, and entertainment.

I usually find movies derived from comic books predictable and boring, especially in the plot lines of the villain who is trying to take over the world/destroy our hero. But "Kick-Ass" has a much more engrossing conflict, dimensional characters, and two genuinely interesting and talented young leads.

The movie is generating some controversy over the fact that Chloe Moretz, who plays the profanity spewing, villain slicing and dicing, Hit-Girl was 11 when the film was shooting. And I have to respect that many people might be offended by an 11 year old greeting bad guys with the c-word before killing them all. So that should be the litmus test of whether you see the film or not.

(With that warning, if you want to see what I'm talking about - click here.)

Weekend Video

2010-03-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Another art historical referencing video - this one "70 Million" by Hold Your Horses - kindly recommended by my assistant Kate Ryan.

Risky Business

2010-02-06T18:10:00.001-08:00

As readers of this blog will know, I'm a huge fan of photographer Ryan McGinley and New York Times Magazine Director of Photography, Kathy Ryan. And I'm pleased to say - they've done it again! After creating a hugely successful Summer Olympics portfolio in 2004, they've just produced a brand new Winter Olympics portfolio on the theme of "Highfliers".

I won't steal the magazine's thunder by nabbing their pictures so here's a link. And by the way, in my opinion, this kind of collaboration, with no absolute guarantee of success, is one of the few things that can keep that business vital and alive. Be smart. Be creative. Take risks!

Gender Bender

2010-02-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

In a recent study by Richard Russell of Harvard University, the two faces above were perceived as male and female. However, both faces are actually versions of the same androgynous face. One face was created by increasing the contrast of the face, while the other face was created by decreasing the contrast. The face with more contrast is perceived as female, while the face with less contrast is perceived as male.

I'm not sure that this proves much more than that pale skin and darker lips look more feminine, but perhaps it also provides a useful printing (or make-up) tip.

24/7

2010-02-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

A while ago I was looking to see what cool iPhone apps there were for the phone’s camera when I landed on the site TechCrunch and a story on Japan’s 32 best iPhone apps. Most of the apps were games (which are of no particular interest to me), but one app appealed to me because of its blend of photography and what seemed a perfect instance of form following function in the most populist (pandering) way. This is Bijin-Tokei - a clock app which shows 1,440 different pictures of girls (one for every minute of the day) each holding a blackboard showing the current time. (Bijin Tokei means Hot Girl Clock.) To be exact, you often get the same girl displaying several different minutes. Apparently finding 1,440 willing models was too tough for v.1..

This seemed like such a simple formula for any kind of photography – I imagine if you’re a birder or a train spotter the thought of a different picture every minute of the day would cause equal excitement - I immediately recommended the idea to the photographer Stephen Schuster who has been working on a spring break project. We'll see if he takes my advice and gets rich!

As of yet there doesn’t seem to be an American version, but according to Asiajin: The Next Generation Internet Trends in Japan and Asia, there is now Binan Tokei – beautiful boys clock, Gal Tokei, Pit Babe version, a Korean version, and a planned French version.

Not surprisingly the latest Tokei, AV-Tokei, features slightly different girls, i.e. pornstars. (“AV” is an abbreviation of “Adaruto Bideo/Adult Video).

Lady and Gentleman photographers of all stripes: start your engines!

Weekend Video

2010-01-23T06:41:00.000-08:00

A summer clip for a winter day:

One of the highlights of last summer's Woodstock anniversary was Barbara Koppel's documentary, "Woodstock: Now and Then", full of old newsreels, concert footage, and now and thens of many of the performers and concert goers. One of the interviewees who particularly stood out for me was Santana drummer Michael Shrieve, who I remember from my teen years as being about the coolest guy around and whose cool I thought stood up pretty well 40 years on!

A great anecdote from the film, was the story of how Carlos Santana was so zonked out on mescalin he thought his guitar was a snake and most of his performance was trying to hold on to the writhing snake and keep it under some kind of control. So here are both the full performance of "Soul Sacrifice" (above), and a clip from the Koppel doc. (below). I noticed that only 488 people had seen this clip on YouTube so I hope it's fresh content.

Jowhara Al Saud

2010-01-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

Airmail. 2007.

I only posted a single installation shot of Jowhara AlSaud's work (in my Paris Photo report) so here is a little more information to fill you in on another of the photographers who I'll be showing in my new exhibition.

Jowhara AlSaud is a 32 year old Saudi photographer whose photographs combine straight photography and what could almost be described as scrimshaw. She photographs an image that will become her ground and then elaborately and painstakingly carves traced images onto the negative using an array of tools. The foreground figures are all family and acquaintances sometimes photographed by Jowhara and sometimes using found photographs, but their facelessness is a commentary on censorship in Saudi Arabia and its relationship to visual communication.

I found the work immediately striking without knowing the full meaning, but I find this often happens with me. In my experience good work frequently communicates itself viscerally before revealing more subtle and complex meaning, and what appealed to me first was simply the resonance of the airmail border combined with the graphic illustration.

AlSaud explains the work and her intentions so well in her artist statement I'll let her speak for herself, but illustrated are the two prints we'll have up on the wall in our "The Year in Pictures" show. (They're worth clicking into to see larger.)

Artist Statement:

This body of work began as an exploration of censorship in Saudi Arabia and it's effects on visual communication. While there is a lack of consistency from region to region, overall, images are highly scrutinized and controlled. Some superficial examples of this would be skirts lengthened and sleeves crudely added with black markers in magazines or blurred out faces on billboards.

I tried to apply the language of the censors to my personal photographs. I began making line drawings, omitting faces and skin. Keeping only the essentials preserved the anonymity of my subjects. This allowed me to circumvent, and comment on, some of the cultural taboos associated with photography. Namely the stigma attached to bringing the “personal portrait”, commonly reserved for the private domestic space, into a public sphere.

It became a game of how much can you tell with how little. When reduced to sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable. For me, they became autonomous, relatable, pared down narratives.

I've always been interested in how photography functions, and I try to undermine any documentary authority it may possess as a medium. I've always felt that a photograph functions more like a memory, in that it's a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and hence impressionable. By etching these drawings back into film and printing them in a traditional darkroom, I'm trying to point out how malleable it is as a medium, even before digital manipulation became so advanced and accessible. With these interventions emerges a highly coded and self-reflexive language. What also interests me is that the information omitted (faces, skin and emulsion) creates an image of its own, as do the censors to our cultural landscape.

Golden. 2009

The Wave

2010-01-15T05:10:00.000-08:00

I am putting this picture in after multiple requests from my brother, Danny, a regular reader of this blog. The reason I didn't put it in when he first sent it was because as astounding a meteorological phenomenon as it is, the picture didn't have that certain je ne sais quoi that makes me snap to. It's a little flat. But I don't want him to feel bad, and so I'll let the readers tell me whether it was worth posting.

FYI - this picture, taken in January 2009 at Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay, shows a rare roll cloud. These clouds form when a downdraft from an advancing storm front causes moist warm air to rise and then cool below its dew point. When this happens uniformly along an extended front, a roll cloud may sometimes form.

2010-01-10T08:40:00.001-08:00

Tsukasa Yokozawa

2010-01-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

Approach Lights #4. 2006

Tsukasa Yokozawa is an interesting story. As a Japanese postman, Yokozawa was much taken with the concept of distance, and as a novice photographer this became the idea he wanted to explore. Beginning in 1999, he began to photograph different Japanese cities by day and night, but from enormous distances with a very long lens. This night view of Hiroshima, for example, was taken from a mountain top several miles away.

Yokozawa not only gave up postal work for full time photography, but before long began to teach photography. Just over a year ago he was given a grant by the Japanese government to come to New York to photograph and make a name for himself (and Japanese photography). His New York series continues his interest in distance but adds to it what he sees as the particularly New York phenomenon of parallel living and lives. Below you will see some of his New York work as well as more of his earlier Japanese pictures. (The pictures of mid-town Manhattan were taken from Brooklyn!)

He is also the last photographer I am adding to the forthcoming Danziger Projects show based on work featured in this blog. The show, not surprisingly called “The Year in Pictures”, opens on January 21 and includes 15 young photographers plus a tribute to the four major photographers and two muses who passed away last year. I’ll parse out details for now, but save the date and if you’re anywhere near Chelsea, the festivities will run from 6 to 8 p.m. on the 21st.

From the series "Parallel Lives". 2009

From the series "Parallel Lives". 2005

On White #1. 2002

Spilt Milk #2. 2001

On the Margin. 1999

Sedgwick by Name

2010-01-10T07:31:00.001-08:00

One of the many reasons I'm addicted to the print version of The New York Times is the pleasure of being surprised by the terrific photographs that unexpectedly show up, often quite randomly. (And which you would never find online.) This photograph of Edie Sedgwick was taken by Factory resident documentarian Billy Name while Warhol was filming Sedgwick's "screen test". It ran in Saturday's paper to illustrate the sorry tale of how Name's negatives have gone missing. The story was written by culture writer Randy Kennedy who is building up quite a collection of oddball stories of lost archives, forgotten artists, and other curiosities. Just type his name into the Times' website search box.

Weekend Video

2010-01-05T19:11:00.000-08:00

With all the current fuss about photoshopping people in magazines, let's not forget that these special effects can often be used well. Case in point, this Evian commercial!

My Top Ten List

2010-01-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

With all the year and decade end reflection going on - most of which I’m finding pretty depressing - I ‘m going to make my annual year end top ten list about the things I’m looking forward to in the year ahead. I’ll start with shows I’m planning.

1. (Above.) Viviane Sassen. Opening in March, I’ll be doing the first U.S. show of work by Viviane Sassen. A Dutch photographer who grew up in Africa, Sassen has long been a highly regarded fashion photographer in Europe. However, starting several years ago, Sassen returned to Africa and began making collaborative portraits with people she met on her travels. Mysterious, colorful, and complex, these works are like visual haikus – compact, poetic and resonant.

2. Annie Leibovitz. (Opening in April.) Whatever has been going on in her life, Annie Leibovitz not only remains but reigns as the number one portrait photographer in the world. Over a career that has now spanned four decades, Leibovitz’s work has deepened along with her color palette and time has allowed us to see her as a major colorist and conceptualist and the key photographer of her era.

3. AIPAD. Having had a terrific fair at Art Basel Miami Beach, I’m looking forward to participating in this March’s AIPAD Photography Fair in New York. Every fair if done properly should be more than just an assemblage of greatest hits. A booth should make a statement. And while I have to admit I haven’t yet figured out what I’m going to be doing at AIPAD, the journey is half the fun.

Susan Derges. Gibbous Moon Cloud, 2009.

4. Brits. I’ve enjoyed following the work and renewing my ties with a number of British photographers over the last year – in particular Susan Derges, Christopher Bucklow, Richard Learoyd, and Tim Walker. I’ve also had the chance to meet two of the photography curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum – Martin Barnes and Susanna Brown – who are both bursting with ideas and as opposed to their U.S. counterparts enthusiastically looking at and showing good new work. There’s something particularly energetic and positive in the London air right now - and I’m looking forward to bringing as much of it as possible back to the States.

5. Jim Krantz. (Opening Fall ’10.) Krantz was one of the original Marlboro photographers whose work was appropriated by Richard Prince for his famous series of images of cowboys. This fall we’ll be turning the spotlight back on Krantz who you’ll see is a uniquely talented photographer. Unlike the Manny Garcia/Fairey situation, however, in this case both Krantz and I feel (to different degrees) that Prince’s work was more insightful and legitimate. So rather than picking a fight with Prince, we would rather accept his homage and take the opportunity to educate people about the source.

6. A time for healing. If you feel the 00s were one sick decade, I’d like to propose the 10s as a decade of healing. Starting with healing oneself – get in shape physically, fiscally, emotionally, professionally and let this work its way out exponentially. It’s clear that just about every system has failed - from the safety of our food, to travel, the financial system, and on a macro level - the ecology of the planet and hope for peace. So here’s to proposing that if everyone tries, we can begin to reverse things just a little!

7. Magazines. The relationship between photography and magazines has been one of mutual nurture and creativity for almost a hundred years. Now that we’re firmly in the world of new technology, let’s hope that either the new or old media companies can find a way to be profitable and continue to be the vital link between art and commerce.

8. Digital photography. Now that we’re firmly in the digital age, let’s stop grousing about the death of film, continue to improve the quality of digital cameras, and get serious about easy ways to archive our snaps so that we can replace drawers full of old snaps and outdated hard drives with reliable and accessible image retrieval.

9. Documentaries as entertainment. Two of the films I most enjoyed seeing in cinemas this year were “Every Little Step”, a documentary following the casting of the revival of “A Chorus Line”, and “The September Issue” the documentary that followed the making of VOGUE’s biggest issue ever. If movie companies and filmmakers continue to broaden the range of subjects covered in feature length documentaries, my hope is that we can enter a new golden age of intelligent and entertaining film going.

10. Blogs. Many of the year end summaries in newspapers talked about the growing influence of blogs and bloggers and their effect in the real world. Happy to hear this! And to do my part in taking it to the streets, opening on January 21, I will be putting on a full five week long show of selected photographers whose work I’ve featured on this blog. So stay tuned and Happy New Year to all!

Happy 100th Birthday to Milton Rogovin!

2009-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

Milton Rogovin by Alec Soth.

Sometimes life gets in the way of the art. This is one of the few plausible explanations of why Milton Rogovin, who turns 100 today, is not more widely know or celebrated than he is. I have been lucky enough to represent Milton’s work for the last few years and have put up a show that re-opens next week and runs through January 16. If you don’t get a chance to see it in person, I hope you’ll check out all the pictures on the Danziger Projects website. (Click here to view.) Hopefully you’ll see why he’s such a photographer’s photographer – a particular favorite of Alec Soth and Tanyth Berkeley amongst many others.

Rogovin’s pictures consist almost entirely of portraits of workers and the working class. His prints are nearly all a modest 8 x 10 inches – a size that suits his commitment to activism above art world recognition and his dedication to social issues, most notably the plight of the miners around the world; the decline of the American steel industry, and the struggle of the working people of his home town of Buffalo, New York.

This is not to say Rogovin is unknown. In 2007 he received ICP’s prestigious Cornell Capa Award and his work is in the collection of most major museums, but it would be fair to say he’s not a household name.

Deceptively straightforward, Rogovin’s photographs reveal a personal style that up-ends the usual balance between a great photographer and the subject. While most masters of photography wittingly dominate the picture, in Rogovin's work the subject commands equal strength. The photographic style is deadpan. The camera simply provides a stage for his subjects to present themselves as they see fit. Rogovin trusts them and their ability to present themselves as the unique individuals they are. Whether because of his respect and empathy for his sitters or the sincerity of his humanism and politics, this seemingly simple concept re-addresses the delicate balance of power between the observer and the observed.

Still healthy at 100 years old, Milton is celebrating his birthday with friends and family in Buffalo. So let’s salute an artist without artifice, a democrat of the darkroom.

Happy Birthday Milton!

Thomas Bangsted

2009-12-27T06:36:00.000-08:00

For the last five years, Danish photographer Thomas Bangsted has been creating these chaotic, strange, and memorable images. What I like about Bangsted’s work is that it seems so painterly in the way it evolves. Unlike most contemporary photographers Bangsted does not work in series – each work is quite unique, has its own size, and its own character. This does not mean I’m against seriality, but the non-seriality of Bangsted’s work is one of its distinctive characteristics.

I’m not sure if there’s anything particularly “Danish” about the work. Unlike Dutch or German photography which seems to be flourishing, there doesn’t seem to be much of a school of Denmark – but there is a distinctive grey light to Bangsted’s work and a moodiness that would not be out of place in a contemporary production of that other famous Dane, Prince Hamlet.

Dutch Humor

2009-12-26T15:46:00.001-08:00

A little Dutch humor. Photographer Jaap Scheeren, one of the contributors to "Dutch Seen" at the Museum of the City of New York, devised this pseudo scientific experiment in collaboration with fellow artist Hans Gremmen. It's a little difficult to follow exactly what it's all about, but whatever it is, I found it quite compelling! In Gremmen's words:

Is it possible to create a three dimensional colour separation? That was the question that triggered us (photographer Jaap Scheeren and me) to start this experiment. A bouquet of fake flowers was arranged as starting and striving point. The next step was to create four still lives of this bouquet: one in Cyan, one in Magenta, one in Yellow and one in Black. These still lives were photographed and merged into one image. In theory this should have been the same as the starting point, but in practice it became “Fake Flowers In Full Colour”.

I think the point is just to make an intriguing visual, playing with the conventions of 3-D, but what I like about the image(s) is that just when you think there's nothing new that could possibly be done with a particular subject, along comes something that's playful, intriguing, oddly beautiful, and original.

For those interested in exploring further, there's Scheeren's website, Gremmen's website, a lengthy Dutch text, and a place to order the book if you're still interested in digging further into this puzzle.

A Magnum Xmas

2009-12-24T04:59:00.000-08:00

First card in was from Magnum Photos with a selection of Xmas and winter themed photos. Strangely for Magnum no credits were attached. I believe the one above is by Fernando Scianno and know the one of the inflatable Christmas figures behind a fence is by Martin Parr. Other than that we can make this a guessing game. The last picture in my selection is of two brothers meeting at Christmastime in 1963 after being separated for years by the Berlin Wall. The moment was captured by Ian Berry.

2009-12-22T04:02:00.000-08:00

Season's Greetings

2009-12-22T03:47:00.000-08:00

With a gallery owner, an editor in chief, and a teenage daughter in the family, it's never easy to find a Christmas card everyone agrees on. This year proved particularly challenging as my daughter's braces came off a week ago requiring a new visual. However, thanks to the trusty (albeit focus challenged) iPhone and the Matt Umanov guitar store on Bleecker Street where my son was trying out banjos, we came up with this e-card that everyone was happy with.

The family picture Christmas card seems a particularly American tradition. I think Europeans find it a bit embarassing - either deludedly self-promoting or too personal, but I think it's nice to see how people's kids are growing up or how Mom and Dad look hiking in Yosemite!

Our best card photographically had to be a picture of the kids taken by The Sartorialist a couple of years ago but he's been so busy with his book tour there was no chance of that this year.

Clearly the photos above are no great shakes aesthetically, but as the readership of this blog is a photographic one, send in your Xmas card photos to jd@danzigerprojects.com and I'll post a selection.

Happy Holidays!

J&J (&J) by The Sartorialist. 2007.

O Pioneers!

2009-12-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

I guess I'll have to be content with being the first gallerist with a blog as the Fraenkel Gallery have beaten me to it on being the first gallery with an iPhone app. Congratulations to them.

On their app you can see current and future exhibitions, explore the work of gallery artists, order gallery publications, and find your way to the gallery via Google maps.

For the free download click here:.

Send in the Clones

2009-12-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

After my experience last week of nearly touching the moon (or at least a piece of moon rock) I had almost given up on the chance to touch a miracle - when a woman in the park told me about a pair of cloned puppies who occasionally showed up in Central Park in the spot where our dog, Jenny, sometimes runs off the leash. A couple of days later, the dogs appeared, and while they were not very co-operative in posing together, they were indeed quite miraculous. A nearly identical pair of female twins (clones can only be the same sex) they were normal in every way, although according to their dog walker (below) they acted somewhat older than their age of 6 months.

I did, of course, pet them - reflecting on the many things that have occurred during the last few years that have changed our life in both small and large ways. I don't mind the idea of cloning beloved pets. There are not many medical, technological, or scientific breakthroughs that I have a problem with. But I'm still thinking about what the change from analog to digital photography means to us. What's worse? The drawers stuffed full of old snapshots or the outdated computers with pictures that have not been transferred or stored properly? What's better? The carefully assembled family album, or the beautifully organized iPhoto library? What do you think?

Art Basel Miami

2009-12-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

There's no question about it, Art Basel Miami is bigger, better, zanier, and more unique than any other art fair I've participated in. It's also a real energy suck no matter how successful you are. However, I'm pleased to report we had a very successful fair, exceeding expectations. Sorry about the delay in the report. There has been a lot of follow-up to do.

Regarding the picture above, I kid you not. This is a finished booth at Art Basel Miami, as are the next four below. Click into them for a more detailed look and tell me what you think. This is contemporary art.

Given the above, it wasn't a huge surprise that our booth had a steady stream of traffic that made it, according to most reports, the most crowded booth at the fair.

Before the fair.

During the fair.

Nevertheless, I did steal away to look for things for the blog. But with the vast array of works and galleries, it was paradoxically difficult to choose a top ten, but here goes. I've mixed media as the fair had less photography this year than ever.

Jorma Puranen from Galerie Anhave in Helsinki painted a board black and then went outdoors to photograph an icy landscape reflected in the shiny paint.

I've always liked the work of Beatriz Milhazes and was taken with this cheery collage at John Berggruen.

One of the better examples of Thomas Ruff's enlarged j-pegs. It's one of those "why didn't I think of that" ideas - but he did it first.

A portrait from Rineke Dijkstra's surprising new series of Liverpudlian ladies.

And one of the latest from Thomas Struth's "Museum" series.

I'm a sucker for Cy Twombly. This collage is from 1971.

A long shot and detail of the Taschen special edition of Norman Mailer's "Moonfire". Designed by Marc Newsom, there are only 12 copies - each with a different sample of lunar rock. This one - the largest - sells for over $1 million. It's the closest I've been to the moon, but I was sorry not to get to hold the rock and be able to say I had touched the moon.

The appeal of this is that it's sometimes how you feel at the end of the day.

And this painting my Mel Bochner is how you sometimes feel in the middle of the day. I also like the Yves Klein blue.

And last but not least, this large scale and show-stopping charcoal by Robert Longo. I was not the only person to appreciate this.

Am I in Heaven .... or Am I in Miami?

2009-11-30T18:48:00.000-08:00

Pamela Anderson attending Art Basel Miami Beach last year.

When I was an undergrad at Yale, the graduate drama students (who included Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, and Sigourney Weaver) would blow off steam at the Yale Cabaret performing sketches and singing songs. One particularly funny song titled "Am I in Heaven .... or Am I in Miami?" always comes to mind as I drive in to Miami - where I'll be for the next week as I'm showing at Art Basel Miami Beach.

For anyone in the vicinity - I'm in Booth D41 and you'll need all the stamina you can muster plus a good map to find me as the fair is truly MASSIVE!

Anyway, I'll try to post from the fair, although I doubt I'll have much time to view too many of the peripherals. But if you don't hear much from me, that's what I'm up to this week.

The Inspirers

2009-11-25T04:38:00.001-08:00

DAN ROWEN (1953 - 2009)

The New York Times published obituaries yesterday of two people who were immeasurably inspirational to me. One was the architect Dan Rowen who was known for his cool modernist design and his work for Larry Gagosian, and the other was Charis Wilson, the wife and great muse of Edward Weston.

I knew Dan well. I inherited his work when I took over the lease on Perry Rubinstein’s Prince Street gallery in 1994 – a space that had been lovingly and thoughtfully designed by Dan in the early boom days of the art market. It had Brazilian cherry floors and the finest fixtures (the library, for example had a built in rolling ladder to easily access the top shelves), but most of all it had Dan’s brain and taste. The proportions were original but perfect, and the thought behind every design decision was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. There wasn’t a day I walked into the gallery when I didn’t think of and appreciate Dan’s work.

Over time we made a few minor adjustments that made the space more appropriate for photography than the large scale paintings Perry had shown, and Dan and I became friends. From then on, there wasn’t a design decision I made without consulting him. No detail was too small for him to care about – no problem too minor for him not to take pleasure in the joy of finding a solution. My business was certainly small potatoes to Dan with clients like Martha Stewart and Michael Kors, but such was his brain and temperament that he took great pleasure in even the smallest act of creation.

When he walked into a space that needed his touch, a smile always played on his lips. There was a spring in his step. It was an opportunity – no matter how small or large – to do what he did best.

The last thing we did together was to solve the problem of the back room on my latest gallery space on West 24th Street. This was the smallest of small jobs – to most people of Dan’s stature it would have been well beneath them – but as a friend Dan was happy to help, and he took it on just before he was diagnosed with cancer. His solution to a messy space littered with wall alarms, pipes, and other detritus was a seemingly simple but actually quite complex wall that moved from one side of the room into open space and in one swoop encompassed a recessed bookshelf, enlarged my storage space, hid everything ugly, and created a desk area where I now and sit and work. Of all the jobs Dan took on, I’m sure it must rank as the most insignificant – but he treated it as if it was a commission to design a new museum - and from the moment it was completed, it stood out for me as a testament to everything that was good and great about creativity, individuality, problem-solving, and friendship.

CHARIS WILSON (1914 - 2009)

I never met Charis Wilson, but like most male photo buffs of my age, she was my pin-up and as recently as last month when I had the pleasure and honor of exhibiting her husband Edward Weston’s work – I had plenty of opportunities to pin her up! Of the 40 Weston pictures on display, about half were of Charis.

She was everything you could dream of as a muse and companion and she had quite a life. She was the all-American dream girl - beautiful, natural, smart, and unselfconscious.

If there’s something like a heaven, or at least a great processing center in the sky, I would hope that Dan and Charis would meet. And while they each had great loves in their lives, I would hope they would enjoy each other’s company as friends – and who knows, maybe one day the east coast intellectual and the west coast beauty would figure out this one point of contact they shared!

2009-11-23T04:43:00.001-08:00

A Man and A Woman

2009-11-23T04:02:00.000-08:00

One recent comment asked how I decide what to buy at a fair like Paris Photo. The easy answer and the one that I usually give new collectors is to wait until you see a piece that you feel you can’t live without. That if you walked away from it and someone else got it, it would break your heart. (Trust me - my heart has been broken this way many times.) Of course economics plays a part in this too. You can only get what you can afford.

But thinking about the above in the context of my own collecting and the recent fair and my trip to London and Paris, I realized there’s more to it and that. The other piece of advice I give collectors is equally if not more important. That is to spend as much time as possible looking and not buying. Going to galleries, museums, and auctions; reading reviews; immersing yourself as much as possible because every intelligent decision is a combination of knowledge, reflection, and gut reaction.

The two pieces I bought this week both built on past knowledge. The first piece (pictured above and below) was a cameraless photograph by the British photographer/artist Christopher Bucklow. It’s made by a complicated process where a person’s shadow is silhouetted on foil and then transferred to a box where the figure is laboriously recreated by making thousands of pricks of light over a sheet of photographic paper. The earlier the hole is made, the brighter the spot so Bucklow is fully in control of the glow that emanates from these spectral figures. I’ve been a big fan of Bucklow’s action/process photograms since he first started making them and also enjoy keeping up with the vitality and energy of contemporary British photography. So this was the background to the purchase.

On this trip to London, there was a Harper’s Bazaar in my hotel room which had a feature on Claudia Schiffer where they had asked various artists to photograph her – one of whom was Christopher Bucklow! I also knew from my correspondence with Chris that he had a show opening in London the week after my trip that I was sadly going to miss.

So here’s the kicker. As usually happens at the end of a foreign trip, I was trying to get home early and because of the incompetence of a particular Virgin Airways desk person I missed getting on the morning flight to New York and found myself at Heathrow Airport on Friday with three and a half hours to kill before the 4:00 p.m. to Newark. So I hightailed it back into London with the hope of getting a sneak peek at Chris’s new work at Riflemaker Gallery before they installed it. I called from the train and Robin Mann, the gallery director, was friendly and co-operative which is how I found myself face to face with a choice of one of three photogram silhouettes of Claudia Schiffer. I picked the orange-y vertical because I liked the way the figure filled the frame and the outline of her breast, although the blue horizontal was a close call.

So that’s how I happened to buy picture #1!

Picture #2

Picture #2 was this costumed self-portrait by the young London based Korean photographer Chan-Hyo Bae. It was a picture I had seen previously on the website of Purdy-Hicks, the London gallery representing my friends Susan Derges and Tessa Traeger. I had been struck by it on the web – I liked its fidelity to the conventions of Elizabethan portraiture combined with its play on gender and medium – but I hadn’t seen it in person. P-H had a print on the wall at Paris Photo that lived up to my expectations and voila! Purchase #2.

Paris Photo

2009-11-19T14:21:00.000-08:00

Jowhara AlSaud's "Airmail" at Aperture.

Now celebrating its 13th year, the Paris Photo art fair presents a vast range of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary photography by 102 exhibitors from 23 countries. It's a bit overwhelming - with this much good photography on display enthusiasm can quickly lead to exhaustion. But it's fascinating and inspiring, and most of the work is of a surprisingly high standard.

After four days of travel, meetings, and looking at pictures, I decided to distill the fair to my top ten favorites and so in no particular order, here they are.

A vintage Seydou Keita at the Agnes B gallery.

A new Susan Derges photogram at Purdey Hicks.

A stunning Gustave Le Grey at Baudoin Lebon.

Viviane Sassen - you will be seeing more of her work here shortly.

Catherine Robbe-Grillet photographing one of Yves Klein's models preparing for one of his contact paintings.

What looked at first like a Loretta Lux was in fact the work of a young Chinese photographer, Yu Xiao, who digitally creates different child versions of herself as a commentary on China's one child rule and the obsessive focus on childhood this has created.

Koos Breujkel and the rather touchingly titled "Lucien Freud at the Grave of his Dog". Van Zoetendaal Gallery.

A late Irving Penn fashion shot of Nicole Kidman at Hamilton's.

A stunning Adam Fuss photogram of water drops. (Better to click in to this one.)

London & Paris

2009-11-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know - it's a tough life. I am currently in Paris visiting the Paris Photo art fair, meeting with photographers, curators, etc. and was just doing the same in London.

Lots of images to upload when I have a minute, but having left Christies' after-exhibition party at 1 in the morning and with two important meetings early tomorrow, you'll hopefully excuse me.

No Fear of Flying

2009-11-16T16:05:00.000-08:00

Daniel Gordon is having his moment. A 2005 Yale MFA grad, Gordon’s photographed sculptural collages (see first image below) are one of six groups of work featured in MoMA’s current “New Photography” show which addresses the concept of image collection and creation in the studio or darkroom. I have to say I’m not crazy about these pictures. (They’re a little too violent for me.) But I managed to catch the last day of Gordon’s exhibition at Leo Koenig – a sampling of a much earlier project of “flying” pictures which I really liked a lot.

A collection of self-portraits taken starting ten years ago in the Hudson Valley and the Bay Area, the extremely athletic artist recorded himself flying — if only for 1/125th of a second at a time. The images are both landscapes and performance documents, humorous and surreal, playing with the notion of how photography can deceive and enchant.

What was particularly refreshing was to see something that was new and gutsy both conceptually and physically. The laws of physics mean that he does after all have to crash. But how nice to see something vibrant and life-affirming and unexpected.

Weekend Video

2009-11-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

I'd like to know how many Republican (or indeed other Democratic) Senators can do this! Al Franken, the comedian turned Senator draws a map of all 50 states from memory during an appearance at the Minnesota State Fair this fall. Lambasted by the right for being a liberal lightweight, this demonstration of cartographical knowledge, dexterity, and drawing skill certainly impresses me! (Forgive the annoying music on this clip or turn it down!)

Ice Art

2009-11-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

AP Photo/Australian Antarctic Division, Murray Potter

Looking more like a work of earth art than a natural phenomenon, this large iceberg was recently spotted about halfway between Antarctica and Australia, a rare sight in waters so far north.

Australian Antarctic Division researchers working on Macquarie Island, about 930 miles southeast of Tasmania, first saw the iceberg last Thursday about 5 miles (8 kilometers) off the northwest coast of the island. The iceberg, about 160 feet high and 1,640 feet long, is probably part of one of several larger icebergs that broke off Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf between 2000 and 2002.

Scientists believe the iceberg will break up and melt rapidly as it continues its journey north. So get moving if you're interested in this particular photo-op!

From The New York Times

2009-11-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

It's always an honor to have a show mentioned in The New York Times, and even more of an honor to be the subject of The New York Times Magazine picture editor Kathy Ryan's first ever blog post! Click here to read her entry and see the pictures she was so enthused by.

Thinking Positively

2009-11-06T16:54:00.000-08:00

I was walking along 23rd Street when my eye was caught by a poster of what was clearly a Shepard Fairey work. Before you let out a groan, let me quickly reiterate that I've always been a fan of Shepard's art. That was what drew me in to researching his sources in the first place. But let bygones be bygones. I love this piece and the way Shepard creates a ground of collaged old newspapers to add depth and resonance to the simplicity of his graphics. (Click on the picture above to see it in more detail.)

The work is currently on display at Deitch Projects in Soho - part of Stage 09 - a benefit exhibition with all the proceeds going to Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong Foundation. For a quick online view of the full exhibition click here.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, as you can see from the detail below, Shepard is now crediting his photographic sources. In this case, Los Angeles wedding photographer Dina Douglass of Andrena Photography. This link is obviously to a different picture than the one Shepard used, but it's all good positive stuff!

A Rich Harvest

2009-11-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

A lot of good images that were new to me popped up over the last week. Above - "South Downs Way, West Sussex, 8th October 2007." By Simon Roberts from his new book "We English".

Then "2nd Class Girls, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2007" by Rachel Papo.

Charles Trainor, a photographer from the Miami Herald came to photograph me for a story they're doing on dealers getting ready for Art Basel Miami Beach. Before he left, he mentioned that his father had also been a photographer. As you can see from the picture above of Elvis in 1956 and The Beatles and Ali in 1964 - I would call that understatement!

Finally, last week I was asked at the very last moment by my friend Jean-Jacques Naudet to drop by a reception at the Oleg Cassini mansion off 5th Avenue. I didn't know what to expect but went out of courtesy to J-J, only to meet the most elegant Paris Match photographer - Benno Graziani - and revel in his pictures of the jet set. That's his photograph of Jackie and the paparazzi, Port d'Amalfi 1962 - below.

And Gianni Agnelli and his yacht-guest Heidi von Salvisberg, Beaulieu 1967 - above. Talk about the swell life!

Weekday Video

2009-10-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

For anyone who missed it, here are Jay Z & Alicia Keys performing "Empire State Of Mind" before last night's Game 2 in the World Series at Yankee Stadium.

Nutty!

2009-10-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

I really don't know how I missed this one. But seeing how this is turning out to be the week of The Year in Pictures "Believe It Or Not" edition, here is a photograph that from all accounts I've read is not a fake.

Melissa and Jackson Brandt had set the auto-timer on their camera while posing by Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park in Canada. Just as the shutter was about to click, the squirrel popped up in the foreground, becoming yet another unwitting star of the internet.

According to Melissa: "We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intrigued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot." The picture was submitted to the website of National Geographic magazine and from there began to make its way round the world.

The couple appeared on The Today Show where Matt Lauer grilled them over the picture's authenticity, but after further investigation he apologized and declared he was satisfied that the picture was real and un-doctored.

Weekend Video

2009-10-27T04:36:00.000-07:00

Assuming this is not made using any special effects, this is one of the most amazing videos I have seen. (I suggest you click the button to the right of the HQ button at the bottom of the picture to view this full screen.)

Robert Maxwell

2009-10-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

Just over five years ago, the photographer Robert Maxwell began doing a series of portraits for The New York Times Magazine called “The Originals”. The idea was to highlight creative individualists who all had a certain style and the series jumped out of the gate at a high level and has been cruising along up there ever since. Maxwell’s pictures don’t try to knock you over the head with gimmicks or surprises. He’s more of a traditionalist, but lately his classicism has reached a new depth. He’s still absorbed with surface but it’s now balanced with an equal interest in what’s beneath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photographer looking so deeply into people’s eyes both literally and figuratively.

This past weekend’s portfolio on the stars of the film “Precious” is a great example. But in particular I would draw your attention to the two pictures of the movie’s star, Gabourey Sidibe – one on the cover and one inside. What stands out for me is the amazing dignity and presence with which he has photographed someone who is so overweight. I’m not an apologist for obesity, but at a time where issues of weight, health, and body image, are being hotly debated – these pictures present an interesting and artful talking point.

Picture of the Week

2009-10-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

To end the week on a more positive note, this photograph by Joseph Holmes was recently released on the website 20 x 200. For those who don't know about it, 20 x 200 is the brainchild of gallerist Jen Bekman and offers prints by a range of upcoming photographers starting at $20 for editions of 200 8 x 10s and going up to $2,000 for much smaller editions of large prints.

I wrote about Joseph Holmes when he photographed my desk for his series on work spaces and he's a frequent and therefore much appreciated commenter on this blog - so I was doubly pleased when I saw this charming picture. What I like about it is the naturalness of the photograph combined with the originality of the image. It's an everyday scene made fresh and resonant by a photographer on top of his game. (To appreciate it more fully do click on it to get the larger size.)