Fair Weather

Thursday started off with a visit to Photo Miami.

First pictures to make an impression were by the young California photographer Alex Trager and her faux voyeuristic images (above and below).




Miklos Gaal's pictures, while hard to see here, employ a highly selective focus that makes every scene seem unreal and have looked interesting for two years running now.


Two great pieces by Robert Polidori.

Needless to say there was lots of Asian photography this year, much of it heavily reliant on photoshop and of mixed success. This is one of the better images by Cui Xiuwen.


Wout Berger creates original still lives in nature.

John Divola's cars were pretty and mysterious.

Then it was off to AIPAD Miami.

This unusual August Sander portrait of a child was one of my favorites of the whole day.


Luis Gonzalez Palma showed both old work and this new color piece (above).

I like Michael Wolf's portraits of Chinese copy painters.

Bob Dylan was much in evidence with different pictures at many booths. This 1966 picture by Daniel Kramer.

An untitled John Divola.


A David Hockney polaroid at Keith DeLellis with a great accompanying card to Heny Geldzahler postmarked 1976. (It says "Swimming pools are such marvelous subjects don't you think?")

Shinuchi Maruyam (at Bruce Silverstein) gets interesting results manipulating liquids in his own studio.

This by the great colorist Martin Parr.

How to match the artist with the work. (Robert Glenn Ketchum.)

A remembrance of times past.


At NADA, Matthew Spiegelman had an interesting selection of pictures.



Walead Beshty made photograms by folding the paper and exposing different sides to different light.


Matt Ducklo's strange images are of actual "Touch Tours", organized for the visually impaired by different museums.


Kate was in the house. The above installation piece by Nico Vascellari is titled "I Kate You" and consisted of neatly organized sheafs of K.M. clippings in plastic folders inside frames.

An My-Le's new series records the American navy's protection of Gulf oil platforms.




Melanie Schiff - that's her in the bottom picture - was a standout and has apparently already been tapped for the next Whitney biennial.



The bargains of the fair were Mark Borthwick polaroids selling for $60 each to benefit the Journal.


Meanwhile at Art Miami, the Starns were showing large new work.

An unusually small and delicate (given the subject matter) Thomas Ruff.

Ruud Van Empel's pictures still look fresh.

Meanwhile many photographers are working with the same selective focus as Miklos Gaal. Here a print of a Japanese race track by Naoki Honjo.

A particularly good Massimo Vitale.


Lastly, lenticular photography - usually a gimmick - finds an appropriate subject and usage in this commentary on the vanishing presence of native americans. As you walk past the image, Edward Curtis's subjects appear and disappear before your eyes.

So much to see...

As you enter the 2007 Miami Basel Art Fair, you are surrounded by photographs. To your left, a huge new Gursky titled "Cocoon"...

... next to a Thomas Ruff jpeg picture.

To your right a series of uninspiring Idris Khan pictures. (Even though his previous work is what they all seem to be copying this year.)

And a Darren Almond.

The point is that photography is EVERYWHERE. But at Miami Basel it's photography through the prism of contemporary and modern blue chip art galleries - which means big prints, big prices, and a dollop of conceptual thought. It's a conundrum that those who hew to a more straightforward tradition find frustrating, but nobody has to buy it.

There wasn't much new and exciting at Miami Basel in the way of photographs, but here are the pictures that grabbed my attention for one reason or another.



Flavia Darrin did a Loretta Lux by way of John Currin.

Ernesto Ballasteros did Idris Khan. (Sorry about the bad reflection.)

Ryan McGinley continued to look good.

This was an interesting constructed piece by Adrian Paci about immigrants going nowhere.

Sam Taylor-Wood showed her latest video piece. A two minute loop on Leda and the Swan.

...another Darren Almond.

A new Wolfgang Tilmans window-sill piece.

A large untitled new Florian Maier -Aichen.

This was an amusing piece by Fabian Marti.

Shirana Shahbazi had some striking color still lifes.

Yet another Darren Almond. He got the ubiquitous prize.

Waiting for a Struth buyer.

A Vera Lutter of Times Square.

Damien Hirst has now officially become a photographer - or perhaps just signed his name to these pictures of butterflies and skulls.

A lovely grid of Vera Lutter's Venice pictures.

I noticed Malcolm Daniel of the Met eyeing this Wolfgang Tilmans.

A good large Cindy Sherman "Untitled Film Still" from 1979.



A group of my favorite William Eggleston 4x5 bar-room portraits at Cheim and Read.

A Struth "Museum" picture.

A nice group of Diane Arbus photographs at Fraenkel.



Many Richard Prince photographs, but most of them looking a bit yellowed.

Teaching the folks at In Fashion '07 a lesson, this lovely grouping at Howard Greenberg. An Irving Penn on top and a Horst below.

Also at Greenberg, another great pairing - Arnold Newman contact sheets and an Irving penn of Frederick Kiesler and Willem De Kooning...

...followed by Steichen's 1924 portrait of Joan Crawford.



Lastly, at Art Supernova - a young offshoot of Miami Basel - a group of adult Pippi Longstocking-ish constructed portraits titled "I Love My Life" by the Israeli photographer Rona Yefman

That's it for now. More on Photo Miami, AIPAD Miami, NADA, and Art Miami tomorrow.

Morning in Miami (2)

For the astute viewer, you will see that this year I am on the north side of Loews Hotel. Otherwise not much has changed in Miami although it's a little less cloudy!

I arrived in Miami last night in time to get to the launch party of the New York Times Magazine's T section website. I checked into the site this past Sunday and found it O.K. - a bit fussy for my taste - however, I am a HUGE fan of the magazine. Whenever the T section appears I am astounded that something of that rarified a sensibility ever comes with The New York Times, but there it is. Prescient articles, inventive photography, a great regular series in Robert Maxwell's "Originals" portraits, a highly original revolving selection of artists and designers doing the guest T graphic that opens the well. I even find the contributors bios interesting as they seem a cut above the usual magazine contributors in terms of what they're working on and their achievements. I usually find magazines that try to be cool annoying, but T's blend of creativity, hipness, and substance is the real thing. Well maybe it's a blend of creativity, hipness, and the superficial, but it's clearly based on the notion that there's profundity in surface and style. (A note- the website seems to have problems loading today, but try to access it through nytimes.com.)


From the T party, there was just time to drop in on In Fashion '07 - the most awful collection of fashion photographs. "200 fashion photographs by 20 photographers!" banners blare all along Collins Avenue, but what a waste of time. What's so dispiriting about bad fashion photography is all the effort that goes into it with all the models, stylists, hair and makeup artists, assistants etc.. At least if bad photographers take bad street photographs or landscapes they're only wasting their own time. (I highly recommend bad photographers to take self-portraits.) Anyway, so as not to be completely negative, here are two images from the show that somewhat broke through the clutter. Taken by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who clearly knows a good prop when he sees one, here are his pictures of Irina and Madonna. If you go to his gallery website you'll see a whole series on guitars, which the organizers of In Fashion 07 were not smart enough to make his display.


More to come.

Morning in Miami

Busman's Holiday–noun. A vacation or day off from work spent in an activity closely resembling one's work, as a bus driver taking a long drive.

I'm off to Miami to visit the various art fairs and I'll report on any interesting work, trends, events, etc.. I'll try not to show too many pictures I've taken as I'm truly just a snapper, but I rather like this photograph taken last year from my hotel room at Loew's.

Snap Happy

I'm not a camera person, but two photographers I work with - Andy Freeberg and Scott Schuman (better known as The Sartorialist) happen, coincidentally, to both use the Canon 5d. So I can vouch for this camera wholeheartedly having seen the results.

It sells for about $2,000 - which is the entry level price for a digital camera where the lens and the chip line up so you get exactly what you see. Freeberg has enlarged his pictures to 50" x 60" with no appreciable loss of quality. They look like pictures taken with a view camera. The Sartorialist's pictures not only reveal every hair on the heads of his subjects but employ an extremely shallow depth of field (where only one area of the picture is in focus) something that has until recently evaded digital photography.


Freeberg's shots of Chelsea gallery front desks (above) were the talk of the season with their deadpan revelation of the manners and convention of the art world. Meanwhile, The Sartorialist (below) who has already taken the blogosphere by storm, is set to take on the photography world when he shows his work at Danziger Projects this coming January. (Unavoidable plug - sorry.) Given the difference in their work and point of view, it is amazing to think Freeberg and Schuman use the same camera, but it once again proves how photography is not about equipment, but about ideas and having an original and worthwhile point of view.