Game Changer

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

What Artists Give Us

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

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!)

An occupational hazard of my profession is that given the number of prints we show, store, etc., - things go missing (although they all eventually show up). 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 also 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"!

A Matter of Time

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 (and myriad other themes, sub-themes, etc.). 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.

Dean Fidelman

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:

A View from Above

We're all a little sick of the snow right now, yes? But to see exactly what a phenomenon the storms over the United States have been, this amazing satellite view courtesy NASA. It should certainly please Andreas Gursky! Click here if this reference needs further explanation.

Kenneth O'Halloran

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 is how in the hands of someone with a distinctive vision, it still has some kick. But I'd love to see O'Halloran come up with more pictures like the top one.

Milton Rogovin 1909 - 2011

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."

They seem to me as fitting a tribute today as ever.

Morning Light

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.

Weekend Video

Just saw Sofia Coppola's new movie "Somewhere". I loved it but I can fully understand how some people would find it aggravating. First, while the film is about connection (or the lack of), it's cast in a louche world of fame, privilege and indolence. Secondly, Coppola has a still photographic style that any one addicted action and fast cuts would have trouble sitting through. Coppola sets up the frame (beautifully), allows a scene to leisurely unfold, and then is on to the next wry vignette. What no-one could quibble with is Coppola's taste in music and how she uses it. All her movies have original song choices and I came out of this film stuck on the song "I'll Try Anything Once" by Julian Casablancas of The Strokes which is used as a something of a refrain throughout the film.

So here's the song (above) and the trailer (below). For readers of this blog (i.e. intelligent, visual, open-minded people) the film is a good bet!

Boulevard

When I spoke about surprises in my recent Top Ten, I didn’t expect to be surprised so quickly and as dramatically as I was when I opened up an envelope from the Fraenkel Gallery to find a card with the image above on the cover announcing Katy Grannan’s new show (opening on Saturday in San Francisco). Do click on the image to see it in a larger size.

I’ve written admiringly about Katy Grannan before, but her new series, BOULEVARD, takes her work to a whole new level. As Fraenkel’s website describes the work, these pictures were made over the past three years in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Shooting against white stucco walls in strong midday light, the city streets became Grannan’s outdoor studio. The characters who populate Grannan’s Boulevards are a parade of down and outers and eccentrics – the lady above being (I think) an exception. But every picture is shot with mesmerizing intensity and shocking jolts of color.

What was most surprising to me, though, was that I normally HATE this type of photography. The passion for displaying photographs of low-lives and losers is so far from my aesthetic I can never understand how people could ever want to live with these kind of pictures. But to me Grannan’s photographs are about something else. First, they seem to belong more to the school of street observation in the tradition of Evans and Callahan and De Corcia than to the freak school of Arbus (who admittedly was a genius) and more recently Robert Bergman. Note how in Grannan’s pictures no-one is making direct eye contact with the camera. The subjects are aware they are being photographed, but they are more rooted in their own world and their own reality than the photographer's. Secondly, the color and light in these pictures is just extraordinary. It must have taken some technical expertise to get it just right. Lastly, there is a humanism in these pictures that makes them extraordinarily complex. Everyone seems to contain a story. Take the woman pictured above. Is she rich? Is she poor? Is she beautiful or ugly? Is she proud of her color co-ordination, her lipstick, her hair? Is her expression the result of a life well-lived or one of regrets? Whatever the answers, the pictures are masterpieces.

(FYI – there’s a wonderful large format catalog available for $45. Only 2000 were printed and they’ll probably sell out fast so hurry!)

A Cautionary Tweet

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

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 Jim 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". If Vlckova lives up to her early promise, she will clearly be a name to be reckoned with.

A Winter's Tale

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

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 kindly gave 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.