Now It Can Be Told

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

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

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.

On the Road Again

As you can probably see from this picture taken out of my hotel window, I'm in Paris - to participate in a symposium at the Pernod Ricard Foundation. Then on to London to meet with some museum and gallery people.

I've just arrived but will share whatever good things I find.

Shot

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

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 Nevares without any comment.

Photograph by Rita Bernstein

AIPAD 2011

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 combined with the slashing line of the gun and bayonet, 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

Lunching at The Standard Hotel today, I noticed that every single person at the tables around us was on their phone. 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.

When Terry Met Robert

The legendary art director Alexey 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 sometimes shock are in there too. The bad boys of photography get this and today no-one gets it better than Terry Richardson.

I was surfing the web looking at Terry Richardson pictures when I came across these images that the photographer shot for Reebok last year. (They're pretty tame compared to a lot of his work, I know.) The brief was to revitalize the brand's "Classics Collection" with a campaign that would run in VICE Magazine but I think he did an amazing job showing what can come out of a creative and original vision. Bear in mind that 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.

A further example of Richardson's work can now be seen around New York on billboards of his 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 Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait. It's an apt mash-up. And I'm pretty sure Robert would have approved of it all - Richardson, Lady Gaga (especially after she reportedly dissolved a deal with Target over their support of anti-gay candidates), and the street art!

The Galliano Affair

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 assume I'm not Jewish and are therefore more open (and conspiratorial) about their prejudice. I’ve stopped counting the number of times people have inadvertently confided 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 smart 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 are part of what makes us an individual. Our dislikes define us as much as our likes.

The line to draw 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. It is not.

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.