Photo L.A. kicks off its 19th edition this week, beginning Thursday night with an opening night reception from 6 to 9 pm, which will benefit the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA and will be hosted by noted photographer David LaChapelle and actor/photographer Chris Lowell. Reception tickets are $75 and can be purchased directly from LACMA at http://www.lacma.org/art/photola.aspx , or by email at: photola@lacma.org . Tickets can also be purchased at the door.

Photo L.A. will be open to the general public on Friday, January 15th, and Saturday, January 16th, from 11 am to 7 pm, and Sunday, January 17th, from 11 to 6 pm. Tickets are $20 for a one-day pass, $30 for a three-day pass and $10 for lectures. All exhibition, lecture and opening night benefit reception tickets are available for purchase in advance or at the door. For additional information on Photo L.A. 2010, including the opening benefit reception and advance ticket sales, visit http://www.photola.com .

More major dealers have joined the show, including Los Angeles heavyweights, Rose Gallery and Fahey-Klein Gallery. My own company, Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, will be exhibiting in booth B-2, which is to the right of the entrance way facing towards you. Our booth should be entirely gray, so you should be able to spot us.

Following on to our story in the last newsletter, Photo L.A. has added details on the show program, which follows:


SATURDAY, JANUARY 16

9:30 am, "Collecting Seminar with Gordon Baldwin"
A recipient of the Rome Prize for his architectural drawings and an independent curator, Gordon Baldwin will offer a guided tour of the exhibition. Attendees will have the benefit of Baldwin's deep experience built over the course of his twenty-year career at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles where he curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions, including "Fame and Photography," "Nadar/Warhol," "The Man in the Street: Eugène Atget in Paris", as well as exhibitions of the work of Gustave Le Grey and Roger Fenton. Baldwin is the author of "Looking at Photographs: A Guide to Technical Terms" (At the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium)

12 pm, "Photographer Michael Light presents Bingham Mine/Garfield Stack"
Michael Light will present an aerial examination of Bingham Canyon Mine, the world's largest man-made excavation which lies 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City and which has produced more copper than any mine in history. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Michael Light has photographed areas of settled and unsettled American land for more than 15 years, pursuing themes of mapping, human impact and the nature of time. (Curated by LACMA at the Marquee Ballroom, Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)

1 pm, "Photography Books That Benefit: A Thousand Words: Photos From the Field"
Edward Robinson, associate curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA, will lead a panel discussion featuring author and editor Stacy Twilley, photojournalists Colin Finlay and Sara Terry, and International Medical Corps' Margaret Aguirre. Occasioned by International Medical Corps' landmark publication of "A Thousand Words", a chronicle of its lifesaving humanitarian response to conflict, natural disaster, and genocide worldwide, their conversation will focus on photography's ability to inform and inspire change. (Curated by LACMA at the Marquee Ballroom, Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)

3 pm, "David LaChapelle: Reflections on Photography"
Photographer David LaChapelle will join Degen Pener, editor-in-chief of Angeleno magazine, for a conversation about LaChapelle's journey through the artistic intersection of popular culture, celebrity and American society. The author of several acclaimed publications, LaChapelle is also the subject of upcoming solo exhibitions at major museums in Taipei and Beijing. (Curated by LACMA at the Marquee Ballroom, Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)

9 pm-Midnight, "Photographer's Fling"
Meet, mingle, and celebrate with the LA fine art photography community to the tunes of Fat Albert Einstein and The Kone from the Brokefolk Crew. Dress in black and/or white. (Sponsored by Center at the Doubletree Guest Suites, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)


SUNDAY, JANUARY 17

9:30 am, "Collecting Seminar with Idurre Alonso"
Spanish art historian and Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) curator Idurre Alonso will lead a guided tour of the exhibition. Her current area of research is on Latin American photography of the 1990s, and her most recent project, Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography (1990-2005), scheduled to open in February 2010 at MOLAA, will be previewed at the fair. (At the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium)

11 am, "Lynn Saville's Night/Shift Lecture"
Internationally exhibited photographer Lynn Saville, whose series of black and white photographs of urban and rural post-twilight photographs, Acquainted with the Night, was published by Rizzoli in 1997, will discuss photographs from her latest work, Night/Shift, a collection of color photographs published by Random House/Monacelli. (At the Doubletree Guest Suites, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)

1 pm, "Idurre Alonso Lecture"
Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) curator Idurre Alonso will discuss the genesis of her upcoming exhibition (to be previewed at the fair), "Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography (1990-2005)," scheduled to open in February 2010. (At the Doubletree Guest Suites, 1707 Fourth St., Santa Monica)


Tickets to the collecting seminars are available online or at the door for $80. Tickets to the LACMA-curated lectures will be free to photo l.a. ticket-holders, and available one hour in advance at the Photo L.A. box office, however attendance will be limited. Tickets to the Lynn Saville and Idurre Alonso lectures are $10. Admission to the Photographer's Fling will be $15 at the door with a cash bar. For additional information on Photo L.A. 2010, including the opening benefit reception and advance ticket sales, visit http://www.photola.com .

 

Be-hold will conduct a catalog/internet auction of photographs on January 28th. From January 22 through January 28th there will be an exhibition of the material, plus other photography events, at the historic Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Ave., in New York City. The sale will feature an extraordinary selection of vintage press and documentary photographs.

In connection with the auction exhibit, there will also be an exhibition of specially selected and printed photographs by major celebrity and political portrait photographers. These will be for direct sale, and are not part of the auction. The photographers include:
--Danny Clinch, who is a major photographer on the pop music scene and whose work has covered artists such as Radiohead, U2, Springsteen and Mettalica. His photographs have appeared in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and the New Yorker.
--Brian Hamill, who is a distinguished photojournalist of the Rock and Roll scene, who has been a unit photographer on over 75 movies including "Raging Bull" and 26 Woody Allen films.
--Gregory Heisler, who has produced over 70 Time covers. His photographic essays have appeared in Life, Time, Esquire and other publications.
--David Hume Kennerly, who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for photographs of the Vietnam War. He has been on the masthead of Time and Life, and was contributing editor at Newsweek.
--Ken Regan, who has been a major sports photographer, has had a close professional association with the Kennedy family, and--for more than 30 years--has been Bob Dylan's official photographer.
--Mark Sennet, who has created over 120 covers for People and over 100 for Time-Life.

Aside from this exhibition and sale, there will be individual presentations by some of these photographers. Brian Wallis, chief curator at the International Center of Photography, will give a talk on recently discovered photographs by Robert Capa. Dr. Stanley Burns, whose numerous publications include recent books on press photographs of crime, and on "altered" photographs, will also give a presentation.

Another exhibition will be of photographs associated with the Floating Foundation of Photography. This was a major gallery and studio on a purple barge on the Hudson River during the 1970's, supported by photographers such as Lisette Model and W. Eugene Smith. The exhibit will include a number of visionary painted collage photographs by Maggie Sherwood, the colorful force behind the Foundation. These works have been rarely seen or offered for sale, but one is featured in the Be-hold auction.

Specific times and further information on all of these programs and the auction can be found at: http://www.be-hold.com .

The documentary portion of the Be-hold auction includes a colorful group of 1930's crime and gangster photographs. There is an archive of 38 original photographs of the Hindenberg disaster, including unfamiliar images. A group of lots present rare images related to the 1927 Mississippi flood. The photographs relate to the labor camps in which black field workers were kept, in order to work on the levees, and they include an eight-part panorama.

Significant material from the Spanish Civil War and WWII is presented, including vintage images by Robert Capa and Edward Steichen, as well as Soviet photographs from the Russian Front. Many lots deal with the Kennedy's, including a photograph of the assassination, a possibly unique collection of 28 color photographs of the Kennedy funeral, and even nude paparazzi photographs of Jackie. A fascinating group of photographs deals with Elvis Presley's army service. There are many vivid photographs from the Vietnam War.

Much material concerns Civil Rights activities, including Martin Luther King's Selma march, and his funeral. Many lots include photographs of the racial urban unrest in major U.S. cities, including Watts, Detroit and Newark. Other sides of the urban scene include photographs of gangs in the Bronx and of Hell's Angels.

The auction does not neglect other aspects of the Be-hold's traditional offerings. Twenty-one lots of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes include a lovely portrait by Southworth and Hawes, a fine half-plate architectural study of a house and several occupational portraits. There is a desirable carte-de-visite of Custer as Major General in 1865. There is a large framed albumen print of the Boston Fire, and a Yosemite scene by Watkins. There are also two large albumen prints by Julia Margeret Cameron of her sons, including a lovely one of the son who became a photographer.

There is a platinum print scene by Rudolf Eickemeyer and an unusual charming 1906 book issued by a Rochester, NY bank with gravure prints of photographs by Clarence White. There are five platinum print portraits of Lewis Mumford by Doris Ulmann. Photographs by other women are also well represented, including works by Berenice Abbott, Maggie Sherwood, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Catherine Wagner, Eva Rubenstein, Joyce Baronio, Cindy Sherman and Cathleen Naundorf.

Information about the auction and associated events, including ordering catalogs, can be found at http://www.be-hold.com . Contact Larry Gottheim at behold@be-hold.com or 1-914-423-5806.

 

By Matt Damsker

"TEACHERS OF THE NEW BAUHAUS" is an appreciation of a key moment in modernism: the establishment in 1937 of The New Bauhaus school of art, design and photography in Chicago, under the aegis of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who essentially transplanted what he and Walter Gropius had founded in Germany before the Nazis forced them out. Produced by Chicago's Stephen Daiter Gallery, this catalogue collects great experimental images by Moholy-Nagy and other lions of the New Bauhaus, including Gyorgy Kepes' hand-gouached portraits, shadow collages and pure abstractions; Arthur Siegel's negative/positive profiles and photograms; Harry Callahan's classic shots of a skinny weed against the sky and pregnant wife Eleanor emerging from primordial darkness; Wayne F. Miller's social documentation; and, perhaps most powerfully, Aaron Siskind's expressionistic textural studies of strange surfaces in Chicago and Mexico. Information: http://www.stephendaitergallery.com .

From Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books in London, "TRIBAL PORTRAITS" offers more than 150 vintage and contemporary photographs from the African continent, including important images from Irving Penn (five bare-breasted girls from the Dahomey tribe, posed elegantly and serenely in the studio) and Leni Reifenstahl (a 1974 color image of Nuba dancers in a palpable haze of heat and dust), but none of the photos in this catalogue seem unimportant. Certainly not the sensitive images of children captured by African photographer Malick Sidibe; the sensual North African nudes of Lehnert and Landrock, from early in the 20th century; the noble profiles of Masai and Turkana women by Mirella Ricciardi; the great warrior and priest close-ups of Pierre Verger; the powerful studies of long-limbed Dinkas by George Rodger; or Stephane Graffe's recent portraits of cloaked or shadowed Moroccan women. There are also many fine anthropological and portrait studies by unknown photographers. Information: email: roland@shapero.com, or http://www.shapero.com.

"ROGER MAYNE AT 80" is "a celebratory exhibition of photographs" from London's Bernard Quaritch Ltd.--38 in all, and a wonderful array of Mayne's richly tonal, naturalistic black-and-white images from the 1950s and early '60s. This typically finely printed catalogue from Quaritch includes a personal appreciation of Mayne's journey (he's still working, now in digital) by wife Ann Jellicoe and an excellent sampling of his street photography, mostly images of British children and young adults, with their wary, tough, post-war demeanors in a scarred London landscape. Also some interesting shots from Costa del Sol and Sicily. Information: by email: rarebooks@quaritch.com, or http://www.quaritch.com.

Finally, there's a fascinating monograph of 20 photos by the little-known California-based photographer LEOPOLD HUGO, from the personal collection Danny Kessler, who notes that Hugo (1866-1933) was a Polish immigrant who settled in La Jolla, CA, sold photographic postcards of the local beaches and scenery, and became head photographer for the San Diego Panama Canal Exposition in 1915. Hugo's softly focused images of La Jolla's wind-sculpted, bonsai-like trees and the surf and coves of his Southern California landscape are worthy examples of Pictorialism. One image--Untitled #20--is indisputably great: a foggy sighting of what looks to be a four-masted schooner braving rough seas in the middle distance, under low skies. The dark ship seems to be moving through the frame like an apparition, a Flying Dutchman that, once glimpsed, can never be forgotten.

Matt Damsker is an author and critic, who has written about photography and the arts for the Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Philadelphia Bulletin, Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. His book, "Rock Voices", was published in 1981 by St. Martin's Press. His essay in the book, "Marcus Doyle: Night Vision" was published in the fall of 2005.

(Book publishers, authors and photography galleries/dealers may send review copies to us at: I Photo Central, 258 Inverness Circle, Chalfont, PA 18914. We do not guarantee that we will review all books or catalogues that we receive.)