One of the most important international photography events, the AIPAD Photography Show New York, will be presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) from March 17-20, 2011. Nearly 80 of the world's leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work including contemporary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

The 31st edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York will open with a Gala Preview on March 16 to benefit the John Szarkowski Fund, an endowment for photography acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The AIPAD Photography Show New York is the longest running fine art photography multi-dealer show.

"Now more than ever, photography is a growing market," said Stephen Bulger, president of AIPAD and the Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. "AIPAD is a must-do show for collectors, and clearly is the best show for photography in North America."

A wide range of the world's leading fine art photography galleries will exhibit at the AIPAD Photography Show New York. In addition to galleries from New York City and across the country, a number of international galleries will be featured from Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Argentina, Israel, Japan and China.

Among the 79 galleries in the Show will be six galleries showing for the first time at AIPAD. The new AIPAD members showing are: Galerie f5.6, Munich; VERVE Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe; and Vision Neil Folberg Gallery, Jerusalem. The new guest exhibitors are June Bateman Fine Art, New York; Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA; and James Hyman Photography, London. A complete exhibitor list is available at http://www.aipad.com/photoshow .

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will present an extensive schedule of panel discussions on Saturday, March 19, 2011 at the Veteran's Room of the Park Avenue Armory.

The panels include "Photography Now: How Artists Are Thinking Today", which will discuss the issues contemporary photographers and artists are dealing with now. Among the panelists are Julie Saul, Julie Saul Gallery, and artists Shirin Neshat and Alec Soth.

"Pictures into Pages: Photography Book Publishing Now" will explore how now more than ever, beautiful photography books are in demand, coveted by many, and considered an important part of a collector's repertoire. Speakers will include Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery; Eric Himmel, vice president, editor-in-chief, Abrams; Lesley Martin, publisher, Aperture Foundation; Nion McEvoy, chairman & CEO, Chronicle Books; Anthony Petrillose, managing editor, Rizzoli; and Gerhard Steidl, publisher, Steidl.

"New Curators/New Directions" will focus on the work of a photography curator at a top museum. Curators will discuss their goals and reflect on how photography has become more integrated into both exhibitions and collections over the last 10 years. The speakers will include Rick Wester, Rick Wester Fine Art, Inc.; Simon Baker, curator of photography and international art, Tate; Roxana Marcoci, curator, department of photography, the Museum of Modern Art; Britt Salvesen, department head and curator, photography department, prints and drawings department, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Brian Wallis, chief curator, International Center of Photography; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, curator and chair, department of photography, the Art Institute of Chicago.

"The Voice of Experience: Behind the Scenes at AIPAD Galleries" will review how leading AIPAD dealers organize exhibitions and work with collectors. Speakers will include Jill Arnold, Director of Business Development, AXA Art Insurance Corporation; Howard Greenberg, Howard Greenberg Gallery; Peter MacGill, Pace/MacGill Gallery; Yancey Richardson, Yancey Richardson Gallery; and Martin Weinstein, Weinstein Gallery.

"AIPAD and the IPad: New Technology and Photography" will look at how all forms of new media technology are affecting the field of photography--from bloggers and Facebook to Flickr and YouTube. Speakers will include: Barbara Pollack, artist and arts journalist; Jen Bekman, Founder + CEO, 20x200 | Jen Bekman Projects; Bill Charles, Bill Charles Represents, New York, and Scott Dadich, executive director, Digital Magazine Development, Conde Nast.

Tickets are $10 each for the panel discussions and are available on a first-come first-served basis.

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will run from Thursday, March 17 though Sunday, March 20, 2010 at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street in New York City. Show hours are Thursday-Saturday, March 17-19, from 11 am-7 pm; and Sunday, March 20, from 11 am-6 pm.

The admission is $25 daily. A show catalogue is available for $10. A run-of-show ticket is $40 and includes a show catalogue. Student admission is $10 with a valid student ID. No advance purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the door. For more information, the public can call AIPAD at 1-202-367-1158 or visit http://www.aipad.com .

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will present a Gala Benefit Preview on Wednesday, March 16, from 5-9 pm. The evening will benefit the John Szarkowski Fund, an endowment for photography acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The fund was established to honor John Szarkowski, one of the most influential curators in photography and a photographer in his own right. Ticket information is as follows:
Benefactor, 5-9 pm ($5,000 4 tickets)
Patron, 5-9 pm ($750, 1 ticket)
Sponsor, 6-9 pm ($250, 1 ticket)
Friend, 7:30-9 pm ($100, 1 ticket)

For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact the Museum of Modern Art, 1-212-708-9680 or email: specialevents@moma.org .

Insurance specialist, AXA Art, is again the premier corporate partner for the AIPAD Photography Show New York.

 

Four of the members of I Photo Central will participate in this year's AIPAD Photography Show New York: Contemporary Work/Vintage Works, James Hyman Photography (Flash Projects on the website), Charles Schwartz, Ltd. and Andrew Smith Gallery. You can find their listing on I Photo Central at: http://www.iphotocentral.com/dealer/dealer.php . If you see something on the website that you would like to have one of the dealers bring to the show, please let that dealer know as soon as possible.

Contemporary Work/Vintage Works will be in the very center of the exhibition hall, down the middle aisle in booth 211. The company can be reached at 1-215-822-5662, or by email at info@vintageworks.net . You can see a selection of images from the company here: http://www.iphotocentral.com/search/result_list.php/128/1/0 .

19th-century photographers that Contemporary Work/Vintage Works will have on the front wall, in the bins and in the portfolios will include: Alphonse De Launay, Eugene Atget, Edouard Baldus, Bisson Frères, Julia M. Cameron, Charles Clifford, Louis De Clercq, William Henry Jackson, Gustave Le Gray (seascapes, early Mission Héliographique and Fontainebleau prints), Charles Nègre, Auguste Salzmann, Southworth & Hawes (four very fine and important daguerreotypes), and Felix Teynard--among many others.

On display will be a wonderful 38-inch-long, three-panel albumen print of a hauntingly empty tent of the Shanghai Circus. A large selection of important 1850s-60s Italian views, including salt prints and an important 1860c Italian views album, will also be available at the booth, as well as some rare Iranian calotype material.

20th-century and contemporary artists include: Nobuyoshi Araki, Ilse Bing, Brassai, Janusz Maria Brzeski, Anne Brigman, Harry Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Otto Hofmann, Horst Paul Horst, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Pierre Jahan, André Kertész, Francois Kollar, Dorothea Lange, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Clarence John Laughlin, Robert Mapplethorpe (four or five top pieces), Daniel Masclet, Ralph Meatyard, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Loewy & Puiseux, Barbara Morgan, Helmut Newton, Frank Paulin, Irving Penn, Willy Ronis, Sherril Schell, Osamu Shiihara, Julius Shulman, Arthur Siegel, Aaron Siskind, Robert L. Sleeth, Jr., Edward Steichen, Josef Sudek, Raoul Ubac, Brett Weston and Edward Weston--plus many more.

The company will also have contemporary work on display by Arthur Tress, Lisa Holden and Mitch Dobrowner. Other work by its represented artists can be shown.

James Hyman Photography will be in booth 414. The company can be reached at 011-44 (0) 207 494 3857, or by email at james@jameshymanphotography.com .

The gallery will mark its presence at AIPAD for the first time with a specially curated presentation of British social photography, which also precisely coincides with the 20th Anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition "British Photography from the Thatcher Years". Curated by Susan Kismaric, the MoMA exhibition drew attention to a new wave of British photographers who were not only engaged with the transformation of British society during the Thatcher years, but also in many cases placed color photography at the centre of their practice.

In order to build on this earlier New York exhibition, James Hyman Photography's AIPAD exhibition "From Talbot to Fox: 150 Years of British Social Photography" broadens the range of photographers shown in order to provide a wider historical and geographical context.

Starting with the earliest photographers the exhibition explores the importance of class and identifies themes such as work and leisure, the urban and the rural environment, wealth and poverty, home and away, and war and peace to explore not only Britain's changing society but also the development of different photographic approaches to this environment.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication on the subject.

The exhibition includes the following photographers: William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton, Horatio Ross, Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emerson, Thomas Annan, Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy, Roger Mayne, Cecil Beaton, Caroline Coon, Anna Fox, Paul Reas, Paul Seawright, Jem Southam, Ken Grant, and Karen Knorr.

Charles Schwartz, Ltd. will be in booth 216. The company can be reached at 1-212-534-4496, or by email at cms@cs-photo.com . You can see a selection of images from the company here: http://www.cs-photo.com/search/result_list.php/0/0 .

Schwartz will bring some spectacular 19th-century portraits. One features a self portrait of Lewis Carroll seated on a windowsill of the Old Rectory at Croft, Darlington, Yorkshire [age 25; this was the family home from the time Charles was 11 until his father's death in 1868], 1857 (July or Aug). The albumen print is signed "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson" (Lewis Carroll) on the recto and is illustrated in Camera Portraits, (National Portrait Gallery, London), page 39.

Another great period portrait is a platinum print by A&J Green of John Ruskin in a Country Lane, 1882.

A stereoscopic daguerreotype of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie at the London Crystal Palace, Sydenham, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is one of the world's earliest instantaneous news photographs, and one of the first meant for publicity purposes. In April of 1855 Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie made a state visit to London. Their visit was meant to enhance the close Anglo-French alliance in order to continue with the Crimean War. The photograph was taken at the ceremony in their honor at the Crystal Palace in London on April 20, 1855. This presented a major moment for photography. Negretti & Zamba, who held the monopoly for photography at the Crystal Palace, had a number of cameramen, including P. H. Delamotte, at work to capture the event.

A 1912 silver print by Herbert George Ponting with his Cinematography camera, which was taken in the Antarctic, is a fine example of a 20th-century self portrait being shown by Schwartz.

Another interesting 20th-century portrait is one by Max Penson of an "Uzbek Scholar Reading the Koran". This portrait of a Muslim scholar reading the Koran was acquired directly from Penson's daughter. Jewish Russian photographer Penson hailed from the same vicinity in Russia as Marc Chagall and was a singular talent, receiving his first camera as a teaching prize at the age of 28. He ended up in Uzbekistan after fleeing pogroms with his family in 1915.

Schwartz will also display a rare, early view of Central Park by French-born and trained Victor Prevost (1820-1881). Prevost studied with Delaroche and learned printing from Gustave Le Gray, and was one of the earliest photographers working in New York.

Another 19th-century image that Schwartz will have in his booth is an 1872 albumen print by William Bell, "Grand Canyon, Colorado River, Near Paria Creek, Looking West". Bell was an important contributor to the early American landscape photographic tradition. He was a member of the Wheeler Expedition of 1872 (the U.S. Geographical and Geological Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian), during which he made this image.

Finally, the company will also have three prints of image made in 1958 by Henri Cartier-Bresson--all of China--on display at the booth, including Urumchi, another untitled image, and Sian. Two are illustrated in Cartier-Bresson book, "The Face of Asia".

Andrew Smith Gallery will be in booth 116. The company can be reached at 1-505-984-1234, or by email at info@andrewsmithgallery.com. You can see a selection of images from the company here: http://www.iphotocentral.com/search/result_list.php/64/14/0 .

The gallery will feature a small group Eugene Atget's sublime and incredibly rich and vibrant masterpieces of the Parks of St. Cloud and Versailles, prints from the collections of Andre Jammes and the Museum of Modern Art. Highlighted include the prosaic and perfectly balanced print of "St. Cloud", 1919-1921; the very modern Bagatelle Nymphea from 1925; and Parc De St. Cloud, 1904, an early perfectly composed print which presaged the great work he did after World War I.

The gallery will also feature classic works by Annie Leibovitz, including her largest prints of two of her most renowned images, "The Blues Brothers" and "John and Yoko, Dec. 8, 1980".

The gallery will also have a selection of vintage prints by Edward Weston, including a fully signed and mounted print of the rare and beautiful Dunes Oceano 1936 (Black Dunes), work by Paul Strand, Minor White, Josef Sudek and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as classic work from the 19th century by the likes of William Henry Jackson (including The Loop Near Georgetown, a circa 1885 mammoth-plate albumen print).

 

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust have jointly acquired a huge collection of the prints, negatives and letters of Robert Mapplethorpe, further strengthening California's position as a major center for 20th-century photography.

The acquisition is the first time the two institutions have collected works of art to share, in a partnership they formed to compete more effectively against other major museums being considered by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation as homes for the collection.

The foundation is donating the majority of the more than 2,000 photographs, including Mapplethorpe silver-gelatin prints and Polaroid works, and the Getty and the county museum, with help from the David Geffen Foundation, are buying the rest.

The foundation estimated the value of the entire collection, which includes 120,000 negatives, at more than $30 million.

"This is pretty big news for us," said Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who was involved in 1992 with an earlier transfer of a major collection of Mapplethorpe work to the Guggenheim Museum, where he worked at the time.

Govan said that he and Getty officials had been in negotiations with the foundation for more than two years, making a case for Los Angeles based partly on the Getty's extensive storage and conservation facilities and on both museums' strong photography holdings.

In addition, a cornerstone of the Getty's photo holdings is the former private collection and archives of Sam Wagstaff, a curator and major collector who was Mapplethorpe's companion, muse and mentor until Wagstaff's death in 1987. (Mapplethorpe died two years later.)

"It's so poetic, if you will, or correct that the two archives are finally going to come together," Govan said.

The Getty Museum will house most of the photographic material in its temperature-controlled storage facilities. The Getty Research Institute, an arm of the Getty Trust, with world-class archival collections, will keep the letters and other historical Mapplethorpe material, which includes legal papers and documents from the landmark 1990 trial in which the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati was acquitted of obscenity charges for including several Mapplethorpe photographs with sexual themes in an exhibition. The Getty and the county museum will collaborate on exhibitions and publications using both the photographs and archives.

David Bomford, the acting director of the Getty Museum, described the acquisition as an important demonstration of a growing collaborative spirit between Los Angeles art institutions. "We like to think in terms of a kind of ideal Greater Museum of Los Angeles," he said. "And this is an example of that happening."

Govan added of the work that the two institutions will share, "There's plenty to go around here, so I think it's unlikely we'll end up fighting over any of it."

 

PARIS PHOTO GETS NEW LOCATION AND DIRECTOR
Paris Photo is moving to the Grand Palais, a larger and more impressive setting than its old home at the Carrousel du Louvre. It has also gotten a new director, Julien Frydman. He was head of Magnum Photos in Paris since 2006 and has been a consultant of the LUMA Foundation for Le Parc des Ateliers in Arles since January 2011. He takes over from Guillaume Piens, the former director. The 2011 edition will mark the 15th anniversary of Paris Photo. The photography fair will run from November 9-13, 2011.


PLANS UNDERWAY FOR EGGLESTON MUSEUM
The Commercial Appeal reports that plans are underway for a $15 million, 15,000-sq.-ft private William Eggleston museum in Memphis. Preparation for the new institution has been spearheaded by New York-based intellectual property lawyer Mark Crosby, who has promoted the idea to a group of philanthropists and has already raised $5 million in pledges. The museum is expected to open in 2013, in one of three midtown Memphis sites: Overton Park, Overton Square, or the Crosstown neighborhood. It will house the offices of the Eggleston archive, overseen by the Eggleston Trust, which is headed by the photographer's son Winston, as well as gallery spaces to show the photographer's work and the work of other contemporary artists. In exchange for storing and maintaining the archive, the museum will have the research and display rights to more than 60,000 photographs.


CAMERA OBSCURA GALLERY CLOSING ITS DOORS
The Camera Obscura Gallery will be closing its doors at the end of April, 2011 to enable Hal Gould, its owner, to work on his memoires, to return to the darkroom and to organize his extensive collection of work. For over 50 years, Hal Gould has promoted and shown fine-art photography. In 1963, he co-founded the Colorado Photographic Art Center, which was one of the first venues devoted exclusively to showing and promoting photography as a medium for fine art. In 1979 he opened the Camera Obscura Gallery on 1309 Bannock Street, Denver, CO. Not only has Gould been a tireless advocate of photographic art, but he is also a master photographer. The gallery certainly will be missed--not only in the Denver community--but nationally and internationally.


DANIEL BLAU OPENS NEW GALLERY IN LONDON
Daniel Blau Ltd. opens its new international gallery space in London on April 7, 2011 with the exhibition: "A-BOMB: Pictures of Disaster". Brad Feuerhelm has been named director of the new gallery, which at 51 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB; phone: +44-207-831-7998. Feuerhelm has been in the photography market for the last 11 years, working as a dealer, a publisher, an expert and a collector. He holds degrees in History of Art and Fine Art Photography from the University of Minnesota. Feuerhelm's own company, Ordinary Light Photography, will soon be changed to a research and discussion forum. The ground-floor space of the new gallery will be primarily used for exhibitions of photography-based art, changing approximately every four to six weeks.


CHRIS BEATLES OPENS PHOTOGRAPHY SPACE
Chris Beetles Gallery has opened a second space devoted just to photography on 3-5 Swallow Street, just off Piccadilly, in London; phone: +44-207-434-4319; gallery@chrisbeetles.com . The new gallery is a natural extension of the main gallery's photographs department. It will be run by the main gallery's photography specialist, Giles Huxley-Parlour, who has put together all the photography shows at the original Ryder Street location over the past four years. There are already eight exhibitions planned for the year ahead, the first of which is "Eve Arnold", which runs through March 5.


CONSERVATOR JEN OLSEN JOINS GAWAIN WEAVER
Conservator Jennifer Olsen will join Gawain Weaver Conservation and Consulting Services later this month. The Studio is located at 12 Seibel St., San Rafael, CA 94901-5006; phone: 1-415-446-9138. Olsen is a treatment conservator with a background in fine art printmaking, which she studied at Pratt Institute. For over 20 years she has specialized in the conservation of photographs and works of art on paper. She worked privately for many years in New York and Connecticut.


DNJ GALLERY OPENS BERGAMOT STATION LOCATION
Dnj Gallery has opened new space in Bergamot Station at 2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite J1, Santa Monica, CA 90404; 1-310-315-3551; office@dnjgallery.net . The gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday, from 10 am to 6 pm. The Gallery introduces contemporary works by emerging and established artists, while displaying a broad range of subject matter and techniques. Dnj Gallery is currently showing its inaugural Bergamot Station exhibition of new color photographs by artist Jane O'Neal entitled "Environmental Memory Part II: Taking Flight." Gallery II presents the show "Intersection," featuring the work of Robert von Sternberg. Its upcoming exhibition of the newest work by the artist Michael Eastman, entitled "Plexagraphs" will be shown March 26-May 28 in gallery I. In gallery II, DNJ will present the artist Maria Luisa Morando with her current series, "Silver."


MONIKA FINANE JOINS VILLA GRISEBACH'S NYC OFFICE
Monika Stump Finane has joined German auction house Villa Grisebach's New York office, which is located at 120 East 56th Street, Suite 635, New York, NY 10022. Having earned her Master's degree in Art History from Freie Universität Berlin, Finane was curatorial assistant to Heiner Bastian, preparing the major traveling exhibition "The Andy Warhol Retrospective" (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Tate Modern; MoCA L.A., 2001–2002). She was then a researcher for the Lyonel Feininger Catalogue Raisonné, an ongoing project based in New York. In 2006, Monika joined Villa Grisebach in Berlin as a specialist for Contemporary Art. Together with Philipp Gutbrod, Finane will now represent the auction company throughout the U.S. They can be contacted at 1-212- 308-0762 or auctions@villa-grisebach.com .

 

By Matt Damsker

CZECH PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE 20TH CENTURY.
By Vladimir Birgus and Jan Mlcoch. Published 2010, Kant Books, Prague. 394 pages, hardbound, published in both Czech and English versions; 517 black-and-white and color plates. ISBN Nos. 978-80-7437-027-4 (English), 978-80-7437-026-7 (Czech). Information: kant@kant-books.com . Also available through D.A.P., 155 Sixth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10013; phone: 1-212-627-1999.

Voluminous and voluptuous, this welcome tome from Valdimir Birgus and Jan Mlcoch codifies for posterity much of the landmark three-part exhibition of the same title held in 2005 at Prague's Museum of Decorative Arts and City Gallery (with a smaller version mounted in Bonn). As leading artists, scholars and curators of Czech photography for the past four decades, Birgus and Mlcoch are beyond authoritative--their clear assessment (despite some troubled diction in the English-language edition) and arrangement of the epochs and images that define the Czech century is at once devotional and deeply informed.

They proceed with clarity, citing the fact that Czech photography "was never made in isolation, regardless of the official preferences of the powers that be…" Thus, the innate restlessness of Czech photo-artistry, influenced by the French, German and Russian avant-gardes, along with American, British and German photojournalism, is the propulsive force that crackles through this volume, as we witness the development of a Czech photographic sensibility that begins in the early 1900s with the Pictorialism of Frantisek Drtikol. His painterly images quickly depart from European propriety to encompass writhing, erotic nudity and a haunted, expressionistic modernism.

From there, the leap to the 20th-century Czech photographic melancholy and mastery of Josef Sudek, Jaromir Funke, Josef Koudelka, Jan Saudek, Antonin Kratochvil--all the way to Birgus and beyond--is chronicled extensively and most powerfully in the book's superbly reproduced panoply of color and black-and-white plates. From the Poetism of the inter-war photographers, with its avant-garde blend of collage and drawing, to the abstraction, constructivism, and new objectivity of the 1930s, Czech photography is a whirlwind of response to social ferment and opportunity. While Sudek's clinical studies of forks, knives and spoons represent the beginnings of clean, sharply angled commercial photography, they are counterbalanced by Funke's looming smokestacks, intimating an era of European dynamism that will rock the world.

World War II, of course, was the launching point for Czech photography's great fixations, most prominently the keen documentary streak that chronicled Nazism and the occupation of the Bohemian lands, poignantly and fearfully captured by the likes of Jan Lukas, Slava Stochl, Karel Ludwig and Svatopluk Sova in their images of the Prague uprising, and of German women and collaborators forced to pave the Prague streets and have their heads shaved. In this climate, photo-surrealism emerges as one response to the war's madness, but as the war ends and the reconstruction and repression of the 1950s and '60s wears on, socialist realism and a new humanism appear, as Koudelka's gypsy families, for example, be speak a legacy of European displacement.

Not surprisingly, in the 1980s and '90s, the pressures that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall inevitably unleashed so much pent-up energy in Czech photography that it wheeled in every imaginable direction, from Miroslav Machotka's and Stepan Grygar's studies of pebbles, stones, light and shadow to Jan Saudek's hand-colored rhapsodies of freedom and desire, with nudes posed classically while wearing Sony Walkman headphones, or in seeming flight against acid-scabbed walls. And as the 21st century presses in, the saturated color photos of Dita Pepe and her Cindy Sherman-esque "Self-Portraits with Women" series is emblematic of a truly new era, with performance art, video and all manner of postmodern fusion hitting its stride.

Indeed, Czech photography is not an easy or especially coherent artistic wave to definitively chronicle. We owe Birgus and Mlcoch a debt of gratitude for this vast labor of love and light.


MARGINALIJE.
Photos by Stanko Abadzic. Introduction by Zdarvko Zima. Published 2009, MeanderMedia. 127 pages, approximately 100 black-and-white plates, softbound. ISBN No. 978-953-7355-50-0. Signed copies of the book are available through Contemporary Works/Vintage Works at info@contemporaryworks.net ; or by phone at 1-215-822-5662 for $55, plus shipping.

In and all around the Czech Republic, the "visual wanderings" of Croatia's Stanko Abadzic (as Zdarvko Zima calls them in his introduction to this solid collection) stake out the margins of post-Berlin Wall Europe--a place, in Abadzic's view, of largely unpeopled vistas, beaches, streets and cafes that are nonetheless alive with visual interest and the languor of freedom. The raking sunlight and flung shadows, the verve of graffiti on scarred walls, the abstract complexity of chairs, stairs, windows, bicycle wheels and random objects are Abadzic's raw materials, and he serves them with an easy romanticism that avoids sentimentality at every turn.

Abadzic is Croatia's photo poet, arguably sans peer. When he captures a series of dolls, mannequins and the like in Prague or Zagreb, or handprints on Parisian walls, he suggests a sense of play and abstract delight that can't easily be translated into words. The loneliness of empty tables and chairs in the lengthening evening light is mitigated by the sight of a frothy latte left behind, or by the curlicues of ironwork shadows falling all around.

If anything, Abadzic's random sights and humorous still lifes (a carefully composed dinner plate, for example, elegantly outfitted with a seashell and dice, and placed on a cushion of rich fabric) are so luminously exposed, wringing every ounce of shadow-and-lightplay, that they infer color and texture beyond their austere black-and-white dominion. Original, complicated, and busily inhabiting the frame, Abadzic's photography never fails to breathe, inviting us into these mundane and nearly surreal spaces, implying that there is room for us--and for dogs, babies and art--in his brave new Europe.


DAGUERRE'S PROBLEM.
From Hans Rooseboom, curator of photography at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, comes a finely researched, self-published monograph, "What's Wrong with Daguerre?" This 35-page treatise explores the historical record, familiarly noting that when Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre introduced his daguerreotype process in 1839, he was regarded as photography's principal inventor, but that it wasn't long before other innovators--notably Joseph- Nicéphore Niépce, William Henry Fox Talbot and Hippolyte Bayard--were viewed as rivals, sparking the "priority debate" about who was the rightful father of photography.

With ample citations and clear comparative analysis, Rooseboom argues compellingly that Daguerre's problem (that is, the devaluation of his role and his process) has often been a matter of bias or nationalism on the part of photo-historians and others who, for example, view the daguerreotype as an instrument of commercialism and the calotype of Fox Talbot as a purer expression of photographic art.

"The comparison invariably works to the detriment of Daguerre," writes Rooseboom, noting that "Daguerre is generally regarded only as an inventor--the inventor of a technique that was only successful for a short time--rather than being considered a photographer in his own right." By that standard, of course, the indisputable artistry of Fox Talbot and the other rivals enjoyed the advantage.

Ironically, Rooseboom adds, neither the daguerreotype nor the calotype are in use any longer (at least generally), yet the debate regarding the primacy, or priority, of their inventors goes on. As recently as 2007, Roger Taylor's book "Impressed by Light: British photographs from paper negatives, 1840-1860" seemed to resurrect the priority debate, with Taylor asserting that "British photographers had invented the process." While no longer explicitly depicted as a battle between different countries, says Rooseboon, the invention of photography is instead described as "a struggle between individual persons, photographic styles or professional ethics."

Indeed, between Daguerre's direct positive on a copper plate, Talbot's print from a paper negative, Bayard's direct positive image on paper, and Niépce's role as Daguerre's collaborator (before his premature death in 1831), it is no wonder that the rivals inspire such varied allegiance on the parts of critics and historians. Thus, "pro-Talbot literature" such as Taylor's depicts Daguerre as "merely a forbidding ghost in the background (or, to be specific, on the opposite side of the Channel)."

Rooseboom concludes that the dispute may never be settled. When we consider that each of the rivals was working toward individual goals as opposed to racing toward the same finish line with the same technique, it is easy to see that their different priorities and nearly two centuries of photo-historical opinion may forever prevent a consensus in Daguerre's favor. If that is what's wrong with Daguerre, it is hardly his fault. For information on ordering the monograph, go to http://www.nescioprivatepress.blogspot.com , or email h.rooseboom@rijksmuseum.nl . Or signed copies of the book are now available through Contemporary Works/Vintage Works at info@contemporaryworks.net ; or by phone at 1-215-822-5662 for $10 each, plus shipping.


THE PHOTO LEAGUE AT 75
Also of note, from the Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, "The Photo League at 75" collects some 50 classic photographs of urban poverty and social injustice in the Depression era and beyond, all celebrating the founding of the Photo League in 1936, a non-profit organization that endured for three decades in New York and to which the greatest American photographers if the day contributed. From Berenice Abbott to Max Yavno (with Lewis Hine, W. Eugene Smith, Weegee and others in between), the Photo League "was the heart and soul of social documentary photography until McCarthy-era hysteria forced its closing in 1951." Information: http://www.stephendaitergallery.com .


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. Books must be aimed at photography collecting, not how-to books for photographers.)

 

JOHN CRAIG, AUTHOR, COLLECTOR, DEALER
John Craig, photo historian and author, collector and dealer, and author of Craig's Daguerreian Registry, died on Friday, February 25th, after a long bout with cancer. I knew John for many years and I considered him a friend. John started collecting 19th-century photography about 1969 while still at Wesleyan University. He started work as a photographer-reporter at the Hartford Courant while still in school, but continued to work there for another six years after graduation. At the same time he started his own retail camera store and served as photographer with the Connecticut Army National Guard. He wrote a column for Shutterbug magazine for about ten years. His company became a major resource for photography equipment instruction books--most long out of print. At the time of his death, John had 155,000 instruction booklets in stock for thousands of cameras, accessories and projectors; and nearly 10,000 other photographic items. His Craig's Daguerreian Registry, which can still be found online and in the multi-softbound editions, is one of the most respected and utilized research sources for daguerreotype collectors and curators. He will be greatly missed, especially by the Daguerreian community. A celebration of Craig's life will be held at his home in the early summer. His wife is in charge of arrangements. Donations in his memory may be made to either charity: The Daguerreian Society, PO Box 306, Cecil, PA 15321-0306, or The Lymphoma Research Foundation, 115 Broadway, Suite 1301, New York, NY 10006. (Alex Novak)


CLIF GARBODEN, PHOTOGRAPHER, EDITOR, WRITER
Clif Garboden was a dear friend of nearly 45 years, going back to our days at Boston University, the infamous BU News of the 1960s, and later what eventually became the Boston Phoenix. He passed away on February 10th. The cause of death was pneumonia, a complication of a reoccurring cancer that he thought he had beaten six years ago. Born in Pittsburgh in 1948, Clif was a talented photographer, writer (including some wonderful articles on other photographers, such as Richard Avedon, Harry Callahan and Edward Weston) and editor at the Boston Phoenix, which, along with the Village Voice, is the country's most influential "alternative" newspaper. You can see a lot of Clif's articles here: http://www.thephoenix.com/boston/authors/clif-garboden/ . As Boston Phoenix writer Peter Kadzis noted in that paper's obituary: "I don't think it was a coincidence that Clif entered journalism through a viewfinder. His eye, his unerring sense of what made for a potent image, was the foundation of his skill, the root of his talent." He started out as assistant photography editor on the BU News, during the most tumultuous days of the 1960s. He wound up as senior managing editor of the Boston Phoenix. He also served as president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). A memorial service at the Framingham Friends Meeting House at 841 Edmands Road, Framingham, MA, will be held at 2 pm on April 9th. He is survived by his wife Susannah, his son Phil, his daughter Molly, and their children. (Alex Novak)


MILTON ROGOVIN, PHOTOGRAPHER
Milton Rogovin, a documentary photographer who championed the underprivileged, passed away last month at the age of 101 at his home in Buffalo, NY. Rogovin's images of the urban poor and working classes in Buffalo, Appalachia and other areas of the country helped build his reputation as a photographer. His archive now resides in the Library of Congress. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee but refused to testify. The Buffalo Evening News called him "Buffalo's Number One Red," and he and his family were ostracized. With his optometrist business destroyed by the negative publicity, he turned to photography, documenting the lives of Buffalo's indigent in his surrounding neighborhood. In this he was mentored by the photographer Minor White. In 1962 Rogovin's photographs were published by Aperture magazine with an introduction by W. E. B. Du Bois. He went on to photograph Buffalo's impoverished Lower West Side, American Indians on reservations in the Buffalo area, and West Virginia and Kentucky miners. In the 1960s he was invited to Chile by the poet Pablo Neruda to photograph its landscape and people. The two produced a book entitled, "Windows That Open Inward: Images of Chile." The New York Times obituary quoted Rogovin as saying in a 2003 interview: "All my life I've focused on the poor. The rich ones have their own photographers."


GITA LENZ, PHOTOGRAPHER
Photographer Gita Lenz died peacefully on Thursday, January 20th at a nursing home in New York City. The first major exhibition of Lenz's work was in a three-person show, "The Third Eye" with John Reed and Don Normark, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1952. In 1955, Steichen included her work in another exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art, this time in the landmark exhibition, "The Family of Man". Gita Lenz lived most of her life in Greenwich Village. From the 1940s through the mid-1960s, Gita created a body of work that withstands comparison to many of the better known photographers of the time. A self-described "Sunday photographer" in the 1940s, her work was often characterized by an interest in the city and life around her. While the social documentary tradition definitely had a distinct influence early on, Gita would soon take an interest in abstraction, isolating aspects both in nature and in the urban environment, stripping away details, framing images unconventionally and adding new depth and meaning to mundane and dilapidated subjects. Gita would go on to work professionally for commercial and editorial clients in the 50s and 60s. (Information supplied by Tom Gitterman, who represented Lenz)


JULIAN BAKER, JR., PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTOR
Julian Tucker Baker, Jr., 71, died peacefully at his home in Raleigh, NC, on February 16th. Born in 1939, Baker was a passionate photography collector, who did not shy away from difficult images, collecting work from a diverse group of artists, including--among many others--Frederick Sommer, Clarence John Laughlin, Arthur Tress and Peter Hujar. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made in Julian's name, to the Fisher House Foundation, Inc., 111 Rockville Pike, Suite 420, Rockville, MD 20850, info@fisherhouse.org ; or to the USO of North Carolina, Inc., P.O. Box 91536 Raleigh, NC 27675, www.uso-nc.org .


RAYMOND D'ADDARIO, NUREMBERG PHOTOGRAPHER
Photographer and camera shop owner Raymond D'Addario died of a stroke in his hometown of Holyoke, MA at the age of 90. He was an Army photographer whose photographs of Hitler's aides and top officers during the Nuremberg war crimes trials helped bring the Nazi atrocities to the attention of the world. His image of the 21 defendants in the court docket at the Palace of Justice is perhaps the most famous of all the photographs taken during the trial. While he was only one of about a dozen still and motion-picture photographers assigned by the Army Pictorial Service to document the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, he was the most prolific member of the team and is considered by many to be its most consequential.