Full Issue of the PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTOR
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THE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTOR INFORMATION, OPINION, AND ADVICE FOR COLLECTORS, CURATORS, AND DEALERS N E W S L T R Volume XXXIV, No. 6 June 2013 AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW AND AUCTIONS: $50–$60 MILLION IN SALES by Alex Novak (with Stephen Perloff) Jerry Uelsmann, Giampaolo Paci, and Maggie Taylor liven up the AIPAD Photography Show New York Opening Reception. (All photographs of the AIPAD Photography Show in this article by Stephen Perloff.) Despite some hefty competition during the about sales from the show. Most were in fact very week, the AIPAD Photography Show, New York enthusiastic about their results. produced some of the most solid results for dealers The 33rd edition of the longest-running pho- ever, as the show itself continued to set attendance tography fair in the world spotlighted 82 of some records (up this year to a “real” 11,500 attendees). of the most important international photo galler- Buyers were finding lots of interesting images ies and private dealers. AIPAD featured contem- to take home to add to their collections. For the porary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, first time ever in reporting on photography and art as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. fairs, I couldn’t find a single dealer to complain Exhibitors included galleries from across the U.S. THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW continued and around the world, including Europe, Asia, the Bussard, Jeff Rosenheim, Malcolm Daniels, and Middle East, and South America. Seven galleries Fred Ritchin — among many others. exhibited at AIPAD for the first time: Brancolini AIPAD drew a wide range of curators from Grimaldi, London; ClampArt, New York; Fifty One such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, Fine Art Photography, Antwerp; Klompching Gal- New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Interna- lery, Brooklyn; M97 Gallery, Shanghai; P.P.O.W., tional Center for Photography; Solomon R. Gug- New York; and Sage Paris. An exhibitor list is still genheim Museum: Morgan Library and Museum; available at http://www.aipad.com/photoshow. Nelson-Atkins Museum; Library of Congress; The opening night gala on April 3rd set the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Los Angeles County scene with a record crowd, which was buying in a Museum of Art; J. Paul Getty Museum; San Fran- serious way. That’s unusual at opening receptions, cisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chi- which often turn out to be simply social events. cago; Art Gallery of Ontario, Scottsdale Museum The benefit was forinMotion , which provides free of Contemporary Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; legal services to low-income women. George Eastman House; Museum of Fine Arts, A wide range of notables from the worlds of Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; art, entertainment, fashion, finance, government Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; Smithson- and the media attended the bash including: Chris ian American Art Museum; New Orleans Museum Rock, Naomi Campbell, Kelly Bensimon, John of Art; National Gallery of Canada; Rijksmuseum, Demsey, Amanda Burden, Leonard Lauder, Sally Amsterdam; and Tate Modern, London. Mann, Christo, Steven Meisel, Bob Gruen, Elliott It really didn’t seem to matter what kind of Erwitt, Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor, Bruce work you were selling here. Whether it was 19th- Davidson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Walter Martin century, 20th-century modernism or the latest and Paloma Munoz, Patrick McMullan, Vince cutting-edge contemporary work, it found buyers. Aletti, Vera Lutter, Jean Dykstra, Duane Michals, Many dealers, including myself, set New York AI- Anna Sui, Louise Blouin, Nion McEvoy, Michael PAD Show records for sales. And the sales were Gross, Gary and Sarah Wolkowitz, Gloria Katz strong to collectors, institutions, as well as other and Willard Huyck, Richard and Ronay Menschel, dealers. The strength of the latter’s purchases are Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Henry Buhl, Joseph Baio, what personally surprised and enthused me. Deal- Dan Greenberg, Eileen Cohen, Matt Blank, Peter er purchases at shows have been rather anemic in Som, Marjorie Ornston, Vicki Goldberg, Chris- the last few years. Dealers tend to avoid buying, tiane Fischer, Keith Davis, Michael Mattis and particularly from other dealers, when they aren’t Judith Hochberg, Sandra Phillips, Gary Sokol, Ju- having a great show or year, and buy when they dith Keller, Charles Jing, Lisa Hostetler, Katherine are doing well. There has been a bit of a recent turn-around here with dealers seeming to feel in more of a buying mood. At least that is my im- IN THIS ISSUE pression and experience. I not only sold to and AIPAD Photography Show Report ............................1 bought from exhibitors myself, but witnessed nu- merous sales of the same type. Perhaps it was also Random Notes from Paris Photo LA ......................10 because many of the dealers couldn’t get over to Auction Preview........................................................16 the auctions to buy nor had inclinations to do so, Auction Report ..........................................................17 when those auctions had so competitively run their Gallery Row ...............................................................18 hours directly over the show’s. Many dealers com- Museum and Nonprofit Row ....................................18 plained privately (and publicly) about the three Fairs and Festivals ...................................................20 big auction houses, but few offered solutions, and Awards .......................................................................21 some even felt it might have oddly helped the fair. In Passing..................................................................23 “The response to AIPAD 2013 from both col- Auction Schedule .....................................................25 lectors and exhibitors was overwhelmingly posi- Courses, Lectures, and Seminars...........................27 tive,” noted Catherine Edelman, new president Trade Shows, Fairs, and Festivals ..........................27 of AIPAD, and director of Catherine Edelman Catalogues & Publications/Limited Editions .........28 Gallery, Chicago. “Sales were strong across the Exhibitions of Note ...................................................28 board, and AIPAD’s famously collegial and wel- coming atmosphere, combined with the collective 2 THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW continued including those two Greg Scott videos at $28,000 and $26,000 respectively. Edelman noted the competition from the auc- tions: “I’m not sure there is much we can do about the auctions taking place in and around our fair. On the one hand, it is very flattering. On the other hand, it would be nice to be the main focus for five days. We announce our show dates when they are finalized, which typically happens during the sum- mer months. I am not sure there is much we can do about this issue, except to embrace it and celebrate the strength of the photo market.” By the way, newly minted president Edelman is already becoming an AIPAD dealer favorite. She set up a lunch area for exhibitors that went over big with the group. In fact the entire man- agement team got plaudits from virtually all of the exhibitors, who constantly remarked about the smooth operations of the show. Our own company, Contemporary Works/ Vintage Works, posted its best New York show results ever. Even after two months we are still making sales from the show, and probably will be until the end of the year. I felt the show itself was in its most elegant iteration. Virtually all the collectors that I spoke A display of Jefferson Hayman’s images at Michael Shapiro to about the show were gushing with enthusiasm Photographs. for the fair. More importantly, it was clear that the work at the fair was appealing to a large group of knowledge and expertise of the membership, was collectors and curators, who were not afraid to pull unbeatable.” the trigger on probably over $12–$15 million in Edelman reviewed her own results with us: sales here over the four days. Add in the auction “We did well this year. We decided to show two results that approached $33 million, plus the local video pieces by Gregory Scott (in the past it’s only New York photo gallery sales, which were report- been one) and sold both, with additional follow edly much stronger than normal for that week, and up. I try to feature work not shown by other deal- you had a single week when buyers bought over ers and not only exhibited work by Gregory Scott $50–$60 million in photography in just New York (the video artist), but introduced the AIPAD pub- City! A rather staggering weekly total to us old lic to Frieke Janssens (Smoking Kids) and Keliy timers. OK, it wasn’t quite the exaggerated $100 Anderson-Staley. I also exhibited new pieces by million total that one publication reported, but John Cyr, whose works we highlighted last year, it also wasn’t chopped liver either, as the saying and Elizabeth Ernst (photo-based mixed media), goes. whose works we show every three or four years.” As I noted above and as before the recession, Edelman gave her thoughts on the show: “I some of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works’ thought the fair looked terrific this year, but I may strongest sales were to other dealers, who clearly be biased. By moving the food into an auxiliary saw and understood the many top bargains in our room, we were able to fill out the back area with booth. The magnificent Heinrich Kühn landscape large booths, attaining a wonderful flow through- on our front wall and the two great Helmut New- out the show floor. We also tweaked the