AIPAD 2008 at the Armory
THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW opened today at the Park Avenue Armory. Its 28th installment might be the best ever - for several reasons. A new design for booths and graphics creates an environment that is clean but not sterile, open and airy, yet concentrated with images as far as the eye can see. The color scheme of warm gray, blue and red backgrounds makes it seem like an interior space, not just a temporary encampment.
New York's premier photography-only art fair always offers a broad range of images from pretty much all periods and practices. This year contemporary works were more than well represented, with many large-scale prints mounted on the exterior sides of booths and plenty of aisle space for comfortable viewing.
Left: AIPAD 2008 at The Park Avenue Armory;
center: Hemphill Gallery; right: Weinstein Gallery. Photos: Peggy Roalf.
Last night's benefit preview honored John Szarkowski and everywhere throughout the great space of the Drill Hall are homages to MoMAs legendary curator of photography. At Pace MacGill, a finely tuned exhibition of his own photographs demonstrate the master's way of expressing his admiration for the work of others through his elevating translations of ideas into images. Elsewhere were works by photographers he championed, including Garry Winogrand, Helen Levitt and William Eggleston, among others.
The show is full of surprises and one of the best is a previously unknown photograph by Eggleston from Tallahachie County, at Deborah Bell Photographs. Dated 1971, the photograph was recently de-accessioned from a Washington D.C. area corporate collection whose art advisors had been curator Walter Hopps and photographer John Gossage. A group formed around the print as Deborah Bell told this story. Comments included how uncharacteristic of Eggleston the photograph is, in that the background of houses and cars, shot at dusk, is out of focus, an effect that causes one of the houses to appear to be in flames.
Not surprising is the wealth of photography from Japan, particularly work by, and inspired by, Daido Moriyama. As the photography world awaits an exhibition of contemporary Japanese photography, opening May 16 at the International Center of Photography, interest in work by this post-war innovator runs high.
At Osaka's Picture Photo Space, which is making its 14th appearance at AIPAD, images by Moriyama, and several contemporary Japanese photographers flank a series of nudes by Lee Friedlander. These photos of real women, with blemishes and flaws intact, shot in the 1970-s and ‘80s, share the same kind of raw sensuality found in some of today's edgiest Japanese work. After seeing a group of Moriyama's images here, I wonder how long it will be until I see his iconic image of a feral dog. Not long at all, and unsurprisingly, at Laurence Miller, one of Moriyama's first proponents in New York.
At Weinstein Gallery of Minneapolis is a stunning show of mural-size images by Alec Soth, including several from his Fashion Magazine project. At Hasted Hunt, Paolo Ventura's Winter Series reigns. Steven Bulger of Toronto brought a selection of the Polaroids made in the early 1980s by Andre Kertez using an SX-70 given to him by Graham Nash. And at Yancey Richardson, there is one of Victoria Sambunaris's images from the series Yet All Remains, which un-layers the Western landscape as built by man.
The AIPAD Photography Show is on through Sunday, April 13 at the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street. Please check the website for hours, directions and more information.