We have previously recommended the E-Photo Newsletter as a regular must-read source for news related to photography. The just-released edition gives us another reason to recommend this informative source as it names Monroe Gallery of Photography "the most influential gallery devoted to photojournalism".
By Alex Novak
These are mostly my personal choices for this past year, although I have been asking others for their choices/feedback by email and on the Vintage Photography group on LinkedIn, etc. By the way, please feel free to join this group and its active discussions here, although you will have to join LinkedIn first.
Undoubtedly there will be disagreements with many of my choices (after all, these are admittedly very subjective), but I sincerely think that these are some of the most influential in their given category. "Best" is a more difficult and
subjective decision and is also very situational; in other words, for example, many dealers could have wonderful pieces in these categories but are not listed as most influential in them. Other galleries and dealers may also be excellent sources, but because their inventory and interests are more evenly spread out, they did not make our more specific lists. Finally, other factors besides the quality of work offered were factored into the decision, including publications, lectures, leadership, availability/activity for this period, programs, etc.
Many named for their category are clearly the cream of the crop in a general way--at least over the last 12 months. Some other sources that are not cited may have had stronger records in the past, or may have stronger ones in the future. One editorial disclosure: I own Vintage Works, Ltd., which I have named--legitimately, I feel--below in three categories. We list at most shows as Contemporary Works/Vintage Works.
I was tempted to do a "worst" list, considering some of the photography shows, etc. that I've seen recently, but decided to spare the offenders. But just an aside to certain French curators: don't hang lots of tiny photos right next to each other and then give visitors a plastic sheet as a magnifying glass so that they can block other viewers from seeing the work--if that were even possible in the near pitch blackness and overcrowded conditions.
I'm sure I will get a lot of additions, opinions, ideas, critiques and responses to this list--both negative and positive. Consider that I am stirring the pot, so to speak, to get people and institutions thinking about striving to get better, including those both on and off the list. Certainly send me your email feedback to info@iphotocentral.com , and I will add it to the article. Please check those responses/discussions out at the I Photo Central news and archives section at:
http://www.iphotocentral.com/news/article_view.php/190/180/1123 .
International locations are noted. Other sources are based in the United States unless otherwise noted. I skipped a European/International curator selectiononly because my knowledge is somewhat limited in this area, although I know some very good ones. I expect we'll restructure this list and add that category nextyear, as well as changing up the selection process a bit.
PHOTOGRAPHY DEALERS/GALLERIES:
19th-Century Gallery/Dealer
Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc.
Also Robert Hershkowitz, Ltd. (London and Sussex), Daniel Blau Photography (Berlin and London), Alain Paviot (Paris), Charles Isaacs, Serge Plantureux (Paris), Vintage Works, Ltd., Lee Gallery and Marc Pagneux (Chanteloup, France)
Surrealism and Experimental Photography
Galerie 1900-2000 (Paris) and Ubu Gallery (New York and Berlin)
American 20th-Century Modernism and Between-the-Wars Photography
Howard Greenberg Gallery and Stephen Daiter Gallery
Also Paul Hertzmann, Inc., Lee Gallery and Weston Gallery
American Mid-Century (1940s-1970s) Photography
Etherton Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill and Stephen Daiter Gallery
Also Silverstein Gallery, Robert Mann Gallery, Robert Koch Gallery and Howard Greenberg Gallery
European 20th-Century Photography
Howard Greenberg Gallery, Kicken Berlin, Galerie Johannes Faber and Vintage Works, Ltd.
Also Alain Paviot (Paris), Robert Koch Gallery, Gitterman Gallery, Edwynn Houk, Michael Hoppen (London) and Galerie Priska Pasquer (Cologne)
Contemporary Photography Gallery
Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill and Weinstein Gallery
Also Rose Gallery, Bonni Benrubi, Nicholas Metivier Gallery (Toronto), Camera Work (Berlin), HackelBury Fine Art Ltd. (London), Hamiltons Gallery (London), Flowers (New York and London) and Edwynn Houk (New York and Zurich)
Cutting-Edge Contemporary Photography Gallery
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
Also Catherine Edelman Gallery
Photojournalism
Monroe Gallery
American Western Photography
Andrew Smith Gallery
Fashion Photography
Staley+Wise Gallery and Camera Work (Berlin)
Daguerreotypes
William L. Schaeffer
Also Dennis Waters, Mark Koenigsberg, Vintage Works, Ltd., Charles Isaacs, Michael Lehr, Serge Plantureux (Paris), Frederic Hoch (Offwiller, France), Greg French and Bruno Tartarin (Paris)
Vernacular/Snap Shots
Barbara Levine, Richard Hart and Stacy Waldman
Also Fabien Breuvart (Paris), Gargantua Photos/Steve Bannos, Joel Rotenberg, Wolfram Harmuth (Berlin) and Pixidiom/Norm Kulkin
The next two categories have changed incredibly over the last few years, with many physical bookstores going private or retiring, such as Dawson Books (now a private dealer), and other photography dealers and galleries dabbling in high-end photography books.
Photo Bookstore
Arcana Books, Harper's Books/Harper Levine, Schaden.com (Cologne) and Chambre Claire (Paris)
Also Photo-Eye, Tristan Schwilden (Brussels) and Lead Apron
Photo Book Private Dealer
Dawson Books, Jeff Hersch, Andrew Cahen, and Charles Woods III
Also Steven Daiter Gallery, Paul Hertzmann, Inc. and Fred Pajerski
MULTI-DEALER PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW:
AIPAD's New York Photography Show
Neither Paris Photo nor Photo LA are currently even close in top galleries/dealers and important material on offer. Both have faded considerably in quality over the last few years, while AIPAD has come back from its financial problems very successfully. We will have to see if the other shows can come back, especially with Paris Photo getting new top management and a new venue recently (see the last newsletter). While not strictly speaking photography shows, watch out for the Armory Show in NYC (March), Art Week in Miami (December), Art Basel (June) and TEFAF at Maastricht (March), especially if you are interested in better contemporary and 20th-century modernism. These events often have as many dealers in photography and at a higher level than many
photography-specific fairs, although you have to go to many more locations to see the dealers and their work.
MOST INTRIGUING AUCTION:
Binoche Auctions, Paris, June 2010
MOST INTERESTING (ON PHOTOGRAPHY) SMALLER MUSEUM:
Antwerp Museum of Photography, Antwerp, Belgium
MOST INTERESTING (ON PHOTOGRAPHY) LARGE MUSEUMS:
New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum
MOST INTERESTING (ON PHOTOGRAPHY) NEW MUSEUM:
Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden
MOST INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN CURATORS, 2010:
Sarah Greenough, National Gallery of Art; Malcolm Daniels, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Anne Tucker, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Keith Davis, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and Sandra Phillips, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
MOST IMPORTANT MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW OF THE YEAR:
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: Primitifs de la photographie: Le calotype en France, 1843-1860
MOST INTERESTING PHOTO EXHIBIT AT A MULTI-DEALER FAIR:
Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc. for its William Henry Fox Talbot exhibition at the 2010 Winter Antiques Fair
MOST IMPORTANT NEW PHOTO BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
--"Czech Photography of the 20th Century" by Vladimir Birgus and Jan Mlcoch
--"Primitifs de la photographie: Le calotype en France, 1843-1860" by Sylvie Aubenas and Paul-Louis Roubert
MOST INFLUENTIAL DEALER CATALOGUES OF THE YEAR:
--"About Sixty French Calotypes" by Robert Hershkowitz, Ltd.
-- Hippolyte Bayard: Photography and the Spirit--A Collection of Photographs from 1839-1849 by Daniel Blau Photography
--Teachers of the New Bauhaus by Stephen Daiter Gallery
BEST DEALER-SENT PHOTOGRAPHY CALENDAR:
Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
CAPTURING HISTORY- A Conversation with Chief White House Photographers
A panel discussion with former Chief White House Photographers
Date: Wednesday, March 23 2011
Time: 06:00 PM
Location: JFK Jr. Forum
Event Speakers: ERIC DRAPER, George W. Bush; DAVID KENNERLY, Gerald R. Ford; BOB McNEELY, William J. Clinton; DAVID VALDEZ, George H. W. Bush
Event Moderators: DAVID GERGEN, Director, Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership Senior Political Analyst, CNN
Watch the conversation live here.
The John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum is one of the world's premier arenas for political speech, discussion and debate. More information here.
Related: White House Photographer Eric Draper's photographs to be exhibited at the AIPAD Photography Show, New York, March 16 - 20.
Friday, March 11, 2011
ON THE ROAD...TO AIPAD
Bob Gomel: Planes stacked up at JFK airport, New York, 1968
We are heading out to the AIPAD Photography Show. We will post regular updates here and on our Twitter feed. We sincerely hope to see you next week at Booth #417.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Picasso: Drawing With Light
Artist Pablo Picasso "painting" with light at the Madoura Pottery, Vallauris, France, 1949
Pablo Picasso's Flashlight Centaur
Via Life.com
Renowned LIFE photographer Gjon Mili, a technical genius and lighting innovator extraordinaire, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark -- and Picasso's lively mind began to race. This series of photographs, since known as Picasso's "light drawings," were made with a small flashlight or "light pencil" in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created. However, while the "Picasso draws a centaur in the air" photo is rightly celebrated and famous, many of the images in this gallery are far less well-known -- and equally thrilling.
More: The following text is adapted from "Picasso’s Third Dimension" by Gjon Mili, published by Triton Press; 1970.
"Mili visited Picasso twice – eighteen years apart – and on both occasions, while assigned to photograph the artist, he found himself involved in totally unforeseen creative experiences. One result of the first meeting, at Vallauris in 1949, is the photograph (above) of Picasso drawing the Centaur with a “light pencil.” This spectacular “space drawing” is a momentary happening inscribed in thin air with a flashlight in the dark – an illumination of Picasso’s brilliance set off by the spur of the moment. It was during this first visit in 1949 that Mili showed Picasso some of his photographs of light patterns formed by a skater’s leaps – obtained by affixing tiny lights on the points of the skates. Picasso reacted instantly. Before Mili could utter a word of explanation, Picasso, sparkling with excitement, started tracing through the air one intriguing shape after another with his bare finger. It is interesting to note the affinity between Picasso’s first light image, the Centaur, and the shape of his own crouched body as he starts to draw. Significant, too, is the course of his action as the image progresses from beginning to end. He first describes a small hook and swings upward to delineate the left arm, then the head and horns, the right arm and then the spine; at frantic speed – which is shown by the thinness of the line – he scribbles two wavering hind legs before he slows down, almost to a stop, while drawing the soft curve of the underbelly. As if he suddenly remembers there is more to do, he swiftly shoots straight up to fill in the facial structures and without breaking the flow, signs off with a flourish. The photographic effect was created by opening the camera’s shutter while Picasso was in the dark, crouched over to begin his instant masterpiece – this static pose captured by a momentary flash. Again in darkness after this instantaneous flash of light, Picasso quickly draws his signature image in the air with a “light pencil.” This light drawing is an “instant Picasso” – vanishing no sooner than born, except for what the camera captures. Not unlike a doodle in appearance, this rendering is an unimpeded expression of the artist’s inner vision, and as instinctive as one’s gesticulations in trying to make a point. This “space drawing” highlights better than anything in clay, wood, metal, or paint the automatic link between hand and brain which is basic to Picasso’s creative thrust."
Related: "Light Painting"
Forthcoming exhibition: Composing the Artist
Exhibition of classic photographs portraying iconic Artists and Writers
Monroe Gallery of Photography May 6 - June 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Today In History: 'The Fight Of The Century'
Muhammad Ali dodges a hook thrown by Joe Frazier. Although Ali lost the match, he proved his stamina by standing through 15 rounds.
Via NPR Picture Show
by Claire O'Neill
March 8, 2011
Today, 40 years ago, there was a big event. The media called it "The Fight of the Century." In Life magazine, it was "The Battle Of Undefeated Champs."
After more than three years in forced retirement for refusing to fight in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali was back to contend in the world heavyweight championship. He was pitted against the reigning champ, Joe Frazier. And they were each, no matter what, to receive an unprecedented $2.5 million for entering the ring.
To honor the momentous fight, Life has published a gallery of photos, many never before seen, taken by John Shearer, who at the time was merely in his 20s. (Joining Shearer as a Life photographer at the fight was amateur photographer Frank Sinatra.)
In addition to shooting the fight, though, Shearer documented the two contenders in the time leading up to the fight: the media circus that surrounded them both; the outspoken — and sometimes unsportsmanlike — antipathy between them; even Ali's small gut (three years is a long time to go without a fight).
Those three years caught up with Ali in the last round, when Frazier received the title by a unanimous decision. Another three years later, though, Ali won the title back.
John Shearer/LIFE
Muhammad Ali taunts Joe Frazier in Pennsylvania at Frazier's training headquarters. Both Shearer's photos and the 1971 Life article portray the outspoken aggression between the fighters.
John Shearer
Ali, along with Puerto Rican light heavyweight Jose Torres (in suit) and others, gather at legendary boxing promoter Chris Dundee's gym in Miami Beach, Fla., in February 1971.
Monday, March 7, 2011
March 7: The 46th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday
Steve Schapiro: On the road, the Selma March, 1965
Civil rights organizations launched a registration drive in Selma, Alabama, a small city about 50 miles west of Montgomery. There were about 15,000 blacks residing in Selma, but only 350 had successfully registered to vote. At a February 1965 voting rights rally in nearby Marion, police shot and killed a young black man named Jimmie Lee Jackson.
In response, activists called a March 7 march from Selma to the Alabama state capitol at Montgomery. Led by John Lewis of SNCC and Martin Luther King’s aide, the Reverend Hosea Williams, some 525 marchers were met on the Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River by Alabama state troopers and local lawmen. They had gas masks at hand and nightsticks at the ready. The trooper leader (Major John Cloud) ordered the marchers to return to their church. Reverend Williams answered: “May we have a word with the major?” “There is no word to be had,” came the reply.
The suppression of the march, the New York Times reported, “was swift and thorough.” The paper described a flying wedge of troopers and recounted how “the first 10 or 20 Negroes were swept to the ground screaming, arms and legs flying.” With the news media on hand and recording their actions for a horrified national audience, the troopers fired tear gas canisters. Local law enforcement pursued the retreating protesters with whips and nightsticks. “I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick ... I thought I saw death,” said Lewis, hospitalized with a concussion.
For millions of Americans, March 7, 1965, would be known simply as Bloody Sunday. Typical was the reaction of U.S. Representative James G. O’Hara of Michigan, who called the day’s events “a savage action, storm-trooper style, under direction of a reckless demagogue [a reference to Alabama’s governor, George Wallace].”
From Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr. announced that he and Ralph Abernathy would lead a second Selma to-Montgomery march that Tuesday. He called on “religious leaders from all over the nation to join us on Tuesday in our peaceful, nonviolent march for freedom.” Before the march could occur, a federal judge, not unfriendly to the activists but determined to hold hearings before acting, issued a court order temporarily forbidding the march.
King was under intense political pressure from every corner. Federal officials urged him to delay the march. With the judge’s injunction now in place, King and his followers would be the lawbreakers should the march proceed. But younger activists, many affiliated with SNCC, wanted to move faster. King risked losing his place at the head of the movement were he unable to satisfy their demands.
On March 9, King and Abernathy led some 3,000 peaceful protesters — their black followers joined by hundreds of white religious leaders — on the second Selma-to-Montgomery march. Troopers again met them at the Pettus Bridge. The marchers stopped, then sang the movement’s anthem: “We Shall Overcome.” The group then prayed, and Abernathy thanked God for the marchers who “came to present their bodies as a living sacrifice.” King then directed his followers to turn back. “As a nonviolent, I couldn’t move people into a potentially violent situation,” he told the Washington Post.
King’s decision disappointed some of the more zealous activists. But King had been conferring quietly with federal officials. The events of Bloody Sunday also had exerted great pressure on an already sympathetic President Johnson. Too many Americans at long last had seen enough. From religious groups and state legislatures, youthful protesters and members of Congress, the demand for federal action was growing. The two leaders appear to have struck a tacit bargain: King would not violate the injunction, and the Johnson administration quietly suggested it would soon be lifted.
On March 15, Johnson introduced the legislation that would become the Voting Rights Act. Addressing the nation that night, President Johnson employed the plainest of language in the service of a basic American value — the right to vote:
"There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans … to solve that problem.
The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution.
We must now act in obedience to that oath. …
There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong — deadly wrong — to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. …
What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
Two days later, the federal court lifted the injunction against the marchers. U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. further ordered that state and county authorities not interfere and indeed take affirmative measures to protect the activists. “The law is clear,” the judge wrote, “that the right to petition one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups … and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.” --Via America.gov
Steve Schapiro: Entering Montgomery, 1965
Marchers cross the Alabama river on the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma on March 21, 1965. The civil rights marchers, eight abreast, were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The msnbc Photoblog has more then and now photographs.
Related: Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle
Sunday, March 6, 2011
THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW PREVIEW: EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
AIPAD Photography Show in New York
Via Photography-Collection.com
March 6, 2011
79 fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of artworks including contemporary, modern, and 19th century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media, at the Photography Show New York of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD). 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.
Exhibitors
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 here.
Exhibition Highlights
A solo exhibition of Alec Soth’s most recent body of work, Broken Manual, will be on view at Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis. The series explores the lives and habitats of people who live off the grid and outside society. A portion of this work was featured in Soth’s recent survey show, From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An accompanying catalog by Steidl was published last year. A number of portraits will be on view at The AIPAD Photography Show New York. Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, DC, will show a portrait of Chairman Mao from 1963 by an unknown Xinhua Agency photographer. The portrait is said to have been printed in over 100 million copies. It is the basis of the gigantic portrait hanging on Tiananmen Gate, facing Tiananmen Square in Beijing; and Andy Warhol’s Mao screenprints of 1972 are based on this photograph, as well. Mariana Cook photographed the artist William Kentridge last July in South Africa and the portrait will be exhibited at Lee Marks Fine Art, Shelbyville, IN. Cook is known for her portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama. Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, will show work from Naomi Leshem’s Sleepers series taken over a period of four years in Israel, Germany, Switzerland, France, and the United States. Leshem photographs teenagers in their homes as they sleep. After waiting about an hour and half, the sleepers enter a period of tossing and turning that Leshem calls the “dance in the night.” During this time, she captures their portraits as her subjects drift between conscious and subconscious. A portrait of a doll, Anna, 2010, by Canadian artist Fausta Facciponte will be on view at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. Facciponte examines the way objects are preserved, decayed, or forgotten as they are passed along from one owner to the next. The spare beauty of seascapes and landscapes from Sze Tsung Leong’s ongoing series entitled Horizons will be seen at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. Leong was born in Mexico City and now lives and works in New York. The Berlin-based Jessica Backhaus explores the play of light and color on the rippling water in Venice and Burano, Italy, at Laurence Miller Gallery, New York.
New landscapes by Victoria Sambunuris from her recent Border series will be exhibited at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. New work by Alex Prager will also be on view. Richard Renaldi’s Smashed Water Tower, Electra, Texas, 2005, from his acclaimed series and publication Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006), takes an element of the quintessential American landscape one step further, documenting its sculptural quality and inherently making a statement about American society today. The work will be on view at Robert Morat Galerie, Hamburg. Focusing on the urban landscape, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s Nathan’s, 2010, from his Coney Island series, will be shown at Julie Saul Gallery, New York. Recently, Liao’s work was seen in a three person show at the J. Paul Getty Museum, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts with a commissioned project on the 100th anniversary of the Grand Concourse, and at the Queens Museum in an exhibition of his Habitat 7 series. New work by Abelardo Morell will be on view at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, including images of a landscape in Florence and a rooftop view of the Brooklyn Bridge made with a camera obscura. GalerÃa Vasari, Buenos Aires, will show the work of photographers, such as Annemarie Heinrich and Juan Di Sandro, who immigrated to Argentina between the 1930s and ‘50s. Originally from Europe, they belonged to a generation that had been trained at the most refined avant-garde schools and there is no doubt of their fundamental role in the development of modern photography in Argentina. Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, will exhibit work from the Diorama Map series by the Japanese artist Sohei Nishino (born 1982). This will be the first time his work has been shown in the United States. The series is an ongoing project to map the world’s great cities – to date Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, London – using a unique process of photography and collage. An intense month of shooting thousands of photographs on black-and-white film from hundreds of locations across the city is followed by several months of developing, printing, cutting, pasting, and arranging of the re-imagined city into a huge photographic collage. The final piece is re-shot using a large format camera to create a single grand photographic print. Niko Luoma is one of the leading professors at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and is an integral part of the Helsinki School. His series of abstract chromogenic prints are inspired by nature in flux, every day events, chaos, chance, and time. Luoma uses a simple mathematical system in exposing negative space and composing each work based on ideas of symmetry. The photographs will be on view at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York. Fiona Pardington’s large-scale photographs in her series Ahua: A Beautiful Hesitation document the sculptures of indigenous peoples encountered during French explorer Dumont d’Urville’s 1837 voyage to the South Pacific and will be on view at Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ.
John Cleary Gallery, Houston, TX, will show work by Andre Kertesz, and Ansel Adams, as well as Maggie Taylor’s most famous image, Girl with a Bee Dress, 2004. Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, will present a one person show of new work by Sebastiao Salgado. HackelBury Fine Art Ltd., London, will show recent work by Doug and Mark Starn. Grey Villet was considered a master of the classic “fly on the wall” style of photojournalism. His gelatin silver print The Little Rock Nine enter classroom to register after escort from Army’s 101st Airborne Division, September 25, 1957 will be on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM. Charles Schwartz Ltd., New York, will show a collection of more than 100 photographs and ephemera relating to the capture of Jefferson Davis. Soon after he was apprehended at the end of the Civil War, it was reported fictitiously that Jefferson Davis had attempted to escape by disguising himself as a woman in his wife’s dress and bonnet. Once this rumor was released and taken up by the media, it spread like wild fire, as the country found an easy target for its anger and loathing of Davis. In addition, the Republicans in the North wanted to degrade the former President of the Confederacy in any way they could, so they encouraged this false report with such vigor that it soon became generally accepted as the truth. James Hyman Photography, London, will present a curated exhibition surveying the history of British social photography over the past 150 years. From Talbot to Fox expands upon the genre to highlight a unique form of photography which has concentrated on themes of class, society, consumer culture, and the British political landscape. Deborah Bell Photographs, New York, will exhibit black-and-white photographs by Andy Warhol (c. 1981-86) taken from street life, providing insight into “Andy’s eye.” Barry Singer Gallery, Petaluma, CA, will show John Baldessari’s Blue Boy (with yellow boy: one with Hawaiian tie, one in dark), 1989, a three-color lithograph that is similar to one shown last year in the Baldessari retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A new work by Chris Jordan, Plastic Bags, 2010, from his series Running The Numbers: An American Self-Portrait will be the highlight at Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles. The photograph depicts Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus using 230,000 plastic bags, the estimated number of plastic bags used around the world every ten seconds.
Panel Discussions
The Photography Show New York will present a schedule of panel discussions on Saturday, March 19, 2011 at the Veteran’s Room at 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, 20×200 , Jen Bekman Projects; Bill Charles, Bill Charles Represents, New York, and Scott Dadich, Executive Director, Digital Magazine Development, Conde Nast.
Tickets are $10 for the panel discussions and are available on a first-come first-served basis.
Show Information
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 as follows:
Thursday March 17 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday March 18 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday March 19 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sunday March 20 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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 202-367-1158 or visit http://www.aipad.com/.
Gala Benefit Preview
The AIPAD Photography Show New York will present a Gala Benefit Preview on Wednesday, March 16 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. 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 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ($5,000 4 tickets)
Patron 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ($750, 1 ticket)
Sponsor 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ($250, 1 ticket)
Friend 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ($100, 1 ticket)
For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact The Museum of Modern Art, 212/708-9680 or email specialevents@moma.orgs
Related: Monroe Gallery of Photography at the 2011 AIPAD Photography Show
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare
Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle
PHOTOGRAPHY
How Photography Shifted the Balance of the Civil Rights Movement
Leigh Raiford — Twitter and Facebook may be the civil uprising tools du jour, but they certainly weren't the first. Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare discusses how photography helped bring Southern brutalities to light and sustained the African American Civil Rights movement.
Figure i.1. (above) - Firemen blast protestors with high-pressure hoses, corner of Fifth Ave. North and 17th Street, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Photograph by Charles Moore. (Charles Moore/Black Star)
For nearly two weeks in early May of 1963, national and international audiences rose each morning to images of violence, confrontation, and resistance splashed across the front pages of their major newspapers. Black-and-white photographs paraded daily through the New York Times and the Washington Post depicted white police officers in Birmingham, Alabama, wielding high-powered fire hoses and training police dogs on nonviolent black and often very young protesters (figures i.1, i.2). Organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), "Project C" (for "confrontation") brought center stage the publicly unacknowledged terror, violence, and daily inequities African Americans had long suffered at the hands of white southerners. Through forced confrontations between blacks and whites, between constitutional right and segregationist practice, between the genteel, progressive image of the New South and the dehumanizing Old South reality, the thousands of men, women, and children who participated in Project C confronted a watching world with the contradictions of contemporary southern race relations. They vividly and visually challenged an entire economic and social regime of power.
A year later, SCLC's leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recognized the importance of such vivid imagery in galvanizing support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King wrote of the campaign in his book Why We Can't Wait, "The brutality with which officials would have quelled the black individual became impotent when it could not be pursued with stealth and remain unobserved. It was caught - as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught - in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world." For King, the visual media proved a crucial component in capturing "fugitive" brutality, holding it still for scrutiny and transmitting this "naked truth" to watching and judging audiences.
Figure i.2. - William Gadsen attacked by police dogs in front of 16th Street Baptist Church, during a nonviolent protest, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Photograph by Bill Hudson (AP Photos/Bill Hudson)
King praises photography and film for their work of exposure, revealing through mechanical reproduction facts that had remained hidden and therefore difficult to prove. By the time King penned Why We Can't Wait, he had witnessed, deployed, and been the subject of photographs of movement events both spectacular and quotidian. He believed deeply in their power to image African Americans as U.S. citizens who, like their white counterparts, were deserving of equal treatment. Images of the broken body of Emmett Till, of whites' abuse of four African American North Carolina A&T students sitting in at a Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter, of baseball bats and firebombs that greeted Freedom Riders in Mississippi and Alabama bus stations each reveal how vulnerable African Americans were when demonstrating for the most basic and fundamental of rights. They laid bare to nonblack audiences what African Americans of the Jim Crow era had long known, seen, and experienced. With bright enough lights and an army of cameras trained in the right direction, images were central to changing public opinion about the violent entrenchment of white supremacy in the South and that system's overdetermination of black life and possibility. The visual proved a tool as effective as bus boycotts and as righteous as nonviolence.
But white violence and black resistance are not the only captives imprisoned within the camera's luminous glare and vigilant eye. For many viewers today, almost the entirety of the civil rights movement is captured, quite literally, in the photographs of Birmingham 1963. These images have shaped and informed the ways scholars, politicians, artists, and everyday people recount, remember, and memorialize the 1960s freedom struggle specifically and movement histories generally. The use and repetition of movement photographs in contexts as varied as electoral campaigns, art exhibits, commercials, and, of course, academic histories have crystallized many of these photographs into icons, images that come to distill and symbolize a range of complex events and ideologies. These icons, in turn, become integral to processes of national, racial, and political identity formation. Even as these photographs mark movement participants' attempts to rewrite the meaning of black bodies in public space, the photographs also imprison - frame and "iconize" - images of legitimate leadership, appropriate forms of political action, and the proper place of African Americans within the national imaginary. The repeated use of many of the more recognizable photographs of African American social movements has had a "surplus symbolic value" in the work of constructing and reconstructing our collective histories. And they become guides to appropriate forms of future political action. Photographs become tools to aid memory. We are invited, expected, even demanded to recount and memorialize. To remember. But what exactly are we being asked to remember? How are we being asked to remember? And to what end?
King's apt phrase "imprisoned in a luminous glare" as metaphor for the work of the camera in African American social movements alerts us to the dialectical relationships between mass media and mass movements, photography and race, history and memory. It also suggests the tensions between captivity and fugitivity, the contradictions inherent in attempting to fix that which by its nature is mobile and mercurial. It calls attention to how mass media attempt to capture mass movements, photography tries to name and regulate "race," and history works to tame memory. The photograph in particular imposes a unitary vision and helps fix the meaning of that which it records. It provides the illusion of seeing an event in its entirety as it truly happened.
Figure i.3 - Crowd watches Birmingham protests; Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Photograph by Charles Moore. (Charles Moore/Black Star
They were less interested in the desegregation of public spaces than in economic equity. In the photographs we might catch them with their arms folded, intransigent witnesses. But outside the picture's frame they threw bottles and shouted obscenities at Bull Connor's police force. Subsequently, they were disciplined by the Birmingham police, by the organizers of Project C, and by the photographic frame that excised them from the documentary evidence of those events. The now-iconic photographs from Birmingham 1963, as noted by King, imprison Jim Crow order; yet what remains elusive in this framing is the expansive expressions of black political desire, constantly changing and evolving over the course of the twentieth century.
From IMPRISONED IN A LUMINOUS GLARE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE by Leigh Raiford. Copyright © 2011 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu
Leigh Raiford is associate professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle is available from the University of North Carolina Press and Amazon.com
Thursday, March 3, 2011
COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY: Beauty Before Age?
A later print of Edward Weston’s Shell (Nautilus), 1927, may appeal to "buyers who can’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Denise Bethel of Sotheby’s. © Edward Weston Estate, Sotheby’s
As prices for vintage photographs rise, some collectors are forgoing the aura of an original in favor of a sharper image.
Via Art + Auction Magazine
At Christie’s New York last April, a rare signed print from 1925 of Imogen Cunningham’s exotic close-up "Magnolia Blossom" (est. $250-350,000) sold for $242,500. A month later at Swann Galleries, in New York, another print of the same image brought just $31,200. Why the disparity? The Swann version was "late," executed in the 1960s or ’70s, while the Christie’s one was vin- tage. In the photography market, where rarity and provenance are revered, those designations mean the difference between six figures and seven. For young collectors, they also mean the difference between an unattainable treasure and a prize within their financial grasp.
A vintage print must have been made from the original negative within a variable but typically short span of years from the date the image was taken and with the artist’s direct involvement. Later, or modern, prints are also made from original negatives but beyond the time limit for vintage designation, and they may be executed by the photographer himself, by technicians or collaborators working under his supervision, or posthumously, with the authorization of the artists’s estate. Vintage material is increasingly rare. As a result, says Denise Bethel, the longtime head of photography at Sotheby’s New York, "we are seeing an even bigger increment in price between the early print and the later print."
"Shell (Nautilus)," a vintage print from 1927 by the American photographer Edward Weston, was the first photo to exceed $100,000 at auction, going for $115,500 at Sotheby’s in 1989 to the noted Houston collector Alexandra R. Marshall. She consigned it back to the house in October 2007, when it brought an artist record $1.1 million (est. $600-900,000). This past April yet another early print of the image from a private collection turned up at Sotheby’s and, in the middle of a market downturn, still made $1.08 million, far exceeding its cautious estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
Six-figure sums may be out of reach for some aficionados but they have alternatives. Consider another "Shell," this one executed in the 1970s by Weston’s son Cole. Put up in March 2009, again at Sotheby’s, and estimated at a quite modest $5,000 to $7,000, the picture was snapped up for $8,125. "There’s a whole group of new buyers who can’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars but would be very happy to have the Cole Weston print, which, by the way, is beautiful," says Bethel, "because Cole was an absolutely amazing printer and worked with his dad, so he knew what he was aiming for."
Swann Galleries photography specialist Daile Kaplan concurs. "We’re seeing more and more clients, younger clients in particular, who know the image and want a [later] copy of it," she says. "I don’t see any reason to be reluctant [to buy a modern print] as long as the photograph has been authorized by the photographer. To me, the modern print is simply another interpretation of that original negative."
Later interpretations are often larger than the originals. Size, which enhances their wall power, adds to these prints’ value. Last October at Swann, a 20-by-16-inch print, made no later than 1967, of André Kertész’s gorgeous 1954 shot of a snow-covered Washington Square (est. $6,000-9,000), which was taken from his Greenwich Village studio, brought $22,800. In December 2009 a 10-by-8-inch print dating to the early to mid 1970s of the same image and carrying the same estimate sold for $10,200, also at Swann.
© Estate of Andre Kertesz, Swann Auction Galleries, New York
In addition to greater size, the presence of a photographer’s signature also increases the value of a modern print. Those executed closer to the date of the original shot generally command higher prices, as well. This may not be the case with every image by photographers who keep close control on their later prints. For instance, although some of Kertész’s modern prints were made 30 to 50 years later than the vintage versions, the artist authorized them. "Kertész did not print them," Kaplan explains. "A technician did, and [Kertész] signed off on the ones he felt were representative."
The clarity and beauty of the image, of course, are also major determinants of value. And here later prints may rival their vintage counterparts, at least in the eyes of connoisseurs more interested in aesthetics than in the technology’s history. "We are becoming much less focused on the technical processes and much more interested in the quality of the final result," says Josh Holdeman, the head of photography at Christie’s New York, noting that "most photographers don’t even make their own prints, so who cares?"
True, a newer print doesn’t have the golden aura of a vintage one, but many collectors actually prefer the former’s pristine clarity to the latter’s patina of authenticity. "If you have two prints of the same image and one is a vintage print and the other is newer but a far superior object, I think you’re going to have a much easier time [selling] the object that is a better picture," says Holdeman. He points to the example of William Eggleston’s striking dye-transfer print "Untitled (Near Minter City and Glendora, Mississippi)," 1970, which shows an African-American woman in a lime-green dress walking alongside a road. The picture was shot around 1970 and printed in three editions of 15, done in the 1970s, 1986, and 1999. "The one from 1999 is superior," says Holdeman. "The colors are [more] saturated. The dress really pops. That’s the one that will carry a premium over the old concepts of what equals value." Indeed, an example from this edition sold at Christie’s New York last October for $98,500 (est. $40-60,000). By comparison, a print from the 1986 edition brought $66,000 (est. $70-90,000) at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York in April 2007 — the height of the market.
Another instance in which later may trump vintage is Cindy Sherman’s "Untitled Film Stills." Most of the 30-by-40-inch photos in the series were shot and printed on cheap poster paper in the late 1970s, when they were selling for well under $1,000, before the artist’s market ignited, and, says Holdeman, "a lot of them have turned brown." Metro Pictures, Sherman’s longtime dealer in New York, confirms that some of the prints have not held up well. "The problems that a few owners encountered were paper yellowing or some of the chemicals from the print changing color, producing a pink discoloration in some parts of the image," says Metro’s Andrew Russeth. "In [a few cases], a new photo would be printed and the poster print was destroyed, so this did not create a new edition of works."
The Sherman reprints are more desirable than the originals, according to Holdeman, although he has had some trouble convincing longtime photography collectors of this. "I have to explain that their vintage "Film Still" is not one that the market wants right now. And they say, ‘No way, it’s the vintage print, and it’s the real object.’ I tell them that in the context of the current market, their vintage print would be rejected for a brand-new one that’s sparkling white."
One artist who has been particularly well served by late prints is Diane Arbus. After her death, Neil Selkirk, a photographer friend of Arbus’s, was hired by her estate to make prints of her photos from the original negatives, working closely with another of the artist’s friends, Marvin Israel. "I’m generally not interested in posthumous prints," says the San Francisco photography dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel, "but Diane Arbus’s case is sui generis. A number of pictures that have entered the canon as great Arbuses she did not live to make finished prints of."
The printing done by Selkirk, who consulted with Arbus before she died and who describes his efforts as "a committed attempt to precisely duplicate the existing prints of hers," is well received both critically and in the market. Some, such as "A Puerto Rican Housewife, New York City, 1963," debuted in the Museum of Modern Art’s Arbus retrospective in 1972.
"Not only are Selkirk’s prints respected by museums," says Fraenkel, "but it’s virtually impossible to do a true survey of Arbus’s achievements without them." Fraenkel has Arbus/Selkirk prints in his inventory priced between $11,000 and $14,000. Among these are copies of "A Naked Man Being a Woman, N.Y.C.," 1968, and "Girl with a Cigar in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C.," 1965. He has also sold a rare vintage print from 1967 of "Identical Twins (Cathleen and Colleen), Roselle, N.J." for $900,000. A vintage print of the same image came up at Sotheby’s in April 2004 and fetched $478,400. Another appeared last October at Christie’s New York, but a previous owner had trimmed the edges, so it bought in against an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. The auction record for a vintage print by Arbus is $553,000, set at Sotheby’s in April 2008 by "A Family on the Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, N.Y.," 1968 (est. $200-300,000). Selkirk prints dating from the 1970s through the ’90s have hit the six-figure mark at auction. The circa 1972-73 print of "Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C.," 1962 (est. $100-150,000), for example, made $229,000 at Christie’s in October 2007.
As much as later printed works are gaining acceptance, there remains a strong preference for vintage material. "Serious collectors, those specifically interested in photography as a medium, are always looking for a print closest to the source," says the New York photography dealer Deborah Bell, who shows such New York Street photographers as Sid Kaplan and Marcia Resnick, "[both] the ones who have been around for a long time [and] people just starting out." As more price-conscious collectors enter the classic-photography market and encounter the relative abundance and clarity of later printed works, however, the long allegiance to vintage will be increasingly tested.
"Beauty Before Age" originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's February 2011 Table of Contents.
Related: COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY - If you don't think photography is worth collecting, you're missing the big picture
ERIC SMITH: THE PATRIOT GUARD AND THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH
Patriot Guard with local children, Hudsonville, Michigan, 2006
The recent Supreme Court ruling recalls the photojournalism of Eric Smith as he documented the Patriot Guard's protection of military families from the Westboro Baptist Church protesters:
Pasatiempo
The New Mexican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entrainment, and Culture
August 3, 2007
Elizabeth Cook-Romero I The New Mexican
Uncivil wars in Middle America
Patriot Guard, Hudsonville, Michigan, 2006
Photojournalist Eric Smith has gone in search of Middle America, which he defines as the people living in the nation’s small towns and the less-than-glamorous cities far from the coasts. “Middle America drives our economy, defines popular culture, and fights our wars,” Smith said during a recent phone interview from his home in Auburn Hills, Mich.
He insists that without the interest of people who live far from major urban centers, Britney Spears would have been quickly forgotten.
Smith isn’t an economist, and he admits that perhaps he’s wrong about the cultural impact of the spending power of small towns. But an Associated Press study has confirmed his belief about their importance to the Iraq war: half of U.S. troops killed in Iraq came from communities with fewer than 25,000 people. And one in five soldiers hails from a town with fewer than 5,000 residents, according to AP.
In Michigan’s towns Smith witnessed the funerals of U. S. soldiers killed in Iraq; the Rev. Fred Phelps and his congregation from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., who picket the funerals of dead soldiers and hold signs with crude messages expressing their belief that U. S. troops die because an avenging God is angry with America’s tolerance of homosexuality; and thousands of men and women who roar into those towns on Harley-Davidson motorcycles to pay respect to their fallen heroes. The clash of beliefs Smith witnessed at those funerals spurred the photo project In America — The War and Patriotism.
Sidney and Michelle Monroe, owners of Monroe Gallery of Photography, saw Smith’s In America — War & Patriotism and Middle America images during a portfolio review sponsored by the Center for Photography, now known simply as Center. Smith is the first new artist the gallery has agreed to represent in several years, Michelle Monroe said. The Monroes felt his work builds on the humanist traditions of the gallery’s more established artists, such as Berenice Abbott and Gordon Parks. Two of Smith’s photographs are included in Speak Truth to Power, which runs through Sept. 23; more hang in an alcove in back of the main gallery.
While Smith’s Middle America captures moments most Americans will easily recognize as examples of our diversity — a woman installing a National Rifle Association display at the Lenawee County Fair in Adrian, Mich.; the white hearse at Rosa Parks’ funeral in Detroit — War & Patriotism may leave people feeling as if they are looking into a distorted mirror or a parallel universe.
“I started following an organization called the Patriot Guard Riders,” Smith said. “ They are all bikers; most are Vietnam veterans.” About three years ago members of the Patriot Guard Riders started showing up at military funerals to create a barrier between the families and friends of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who were picketing those funerals with signs that read “America is doomed” and “God hates fags.” Most American Christians might believe that God loves everyone, but Westboro’s Web site posts a 94- page manifesto that calls that belief “ the greatest lie ever told.”
At military funerals, members of the church have greeted mourners with sneers and hateful rhetoric, and that, Smith said, has touched a raw nerve in many Vietnam veterans.
For members of the Patriot Guard Riders, creating a barrier out of flags and their own bodies is cathartic, Smith said. “They do not want these kids treated as they were treated — spit on and harassed. For a lot of these guys, this is a response to the treatment they received more than 30 years ago.” In his photographs, Smith has captured moments when the spit and polish of military honor guards has found common ground with white-haired, bearded, leather-clad bikers.
World War II Veteran with Patriot Guard Captian, Lake Orion, Michigan, 2006
Westboro Baptist Church members haven’t shown up at the recent military funerals Smith attended, but the Patriot Guard Riders keep coming. “They now claim 100,000 members nationally,” he said of the bikers. “They’ll do whatever the family wants them to do. They’ll form a flag line; they’ll join the procession to the grave. Sometimes they lead that procession.”
Many talk about parallels between the Iraq war and Vietnam: official lies led the nation into both wars, which quickly became quagmires, Smith said, but perhaps the deepest connection is visible during these funerals, as one generation offers another the respect it longed for but never received. “Almost all the funerals I have attended are in small¬town America,” Smith said. “Quite often, not just the Patriot Guard but half the town shows up.”
Smith took a picture at a funeral in a high- school gymnasium in Morley, Mich. “ The town’s so small that two towns had to come together to build a high school, but it was standing room only with 500 bikers lined up outside,” he said. “A lot of these kids were football players and popular. They are 18, 19, 20, or 21 — fresh out of high school — so the whole school shows up.”
Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Morley, Michigan,2006
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