PFA
Newsletter
Photography in the Fine Arts Quarterly
Vol 26 No.4 November 2009
Photographs
by Elliott Erwitt
and
ENCORE! More of 'The Art of Photography Today'
November 6, 2009-January 2, 2010
Photographs
by Elliott Erwitt
The Camera
Obscura Gallery proudly presents an exhibition of photographs by renowned
MAGNUM Agency photographer, Elliott Erwitt.
Best known for his candid black & white images celebrating everyday
life, Elliott Erwitt's delightful photographs are masterpieces of spontaneity,
often capturing ironic and whimsical moments. The exhibit, shown in
our main North Gallery I, comprises twenty original gelatin silver photographs
selected from Mr. Erwitt's vast archive and includes several of his
most notable images. Elliott Erwitt's career as photojournalist and
film-maker is distinguished. His photographs have appeared in innumerable
publications and monographs and are included in major collections around
the world. The Camera Obscura Gallery will offer a selection of his
most recent books for sale during the exhibition.
Elliott
Erwitt
(American, born 1928)
Born in
Paris of Russian parents, Elio Romano Erwitt spent much of his childhood
in Italy. His father Boris Erwitt was an architect by training and his
mother Evgenia, the daughter of a well-established Moscovian family,
occasionally took up painting and drawing. At age 11, due to the growing
anti-Semitism in Europe the family immigrated to the United States in
1939 on the last peacetime voyage of the Ile de France.
Elliott Erwitt studied photography at Los Angeles City College (1942-1944)
and shortly thereafter began to support himself shooting weddings and
babies, in addition to other odd jobs at the local soda fountain and
bakery. Later on he was able to attend the New School for Social Research
(1948-1950) studying film. After serving as a photographic assistant
in the United States Army Signal Corps in Germany and in France, Erwitt
returned to New York.
1950 was a fortuitous year for Erwitt in that he met Edward Steichen,
Robert Capa and Roy Stryker, and ended up working for Standard Oil Company
under the former head of the fabled Farm Security Administration. In
1956 Edward Steichen curated several of his pieces into the renowned
"Family of Man" exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
From 1950 to 1952, Erwitt was a freelance photographer for Collier's,
Look, Life and Holiday. By 1953 he was an associate member at Magnum
and became a full member in 1954. Over the years Erwitt has shot journalistic
essays throughout the world and taken up numerous commercial assignments
for Air France, KLM, and Chase Manhattan Bank, among others.
Erwitt's initial claim to fame stemmed from his image of the "kitchen
debate"-Nikita Khruschev and Richard Nixon arguing in front of
a Westinghouse refrigerator at the American exhibition in Moscow in
1959. His most requested image, however, according to Magnum, is from
the Civil Rights era in the United States. The image is of two water
fountains: the first and obviously newer of the two is labeled WHITE,
the second fountain is an older mechanism and designated for COLORED.
A black gentleman hovers over the latter but looks over to the fancy
fixture next to his. This haunting document is, like Robert Frank's
work, a pointed commentary of civil unjust.
Since the 1970s, he has turned much of his energy toward movies. His
feature films, television commercials and documentaries include "Beauty
Knows No Pain" (1971), "Red, White and Bluegrass" (1973)
and the prize-winning "Glassmakers of Herat, Afghanistan"
(1977).
- Biography courtesy of Jennifer Stoots
Encore!
More of
"The Art of Photography Today"
As jurors of "The Art of Photography Today" competition, we
were confronted with almost 1400 images from 400 contributors, of which
82 photographs had to be selected for exhibition in the two gallery
rooms of The Camera Obscura Gallery. It took four days to eliminate
the bulk of the entries, leaving approximately 110 images to be narrowed
down to the final 82. Two more days of careful consideration determined
the finalists. The group of 25 left out prompted the comment: "These
remaining images are interesting and strong enough to create an exhibition
by themselves."
So, we have decided to do just that!
ENCORE! will be shown in the new South Gallery II room of The Camera
Obscura Gallery. The exhibition will include 22 photographs by 21 artists.
We hope you will appreciate this selection and new artists as much as
we have, and in that regard, we would like to invite you, the viewing
public, to please vote for your choice of Best Of Show. A $100 gift
certificate will be awarded to the winning artist.
Thank you for your participation. It has been a great year for photography
in Denver.
HAPPENINGS
Denver
Arts Week
First Friday, Nov 6 kicks off Denver Arts Week. This year's theme is
"Know Your Artists". Many Golden Triangle Museum District
galleries will have artists present during the First Friday Arts celebration.
Saturday, November 7 is Night at the Museums with shuttle buses coming
from Cherry Creek Mall into the Golden Triangle Museum District. Museums
will stay open until 10 p.m. that evening.
November 10 is the opening of the Golden Triangle Museum District's
Plein Air Art Festival hosted by the Denver Public Library, 7th floor
Gallery. The exhibit runs through Dec 31. Visit www.gtmd.org
for more information.
The Photography Show New York
The Association
of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has announced their
annual New York Photography Show will be held March 18-21, 2010 at the
Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Visit www.aipad.com
to learn more.
FOTOFEST 2010
Houston's
celebrated month-long photography festival, FOTOFEST, will be held in
2010 from March 12 through April 1. Visit www.fotofest.org
to learn more.
Call
for Entries
"
Center for Fine Art Photography:
Elements of Water-deadline Nov 17. www.c4fap.org
"
Working With Artists:
Wee: Small Works-deadline Nov. 17. www.workingwithartists.org
IN
MEMORIAM
Irving
Penn
(1917-2009)
American
master of fashion photography, Irving Penn, passed away on October 7.
He was 92.
Born in Philadelphia in 1917, Penn was initially trained as painter
at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. He moved to New
York in 1938 and worked as art director for Saks Fifth Avenue. After
four years he quit to travel to Mexico to paint. He soon became disillusioned
with painting and returned to New York where he took a position designing
cover shots for Vogue magazine. As a notorious perfectionist, he was
continuously dissatisfied with the images made by their staff photographers,
and began making his own. His first cover image appeared in October
1943; he went on to create more than 150 covers for Vogue.
Irving Penn was one of the first photographic artists to cross the border
from fashion and commercial work to fine art. His photographs have appeared
in countless museum and gallery shows, have been published in numerous
monographs and are widely collected.
Willy
Ronis
(1910-2009)
Noted French
photographer Willy Ronis passed away in September at the age of 99.
A member of the famous circle of French photographers which includes
Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau, Ronis became known for the
spontaneous style of photographic reportage, with the sensitive documentation
of the human condition which defined their work.
Born in Paris in 1910 to Jewish immigrants who fled Tsarist Russia in
the Crimea, Willy Ronis' career in photography was influenced by his
father, Emmanuel Ronis, an accomplished photographer and retouch artist,
although his first ambition was to become a composer; while still in
his teens he had already composed a number of pieces.
Ronis' life in photography took him from the work in his father's studio
to his pursuit of the "Nouvelle Vision". He found great inspiration
in the street life of Paris. After WWII, he had numerous assignments
for LIFE magazine and was asked to join the newly formed Rapho, an agency
who had established a new philosophy on reportage, concentrating on
"humanistic" themes, and whose membership already included
Ergy Landau, Nora Dumas, Robert Doisneau, Emile Savitry and Brassai.
He continued his relationship with the agency through 1955.
Throughout his career, Ronis' work has been featured in numerous exhibitions
and has been the subject of more than twenty publications.
The photography of Willy Ronis is indeed an important contribution to
Twentieth Century Art. Made during a time of changing ideas about art
and photography, his photographs are at the forefront of modernist art,
not only in France, but also throughout the world. The Camera Obscura
Gallery held two exhibitions of his work.
Bill
Jay
(1940-2009)
Publisher,
educator, photo historian, author and photographer, Bill Jay, died in
August at his home in Costa Rica.
Originally from London, Bill Jay was the first director for the Institute
of Contemporary Arts in London and editor of Creative Camera Magazine.
He moved to the US to study at the University of New Mexico under Van
Deren Coke and Beaumont Newhall. He began teaching at Arizona State
University in 1972 where he founded their Photographic Studies program.
Best known for his portraits of photographers and his critical writings,
Jay published numerous books and contributed to periodicals such as
Lenswork, for which he wrote the column "EndNotes". He also
wrote several introductions to artist monographs including Jerry N.
Uelsmann, Bill Brandt and Michael Kenna.
Bill Jay's vast archive is now housed at the Center for Creative Photography
in Tucson.
EXHIBITIONS
Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, 303.298.7554 Matthew Buckingham,
through Jan 10, 2010.
Flash Gallery, Lakewood, CO, 303.837.1341, Identity, through
Nov 8.
The Center for Fine Art Photography, Ft. Collins, CO, 970.224.1010,
Call for current show information.
Blueline Gallery, Florence, CO 719.784.2476, The Photography
of Gushikawa with Joyce Desmond, J.Patrick Bernard and Alan Miller,
Nov 7-Dec 11.
Open Shutter Gallery, Durango, CO Spirit of the West,
through Nov 21.
SF Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Richard Avedon,
through Nov 29.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, Diana Thater:
Butterflies and Other People, through Jan 31, 2010.
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Irving Penn: Small Trades,
through Jan 10.
Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA Beloved Daughters:
Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, through Jan 31.
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, John Gutmann:
the Photographer at Work, through Jan 31.
International Center of Photography, NYC, Dress Codes: The
Third ICP Triennial of Photography, all through Jan 17 .
Museum of Modern Art, NYC, New Photography 2009, through
Jan 11.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Robert Frank's The Americans,
through Jan 3.
George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, How do We Look; What
We're Collecting Now; and Picturing Rochester, all through
Jan 24.
Auction
Report
Autumn
in New York City is Photograph Auction time at the four major auction
houses, which held seven sales in five days with a total of 1,107 images
offered, of which 727 lots sold for $10,470, 948.
First on the docket was Phillips de Pury and Co. However they elected
to combine the photograph sale with a selection of Modernist paintings
and another selection of interior designs, all on the theme of Latin
America. In the photograph sale they offered 69 lots by Latin artists
including Vic Muniz, Luis Gonzales Palma, Graciela Iturbide, Albert
Korda, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti, etc., as well as Latin subjects
by international artists such as Anton Bruehl, Cartier-Bresson, Paul
Strand, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Frank, Sebastiao
Salgado, et al. 38 lots sold for $380,464. Top price lots were: Vic
Muniz (Brazilian, b. 1961) Sacred Ludovica, est. $20,000-30,000,
sold for $42,500; and Michael Eastman (American, b. 1947) Green Dining
Room, Cuba, est. $20,000-30,000, went for $25,000.
The real auctions started on October 6, with 292 lots offered by Bloomsbury,
including a Special Collection of Weegee Prints form the property of
Suzanne and Hugh Johnston, who had started collecting Weegee between
1956 and 1961. 49 lots were offered, of which only five sold, mostly
below the estimate of $2,000-3,000. Other images in the sale did not
do much better, although they were high quality images by big name artists
such as Karsh, Cartier-Bresson, Berenice Abbott, Andreas Feininger,
Avedon, Capa, Doisneau, Bill Brandt, Ralph Gibson, Salgado, O.W. Link,
Duane Michals, Kertesz, etc. Top lots were: William Klein (b. 1928)
Album of New York-188 black & white plates, est. $5,000-7,000,
sold for $6,500. Eugene Atget (1857-1927), St. Etienne du Mont rue
de la Montagne Sainte Genevieve, 1898, est. $6,000-8,000, sold for
$5,000. Sales were disappointing with only one third of the lots finding
a buyer.
Next day October 7, 2 PM, Christie's presented their first of four shows,
The American Landscape: Color Photographs from the Collection of Bruce
and Nancy Berman. 189 lots were offered, of which 166 sold for $1,544,625.
Over 60 of the photographs were by William Eggleston and others by William
Christenbury, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Robert Polidori, Alex Sloth,
and Richard Misrach, mostly from 1955 to the present day contemporary
artists who have contributed to the transformation of color photography.
Top lots were: Bruce Davidson (b. 1933), Subway, 1980, 47 dye-transfer
prints, 15x22", #5/6, est. $150,000-250,000, sold for $146,500;
Richard Misrach (b. 1949) Untitled, #13-02, from On the Beach, chromogentic
print #4/5, 51x121", est. $30,000-50,000, went for $68,500; Richard
Misrach, The Santa Fe, 1982, chromogenic print, 38x47 ½",
est. $20,000-30,000, brought $47,500; Robert Polidori (b. 1940), 2732
Orleans Ave, New Orleans, LA, 2005, chromogenic print 33x48"
, est. $10,000-15,000, sold for $47,500; William Eggleston (b, 1939)
Untitled 1983, chromogenic print, 11x7 ½", est. $4,000-6,000,
went for $27,500.
October 7, 5 PM, Christie's second show, Photographs by Sally Mann,
offering 58 lots, of which 47 sold for $667,625, mostly all nude studies
of her young children. Top lot: Sally Mann (b.1951) Candy Cigarette,
1989, gelatin silver print, 18 ¾ 23 ¼ ", est.
$30,000-50,000, went for $68,500; The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude,
1987, est. $15,000-25,000, sold for $40,000; Virginia #36,
2004, 50x40" print, est. $15,000-20,000, brought $24,500; Jessie
in the Wind, 1989, gelatin silver print, 19x23", est. $15,000-25,000,
sold for $27,500.
October 8, 10 AM, Christie's third show: The Miller-Plummer Collection
of Photographs. Harvey Shipley Miller and Randall Plummer began to collect
photographs in 1973. Their first joint purchase, from the Schoelkopf
Gallery in New York, was Julia Margaret Cameron's celebrated portrait
of Sir John Herschel-a work whose power convinced Shipley Miller
that photography was not simply a technical stepchild of the arts, as
he had hitherto believed.
The collection consisted of 117 lots, of which 88 lots sold for $1,832,625.
Top lots were: Marcus Aurelius Root (1808-1888), Anthony Pritchard,
ca. 1850, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 4 ¼ x 3 ¼ ",
est. $ 20,000-30,000, sold for $350,500; Alexander Gardner (1821-1882),
Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War, Vol 1 and 2-100
albumen prints bound in two folio volumes, est. $40,000-60,000, sold
for $92,500; Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Destitute Pea Picker, California
(Migrant Mother), 1936, est. $40,000-60,000, went for $86,500; Heinrich
Kuerhn (1866-1944), In Bacino di San Marco, Venizia, 1898, gum-bichromate
print, 20x25", est. $40,000-60,000, brought $86,500. Lots of varied
and rare collectibles in these offerings, with many buyers at high prices.
Christie's fourth sale, 2 PM October 8: Photographs, presented 117 lots,
of which 88 sold for a total of $1,832,625. Top lots were Robert Frank
(b. 1924), Fish Kill, NY 1955, gelatin silver printed 1969, the
most frequently reproduced image from The Americans before the book
came out, est. $60,000-90,000, sold for $170,500; Baron Adolph de Meyer
(1868-1946), Water Lilies, 1900, platinum print, 10x13"
est. $150,000-250,000, sold for $170,500; William Eggleston, Greenwood,
Mississippi, 1973, dye-transfer, 30x40", est. $150,000-250,000,
sold for $158,500; Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Portfolio 3: Yosemite
Valley, 16 prints, est. $50,000-70,000, brought $158,500. A notable
non-seller was Edward S. Curtis' complete 20-volume set The North American
Indian, est. $700,000-900,000-two years ago a similar set sold for $1,200,000.
On October 9, Sotheby's offered their sale of 243 lots, of which 192
sold for $3,571,754. Top lots were Robert Frank, McClelland, SC (Barber
shop through screen door), 9x13", est. $30,000-50,000, sold
for $182,500; Man Ray (1890-1976), Lee Miller and Friend, Paris,
1930s, 8x6" , est. $60,000-80,000, went for $98,500. Ansel
Adams, Moonrise Over Hernandez, NM, 15x19", est. $25,000-35,000,
sold for $40,000. Lots of wonderful images still coming to the market!
Quarterly Quotes
"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding
something interesting in an ordinary place… I've found it has little
to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you
see them"
Elliott Erwitt
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