Art Photo Collector

“We tremble at the feelings we experience as our sense of wholeness is reorganized by what we see.”—Emmet Gowin

The Finnish-born photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is once again garnering the attention she merits. Experiencing something of a notoriety renaissance for her “Byker” series beginning in the late 60’s (currently on view at L. Parker Stephenson Photographs until May 11th), it’s exciting to see Ms. Konttinen reaching new audiences. 

Konttinen’s images, taken within the communities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, sought to capture the humor and dignity of working-class Geordie culture as they, like other poor neighborhoods in the north of England, saw their homes devastated by developers keen to tear down the “slums” and replace them with architectural and planning fantasies that bore no connection to the people actually living there. Konttinen and friends, as part of the the still extant Amber Collective, lived in Byker from 1969-76 and documented the impact over a ten year period until 1980. These photographs should, therefore, be understood for their political and social undertones.

Aside from their didactic message, Konttinen’s images possess the power of intimacy and connection. The wonderful compositions and tonal ranges add to their beauty; however, it is the emotive energy in the images that sets them apart. I, for one, feel the love. —Lane Nevares

“I believe the power of seeing the world as fresh and strange lies hidden in every human being.”—Bill Brandt (b.1904-d.1983)

Bill Brandt is rightly regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th Century. On the 6th, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened a major exhibit, ”Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light,” as an opportunity for us to reevaluate Brandt’s legacy and to retrace his artistic journey.

More than 150 works are divided into six distinct sections, offering a tight and cohesive survey of Brandt’s artistic development: including his work in WWII London, Northern England, landscapes, portraits and of course his famed nudes. Many of the prints in the exhibition are stunning to behold, the best of their kind, and reveal the work of a superb craftsman. The opportunity to see these prints, first-hand, is a must for anyone who appreciates Brandt’s work.

Along with MoMA’s adjacent (and excellent) exhibit “The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook,” there’s no finer way to spend an afternoon in the city enveloped in a “sense of wonder.” —Lane Nevares

“They were … pure and unadulterated photographs, and sometimes they hinted at the existence of visual truths that had escaped all other systems of detection.”—John Szarkowski

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has recently opened, for the first time in 25 years, a major retrospective of the singular American photographer, Garry Winogrand. This is a big deal. The exhibit, organized and curated in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, will later travel to DC and then on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this summer. Given Winogrand’s importance in the history of 20th Century photography, this will be one of the major shows of 2013.

Professional photographers, long before the days of digital, have always burned through rolls of film, snapping thousands and thousands of images. Winogrand was no exception. When he passed in 1984, he left behind dozens of marked-up proof sheets and more than 6,500 rolls of undeveloped film containing more than 250,000 images. What makes this retrospective particularly important is that nearly a third of the images in the show have never been printed or exhibited, creating a renewed and exciting opportunity to take a greater in-depth look at Winogrand’s legacy. 

The forthcoming monograph to accompany the exhibit will also provide scholars and enthusiasts with a comprehensive resource for examining his importance and lasting influence on photography. Winogrand forever changed how photographers see, but it’s also worth noting that he expanded the possibilities of what happens in the frame. —Lane Nevares

“It (taking photographs) is all about longing…without longing—no pictures at all.”  —Anders Petersen

One of the nicest gifts I received this year is Anders Petersen’s latest monograph, ”Soho.” In collaboration with London’s noted Photographers’ Gallery and Mack Books, Petersen was given a four-week residency last year to shoot images of an area in London known for many things to many people. For Petersen, it was an opportunity to return to a place he’d known in the 70’s and could re-discover, thirty years later, through the lens.

While there are many impressive photographers working today, Anders Petersen is one of the finest. I am consistently astonished at the power of his photographs. His ability to infuse images with a poetic gaze that senses fragility and yearns for Beauty is the mark of an artist in love with his craft, and more importantly, in love with people. I can keep returning to his work and always find something deeper, more resonant. 

For a peek inside the book here’s a video. But I recommend discovering his work, first hand, in print. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in the magic of the photobook. —Lane Nevares

You, me and Sotheby’s. Last exciting auction tour of the season is coming up this Wednesday. Please join me for fun, intellectual stimulation, and what will be a thrilling auction.  Hope to see you there. —Lane Nevares

“Reality is always extraordinary.”   — Mary Ellen Mark 

For many people, Mary Ellen Mark’s work needs no introduction. Her latest monograph, Prom, done in collaboration with her husband the film maker, Martin Bell, who also interviewed the sitters, was published in April.  Since then, the exhibit for Prom has traveled: most recently to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and tomorrow night to the Janet Borden Gallery where it will be up until the 19th of January.

With her 20x24 Polaroid Land Camera and signature lighting, Mary Ellen Mark explores the peculiarly American rite-of-passage known as the “Prom.”  While, to my tastes, these portraits are not a departure from her other polaroid portrait series, Twins, this latest body of work is still excellent and distinctively Mary Ellen Mark.

The details matter. Taken over a period of four years and thirteen different High Schools, these photographs, carefully examined, reflect layers of American culture. The clothes, the postures and the gaze—all provide clues. These teens mirror our economic and social realities, and in doing so, reveal ourselves.  —Lane Nevares  

“The world makes up my pictures, not me.” —Lee Friedlander 

Until December 22nd, the Pace/MacGill Gallery on E. 57th St. is hosting a double-shot of Lee Friedlander.  Two exhibits, “Lee Friedlander: Nudes” and “Lee Friedlander: Mannequin” take us into the past and back to the present.  On the second floor, we get to re-visit Friedlander’s acclaimed nudes from the late 70’s and 80’s, while on the 9th, we encounter the first New York presentation of his latest body of work, “Mannequin.” 

Both shows revel in the power of the 35mm camera. Friedlander’s nudes are evocative and immediate.  His hand-held camera work still feels loose and confident. In this new series, “Mannequin” it’s all about composition, perspective, and layers of shadow and light. While past masters like Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott have successfully pursued a similar motif of reflections in a shop window, a modern master like Friedlander leaves his own scent behind. I found that the complexity of these images stirred my mind in many directions—the closer I looked the deeper I got.  Lee Friedlander is approaching his 80’s, yet how many younger photographers can consistently match this caliber of work?  —Lane Nevares

“A single photograph is a mere fragment of an experience and, simultaneously, the distillation of the entire body of one’s experience.” —Shomei Tomatsu

Tomorrow night in Cologne, Germany the Galerie Priska Pasquer will host a vernissage for the great Japanese photographer, Shomei Tomatsu. While still not widely known in the States, Tomatsu is, without question, one of Japan’s most important photographers. 

Born in 1930, Tomatsu came of age in the devastating aftermath of post-WWII Japan. A quiet, reserved and self-taught photographer, he would first go on to document the atomic devastation in Nagasaki as he discusses in this brief video.  Later, however, his work would follow the changing dynamism of Japanese culture and society as it emerged from the war and into the bright lights of capitalism and consumerism.

We can thank the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for first bringing Shomei Tomatsu to the attention of a broader American audience.  Their groundbreaking retrospective, “Skin of the Nation” in 2006, helped us to understand the importance of Tomatsu’s work. And today, Aperture magazine’s latest fall issue #208 displays a Tomatsu image on the cover and a feature on his work in Okinawa.

I invite you to explore Shomei Tomatsu’s legacy and to discover for yourself, why the sensitivity, power and grace of his images have influenced Japanese photography for generations. —Lane Nevares

“I’ve been asked if I think there will ever come a time when all people will come together. I would like to think there will. All we can do is hope and dream and work toward that end. And that’s what I’ve tried to do all my life.” Gordon Parks (1912-2006).

Gordon Parks was an extraordinary man who led an extraordinary life. Few individuals will ever match his range of interests and caliber of work. This humble tumblr post certainly cannot give the man his due.  All I would say to you, dear reader, is that Gordon Parks lived a life that proves anything is possible.

The esteemed Howard Greenberg gallery along with the Gordon Parks Foundation are currently hosting two exhibits celebrating his work in this centennial year of his birth. The shows end soon on October 27th. 

Since it is frankly impossible to represent, here, the breadth of Gordon Parks oeuvre in a couple of his photographs, I’ve chosen these two images of Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli (filming Stromboli) as one tiny example of Parks’ genius. Given the scandalous nature of the circumstances surrounding Bergman and Rossellini at the time, Parks cooly captures the psychological intensity—something he would do again and again throughout a breathtaking and audacious career. He was a Master photographer and polymath, a shining beacon of possibility, and one of my heroes.   —Lane Nevares  

“I wanted to change history and preserve humanity. But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.” —Danny Lyon 

Danny Lyon is one of the greats of American Photography.  He has been walking-the-walk, documenting the people and the struggles in the world since the mid 1960’s. His work is old-school Leica, and he is still in top form hanging with local folk and communicating their lives through his lens.

Lyon’s upcoming exhibit at Churner and Churner gallery, opening October 18th, features work from China’s Shanxi Province, where he traveled between 2005-2009. The show, with over 40 gelatin silver prints on display, reveals Lyon’s reflections and insights on this northeastern Chinese coal country and its people. Lyon, unlike most photographers who shoot and observe passively, has always believed in the photographer as an active participant with his subjects. His new work is true to form. —Lane Nevares

“And why is it good? For its own sake. For magnifying the artist’s process. For exalting the principles of nature, the acquired wisdom of man and that to which he aspires—illuminations.”—Patti Smith

The aforementioned quote is from the preface to Lynn Davis’s monograph, Monument. It elegantly opens up the conversation of why one creates art. Whether it’s poetry, philosophy, prose, painting, sculpture, science, music or photography, the true believers seek the good. Patti Smith and Lynn Davis have been friends a long time. I suppose in their own ways they’ve been fellow travelers.

Lynn Davis’s work, which is widely known and collected, spans continents and invites contemplation. Through her old Rolleiflex camera she captures an austere graciousness in the remnants of civilizations past and present. The unique tone of her prints, seen first hand, is remarkable. But what captivates me most in her work is the spirit of travel, the connection to that inherent part of ourselves that wants to see the world.

Davis’s latest exhibit, “Modern Views of Ancient Treasures,” opens this Friday in Venice, Italy at the National Museum of Archaeology. —Lane Nevares

“Photographs open doors to the past, but they also allow a look into the future.” Sally Mann  

Artists can find inspiration anywhere, but it was a severe horse-riding accident six years ago that catalyzed Sally Mann to create her latest series, “Upon Reflection,” opening tomorrow night at Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Banged-up and physically incapacitated from the accident, Mann did what any artist impelled to create does: she looked within. Unable to carry around her large format camera, Mann took self-portraits whose reflections go deeper than the surface of her skin.

Choosing to use a mid-19th Century historical printing process, ambrotype, (with her own modern modifications) Mann’s handmade prints are a metaphor for her own recovery. These images are blurred, scratched, pitted, grainy, over/under exposed—all providing an organic reflection of an important artist who has never shied away from revealing the depths of her own psyche.  —Lane Nevares 

“I find my muse behind the mystery of youth.” —Natalie Obermaier

Quality work should always be recognized.  Natalie Obermaier’s poetic series, “Cloister the Mews” is featured in the latest issue of Fraction Magazine.  (full disclosure: Nevares Fine Art represents Natalie’s work.) 

Natalie’s work captivates.  With a Hasselblad camera and black & white film, she reveals a sensitivity in her subjects that is a pleasure to encounter.  View her work carefully and the subtleties of light and shadow will resonate. In this brief video Natalie discusses her work and how the muse guides her. Inspiring.  —Lane Nevares

“My work is ultimately about emotion. It is about capturing a moment or a memory.”—Deborah Parkin 

The photographer and mother, Deborah Parkin, tell us that “September is the Cruellest Month.”  This is also the title of her latest series, forthcoming monograph, and new show opening next week in England at the beautiful “Theatre by the Lake” in Keswick, Cumbria. 

I discovered Parkin’s portfolio recently through Aline Smithson’s excellent photo blog Lenscratch. I immediately sensed the power of the work. Parkin’s portraits are deep, poetic and emotional—and all the more so when you understand that these historically processed, large format images are of her own children.  

Parenting itself is an unbelievable emotional journey.  Along the way, Parkin is documenting her own experience and trying to capture those fleeting moments that always pass too quickly. As the kids go back to school, and the summer slows to an end, maybe Parkin is right: September is the cruelest month.  —Lane Nevares

“The personality of the photographer, his approach, is really more important than his technical genius”—Lee Miller

Lee Miller lived an extraordinary life.  Born in upstate New York in 1907, she would later model for Vogue magazine, work as a professional photographer, explore Surrealism with Man Ray in Paris, become a war photographer in WWII, travel widely, and know many of the most important artists of the 20th Century. But above all the fascinating lives she led (and the price she paid), Lee Miller was a great photographer.

Presently on view at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum is “Man Ray/Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism.”  Any opportunity to see Lee Miller’s (and Man Ray’s) work first-hand, should be taken. Lee Miller’s work, perhaps not as famous as many of her contemporaries, nevertheless, stands the test of time. She left us a beautiful legacy. The exhibition runs until October 14th. —Lane Nevares