Seventy-three of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries participated in the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) Photography Show New York 2009, which took place from March 26-29th at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. Despite the economic climate and that it followed the Armory, Pulse, and Scope fairs by just weeks, AIPAD’s President, Stephen Bulger, noted “the Show exceeded people’s expectations.” Bulger, who is also President of Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto added, “Many dealers commented that business was much better than they expected.” The Armory, a vast drill hall built with private funds in the mid-nineteenth century, and opened as a military facility and social club in 1880, was an apt setting for the event. The AIPAD Show, Bulger continued, is the fair that collectors and museum professionals depend on “for the most important work on the market today in fine art photography.” Michael Foley of Foley Gallery in New York offered a dealer’s perspective. “The best way to connect with the people that are exclusively interested in photography is to do a fair where it is almost a guarantee to meet them face to face, and that venue is the AIPAD fair.” Eight-thousand visitors attended the Show, including collectors from around the world, leading museum directors and curators, art dealers, artists and photographers, leaders from the worlds of business, entertainment and fashion, as well as celebrities and the media. Guest exhibitor, Robert Morat of Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg, said, “As a European gallery, AIPAD is a very important fair as it allows us to get in touch with an American audience. We had a very focused, interested, knowledgeable crowd.” This year marks the 30th anniversary of AIPAD, and the 29th edition of the AIPAD Photography Show New York—the longest-running annual fair in the US. A Gala Preview to benefit the John Szarkowski Fund, an endowment for photography acquisitions at The Museum of Modern Art, was held on March 25th. In celebration of its anniversary, this year’s Show included two special exhibitions. INNOVATION featured one work from each participating gallery that reflected advancement in the medium, whether technical or artistic, from daguerreotypes to digital media. Chronologically, the show began with Seven Minute Self-Portrait, Paris, Thursday, July 1st, 1841, a daguerreotype by Pierre Ambroise Richebourg, at Serge Plantureux, Paris, and included works by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Man Ray, Robert Frank, Joel Meyerowitz, and Carrie Mae Weems.

For INNOVATION, Jackson Fine Art presented Vee Speers’ Untitled #5, (from the Birthday Party Series) 2008, a portrait of a pre-adolescent girl with tightly coiffed hair wearing a black and white party dress. The staged image is arresting upon first glance, but what holds the gaze, and perhaps, momentarily, the breath, is the discomfort the girl exudes. It’s not just the costume, it’s the detachment in her eyes, parted, speechless lips, and tentative hand gesture. The party-girl stands trapped—straddling the cusp of

the childhood she hasn’t finished exploring and the adulthood she is being lured by or forced into. Speers uses a large-format camera, scans her negatives, and digitally adds colors to the images—a practice done by brush since photography’s early days. Australian-born, Speers lives in Paris, and is a former fashion photographer. She draws inspiration from observations of her own children navigating their footing in this complex world, and, perhaps, from her impressions about the culture of her former profession. The Center for the Legacy of Photography, a new initiative of George Eastman House and Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology, made its debut at the Show with the other special exhibition, Cause & Effect, which examined the cause-and-effect relationships of materials and processes in the creation of photographs. On view were 22 vintage prints from the Eastman House collection, including works by Hill & Adamson, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lewis Hine, and Ansel Adams. Other 30th anniversary special events that took place were the panel discussions, What Makes a Photographic Print a Masterpiece?, The Art of Fashion Photography, and Photographers as Filmmakers, plus a lecture by Bruce Davidson about his work from 1956 to the present. The Show included contemporary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. Not to be missed were Sharon Core’s still-life images, at Yancey Richardson, which the artist, who trained as a painter and photographer, made with inspiration from the American painter, Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825). Using reproductions of his still-lifes as references, Core adeptly recreated their likenesses using monochromatic, painted backdrops and tables, complex lighting, produce from her own greenhouse, and period porcelain and tableware from her own collection. No detail was overlooked in the making of these works that are at once seductive and comforting. The graceful photographs in Core’s Early American series raise questions about the boundary between reality and artifice, and suggest a play on the use of photography in Photorealism. AIPAD prides itself on its dedication to the highest standards of practice in the business of fine art photography. Core’s work is amongst several fine examples in this year’s Show. Janelle Lynch