The Library of Congress @ Flickr

The Library of Congress is conducting a pilot project placing three thousand photographs on flickr. (Above: Jack Delano’s Going to Town on Saturday Afternoon, Greene Co., Ga. 1941.) The project is intentionally beginning modestly, in order for the Library to learn in which direction(s) to focus. As the repository of over 14 million prints this is understandable!

For now there are selections from two collections – color work from the FSA project (the depression era record of rural America) and the Bain collection (a turn of the century news service).

As someone who has spent many years lovingly doing picture research, going through all 173 pages (18 images per page) perfectly replicates the experience of being at The Library of Congress. It starts out excitedy, and then settles in to work as the search for good images becomes tedious. Your eyes start to ache. You begin to despair. Then you find a gem of a picture and your spirits soar! It’s armchair creativity but curating is nonetheless a creative act if not a genetic predisposition (or a pathology).

I’ve selected a few of the pictures from the flickr site that stood out for me, but for those interested in going deeper, the Library of Congress has it’s own separate site with about a million images.
Happy hunting!

Grand Grocery Co., Lincoln, Neb. 1942. John Vachon.

Tule Lake Internment Camp. 1944. Russell Lee.

Rural school girl. San Augustine County, Texas. 1943. John Vachon.

Wheat. PA. 1943. John Collier.

Jack Whinery and his family, Pie Town, New Mexico. 1940. Russell Lee.

Shulman's market. Washington, D.C.. 1942. Louise Roskam.

Backstage at the "girlie" show. State Fair, Rutland, VT. 1941. Jack Delano.

Backstage at the "girlie" show. State Fair, Rutland, VT. 1941. Jack Delano.

Train at sunset. New Mexico. 1941. Jack Delano.

Party Pix

A few snaps from last night's Sartorialist opening. 600 people, 8 cases of champagne, 5 cases of Pellegrino. It was an incredible evening with lines stretching around the block (see below) and people waiting incredibly patiently to come in and circulate around the gallery. A thank you to everyone who showed up and a hope that any who missed it will get a chance to see the show before it closes at the end of February.

Presenting: The Sartorialist

Tonight marks the opening of The Sartorialist’s exhibition at Danziger Projects. (6 – 8 pm. 521 West 26th Street.) All are welcome.

The idea for the show began when I landed on The Sartorialist’s blog for the first time this past July and was wowed by the quality of his pictures. Here was a highly accomplished photographer with a uniquely personal point of view taking pictures digitally and then posting them on his blog. There was no connection to the art world evident – but I felt that here was the first real fine art photographer of the digital age.

I e-mailed The Sartorialist - a.k.a Scott Schuman – and we began the process which 6 months later has resulted in the opening of his show. The process involved meeting (we hit it off immediately), establishing that his files would hold up to gallery standards (no problem), looking at all his work (easy because it’s all posted), figuring out what the prints should look like (what size, what paper they should be printed on), what kind of installation (single hung, double hung), prices and editions, and most importantly – expectations. As we were both taking a step into the unknown, I wanted Scott to know that I completely stood behind the work, but it was possible that people would not be able to make the leap from appreciating the work online to appreciating it in a gallery. The new (and especially the unconnected to the system) is always risky.

When the word of the show first made it out to the internet several months ago, the response was immediate and broad with comments falling into two camps – either congratulatory: “Well deserved, Sart.” or snarky: “Who does he think he is selling his pictures in a gallery for $1,200?”. There were quite a few of the latter. (However, this is an incredibly low price in today's art market.)

We hung the show last week and I have to say that to me it looks perfect. At the last moment we switched to non-reflective, u.v. filtering, museum plexiglass, and the results are worth every penny of the $240 extra per frame the plexi costs! The pictures really glow on the wall without the distraction of reflection. And the response has been unbelievable. We let people in early once the show was hung and collectors with no knowledge of The Sartorialist have literally walked in off the street and bought pictures. Seasoned collectors have bought groups. With only ten prints being released of each image two have already sold half their editions! Museums are interested. New projects are brewing.

When I put on a show I try to write a press release that best conveys both information and what I feel about the work. To see what I wrote along with many of the images in the show you can go to the Danziger Projects website.

The pleasures of a doing a show are creation and collaboration. This one has had it in spades!

Air McElroy

Lilly McElroy likes to throw herself around. At men, onto her bed, through the air. A performative photographer and video artist, McElroy seems to have a lot of fun making refreshingly spontaneous pictures. I asked her to explain the procedure behind her photographs and this is what she sent me:

"I started the project by placing an ad on Craig's list looking for men who would meet me at bars blind date style and let me literally throw myself at them. This worked fairly well, but limited the # of photos I could take. Now , I go to bars with a friend/photographer and approach men who are physically larger than I am. I ask them if I can literally throw myself at them. If they say yes, I have myself photographed doing it and buy them a drink afterwards. If it seems like they want to hang out, I'll have a drink as well. Sometimes we talk about the project and sometimes we just chat. I don't have a specific set up for the photos. I just want them to look as much like snap shots or party pics as possible."

Of course there are layers of meaning behind the physical comedy, but McElroy knows how to capture our interest and keep our attention. There are lots of other good series on her website which I'd recommend checking out.

Weekend Video - The Grammys

With so many award shows being cancelled I thought I'd pull out some highlights from last year's Grammy Awards for anyone feeling award deprived. The first - Gnarls Barkley's live version of "Crazy" - made my hair stand on end with it's strangely slowed down tempo, and I realized for the first time why the song was such a hit. (I'm still not sure what the airline pilot outfits mean.) But this version of "Crazy" made it seem like the signal song of the year.

The Corinne Bailey Rae/John Legend/John Mayer medley is nothing more than a look at three original and ascendant performers. As in photography, no matter how well traveled the road may be, fresh talent always finds a way.

Surfing the Web

I first met Tom Adler 12 years ago when he came into my gallery carrying the dummy of his first picture book "1936 - 1942. San Onofre to Point Dune. Photographs by Don James". We agreed to do a show and have become fast friends and collaborators ever since. The picture below is a Don James from the show. (Don James was 16 years old in 1936 when he borrowed his father's camera to record what were the very beginnings of surf culture in California.)


Tom has continued to produce important and revelatory photo books on surfing and been hired by companies from Polo to Roxy to brighten up their visuals. Last summer we did a follow-up show "Rediscovered Archives and Graphic Works" based on Tom's remarkable eye for combining and contrasting different images. See two examples below and more on the link above.



His latest books, "Surf Contest" and "Ron Church: California to Hawaii 1960 to 1965" bring the work of Ron Church back into the limelight after a long period of neglect.




Most recently, Tom was brought in to revise the look of swell.com - an online store and catalog selling surfing style clothes and accessories, and the results are just amazing. The catalogs are (deceptively) simple but visually refreshing, and almost every click on swell.com brings you to a picture that transcends the gee-whiz poster type of big wave photograph because of the subtly artful aspect of each image. Examples of some of the images and layouts below. Good web design is hard to find, but Adler shows both the importance of photography and the endless wave of possibilities. (Excuse the pun.)





Finally, the limited edition poster, below, which Tom created for our first exhibition now sells for up to $500! (swell.com has an authorized reprint for $29.95.)

Stormy Weather

Extreme weather is not a category of photography we think much about in the fine art world of New York City, but it has its fans, publishers, and practitioners just like any other genre. Top amongst these is probably Jim Reed, a 56 year old former writer and film-maker who moved from Los Angeles to Wichita, Kansas, 16 years ago in order to be near the biggest hurricanes and tornadoes in the country.

Abrams have recently published a book of his best images titled "Storm Chaser" and for an avowed lover of sky pictures these are quite something! Sublime and luminescent, the photographs have an almost religious quality. They're Ansel Adams on acid! So it's not altogether surprising to find a Christian theme running through Reed's writing as well as an endorsement from evangelist leader Pat Robertson. To balance things out politically though, there's an unabashed warning about global warming from Reed that would make Al Gore proud.