By 
The power of photography will be on full view when The Photography Show New York presented by AIPAD opens on Friday, May 20, and runs through Sunday, May 22, 2022, with a VIP Opening on Thursday, May 19. The Show will be held at a new midtown location: Center415 on Fifth Avenue between 37th and 38th streets. The Photography Show will bring together 49 galleries from nine countries and 23 cities from across the U.S. and around the world.
The exhibitors are all members of the prestigious Association of International Photography Art Dealers known as AIPAD, recognized as the world’s leading galleries of fine art photography. This year, The Photography Show runs concurrently with Frieze New York, Volta New York, and other fairs.
Now in its 41st edition, The Photography Show New York presented by AIPAD is the longest-running and foremost exhibition dedicated to the photographic medium. The tightly focused members-only fair will feature a tantalizing array of fresh-to-market and museum-quality work including cutting-edge contemporary, modern, and exemplary 19th-century photographs.
Exhibition Highlights
Portraits
“A star, a glare, an inquiring dare,” is how Greg Tate described Dawoud Bey’s work in his essay for Street Portraits: Dawoud Bey (Mack Books, April 2021). From 1988 to 1991, Dawoud Bey made a series of portraits of African-Americans in the streets of various American cities. He asked a cross section of the populations of these communities to pose for him, creating a space for self-presentation and performance. The portraits will be on view at Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago, with another series by Bey, New Orleans, and work from Robert Frank’s famous series The Americans.
Israeli photographer Michal Chelbin’s remarkable portraits of teenagers have won her international acclaim. Recently she traveled through Ukraine and Spain to explore the connection and tension between youth and uniforms. In her latest book, How to Dance the Waltz (Damiani 2021), she depicts teenagers dressed in military garb, extravagant debutante gowns, and outfits of matadors, all slightly ill-fitting and strange on their slight frames. Chelbin’s work, including the portrait of two sailors, Maksim and Vitally, Ukraine, 2018, will be on view at ClampArt, New York.
In 1861, the incomparable stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, then 17, posed for the famous photographer Nadar. She was just beginning her extraordinary and successful career. Famous throughout the world for playing heroes as well as heroines, Bernhardt’s celebrity anticipated the phenomenon of late–20th-century media stars. The portrait will be one of the highlights of Keith de Lellis Gallery, New York, which will present a thematic exhibition of both formal studio portraits and informal street photography, with a focus on the work of Black photographers of the mid-20th century.
The self-portraits of the internationally-renowned photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi, will be on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. Muholi’s work, which frequently documents South Africa’s LGBTQIA+ community, is currently the subject of an exhibition Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
In 1932, Dorothea Lange, with her two young sons, accompanied her husband, the artist Maynard Dixon, on a sojourn to Taos, New Mexico. Lange made a series of portraits of native residents of the nearby Taos Pueblo. These vintage contact prints, probably unique, represent some of the best work she made during the seven-month period in Taos and stand in stark contrast to the formal studio portraits of wealthy San Franciscans which made up the bulk of her photographic output at that time. The work will be on view at Richard Moore Photographs, Oakland.
Rashod Taylor’s award-winning series Little Black Boy, 2020, is modeled in part after a family photo album, offering not only a window into his into his own family story, but also into the Black American experience. Obscura Gallery, Santa Fe, will present work from this series, as well as a selection of his tintypes from the series My America.
Arnika Dawkins Gallery, Atlanta, will exhibit work that explores the notions of beauty, especially that of Black beauty. Aiming to acknowledge and celebrate an aesthetic long overlooked in the mainstream, the gallery will feature artists Oye Diran, Ervin A. Johnson, Regis and Kharan Bethencourt, and Delphine Fawundu, whose photographs explore beauty and strength through portraiture.
On a Large Scale
The 1970s work of California-based photographer Michael Jang, who portrays suburban and urban life with irony and whimsy, is being rediscovered by some major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lee Gallery, Winchester, Mass., will devote a solo exhibition to Jang’s work—the artist’s first in New York City—and will include monumental wheat paste murals that will cover a 10-by-25-foot wall.
20th–Century Photography
One of the most innovative American photographers of the 1970s and ’80s, Marcia Resnick is today best known for her portraits of the creative community in downtown New York City during that era. Deborah Bell Photographs, New York, will present work from Resnick’s 1978 series Re-visions. Her first museum exhibition is traveling in 2022-23 from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the George Eastman Museum.
The work of Lora Webb Nichols has been recently discovered, and her early 20th-century photographs from the small frontier town of Encampment, Wyoming, have been met with acclaim. Danziger Gallery, New York, will present a rare viewing of her work. She became a photographer for hire during a copper mining boom, subsequently opened a studio, and accumulated a distinctive and surprising body of work that comprises 24,000 negatives.
Galerie Johannes Faber, Vienna, specializes in classic, modern, and vintage photographs from the 20th century. For AIPAD, the gallery is featuring master works by Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank, Rudolf Koppitz, Heinrich Kühn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Josef Sudek, Edward Weston, and others.
Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, will feature works by Baldwin Lee, a first-generation Chinese-American, who took a 2,000-mile road trip through the American South in the 1980s. Lee, a student of Walker Evans, photographed Black Americans at home, at work and at play, and created one of the most piercing and poignant bodies of work of its time.
Three images by rock photographer Joel Bernstein of singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell skating on a lake in Wisconsin—one of which was chosen for the gatefold of her 1976 Hejira album—will be on view at Scott Nichols Gallery, Sonoma. The gallery will also show rare photographs by Ansel Adams.
A thematic exhibition of vintage work by Mexican artists and by artists working in Mexico will be presented by Charles Isaacs Photographs, New York. Among those featured will be the modernist Emilio Amero; the Polish-born Bernice Kolko, who was close with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; and Armando Salas Portugal, one of Mexico’s most prolific and important photographers.
19th Century Photography
Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc., New York, will show the work of leading 19th-century photographers, including William Henry Fox Talbot. A brilliant scientist, Talbot was one of the pioneers of photography during the 1830s, combining the use of a camera obscura with light-sensitive chemistry. Unlike other early photographic techniques such as heliography and daguerreotype, Talbot’s negative-positive process on paper became the basis of all modern photography.
A Fruit Piece, 1845, is an unusually fine print of the final plate in Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature.
Photojournalism
Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, will present two distinct exhibitions exemplifying the power and immediacy of photojournalism. The first recognizes the new wave of independent photojournalists who are battling situational danger amidst growing public skepticism of the media. The second exhibition features the work of Tony Vaccaro, who has survived the Normandy Invasion and Covid-19, and just recently celebrated his 99th birthday.
And More…
Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, will present recent work from Russian-American artist Anastasia Samoylova, who works with the tools and traditions of street photography to craft an air of unreality from the everyday. Her recent series Image Cities grew out of her FloodZone project from Miami—focusing on the way luxury property developers cloak construction sites in vastly scaled imagery and advertising.
The work of Joel-Peter Witkin, known for his painstakingly constructed photographs—elaborate tableaux that feature dwarves, hermaphrodites, and people with unusual physical capabilities or deformities—will be exhibited by Etherton Gallery, Tucson. At once hauntingly beautiful and grotesque, the photographs challenge established notions of beauty and normality.
A thematic exhibition of conceptual work by Eastern European women will be on view at Paul M. Hertzmann, San Francisco. Photography by Natalia LL challenges the masculine erotic stereotype of women, as well as the scarcity of such consumer items as ordinary as bananas in Soviet-era Poland. Anna Kutera explores an extensive series of everyday and simulated situations with a feminist approach.
Antwerp-based gallery IBASHO specializes in fine art Japanese photography ranging from vintage and earlier works to contemporary photography, including that of Western photographers inspired by Japan. From the raw and unpolished to the minimalist and still, the gallery will present new work by Miho Kajioka, Casper Faassen, and Albarrán Cabrera, as well as rare black-and-white Polaroids by Daido Moriyama.
ICP PHOTOBOOK FEST
In partnership with The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, the International Center of Photography will hold the ICP Photobook Fest on May 21-22, 2022, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at ICP’s new building on the Lower East Side, located at 79 Essex Street, New York. The event will feature leading and independent photobook publishers and photographers showcasing their latest image-based books, as well as online programming and in-person book signings.
Timed admission tickets to visit the ICP Photobook Fest will go on sale at a later date.
EXHIBITORS
The list of participating galleries for The Photography Show presented by AIPAD 2022 can be seen here.
SHOW LOCATION
Center415, 415 Fifth Avenue, between 37th and 38th Streets, New York City
For further details, visit aipad.com or contact info@aipad.com.
SHOW DATES AND HOURS
Show Schedule
Thursday, May 19
Media and VIP Preview by Invitation Only
Friday, May 20
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. VIP Early Access Hours
1:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. General Admission
Saturday, May 21
11:00a.m. – 12:00p.m. VIP Early Access Hour
12:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. General Admission
Sunday, May 22
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. VIP Early Access Hour
12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. General Admission
AIPAD BACKGROUND
Founded in 1979, The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) represents more than 80 of the world’s leading galleries in fine art photography. AIPAD is dedicated to creating and maintaining the highest standards of scholarship and ethical practice in the business of exhibiting, buying, and selling fine art photography.
More information is available at AIPAD.com.
photography
What do you think?