The Photography Show 2004, sponsored by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers [AIPAD], will be open to the general public February 12-15, 2004. The Photography Show will be held in Americas Halls I & II at the New York Hilton Hotel, 53rd and Avenue of the Americas, New York City, NY.

About 80 AIPAD dealers from the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan will participate in the 2004 exposition, the 24th such show. An extensive range of fine art photography from rare 19th-century and early 20th-century vintage works to cutting-edge contemporary will be offered for sale.

New for 2004, The Photography Show will be open to the general public four days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, February 12-15, 2004. Hours are Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 12 noon-8 pm; Sunday: 11 am-6 pm. Admission is $20/one day pass; $30/four day pass. Admission includes the AIPAD annual Membership Directory and Illustrated Catalogue (350 pages, over 250 illustrations), which is a great resource for researching photographers and galleries and easily worth the price of admission by itself.

The Opening Night Preview on Wednesday, February 11th from 7 pm-10 pm is by invitation of the exhibitors.

In keeping with AIPAD's commitment to educating the public about a range of issues related to collecting fine photographs, the program includes free lectures on Saturday and Sunday at the NY Hilton.

On Saturday, February 14th, from 9:30 am-11:30 am, noted art critic and author Vicki Goldberg will present her lecture, "A Brief History of War Photography."

On Sunday, February 15th, from 10:00 am-11:30 am, a panel discussion will focus on regional photographic activities. This year's panel, "Texas Photography and the State It's In," will be moderated by Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator of photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Joining her on the panel will be Roy Flukinger, senior curator of Photographs and Film, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas, Austin; John Rohrbach, curator of photographs, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Forth Worth; and Wendy Watriss, co-founder, curator, and creative director, Houston FotoFest.

A Private Tour with the Curators from this panel is available on Friday, February 13 from 10:30 am-12 noon for a price of $50, which includes a one-day exhibit pass and a catalogue. Call AIPAD for reservations, which are required, at 202-986-0105.

Several I Photo Central dealers will be exhibiting at AIPAD, including my own company, Vintage Works, Ltd. Our booth (number 208) is just up the escalator and is the second booth to the right (and on the right hand side).

Vintage Works is featuring the vintage 1970s-1980s contemporary work of Joel D. Levinson. Levinson has had two books to date, including "Fleamarkets" and "Joel D. Levinson, Photographs". A third book, "After Eden", is currently in the works. Levinson has had more than 31 one-man gallery and museum shows and is in the collection of over 30 major museums and institutions.

In addition to Levinson's images, we will have major new 20th-century pieces by Man Ray; Jack Welpott; Marcel Bovis; Ilse Bing; Brett Weston; Marta Aczel; Brassai; Paul Frieberger; Vandor; Daniel Masclet; Helen Levitt; Bernard and Arthur Siegel; Robert Frank; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham; Ray Metzker; Dan Weiner; Andre Kertesz; New York panoramas and other large format albumen and platinum prints by George Hall & Son; and one of the last portfolios of Frantisek Drtikol's Ten Nude Studies (The original pigment process has been used and the images were printed from the original glass plate negatives).

Some of the 19th-century pieces featured include two striking and magical pieces by Wilhelm Burger of Dancers from Siam; possibly a unique positive 1860c print by the mysterious Alfred Lepetit of Les Pifferari et Femme (Scene de Taverne); two salt prints of Rome attributed to Eugene Constant; perhaps the strongest print that I have ever seen by Theodule Devaria, The Inscription of Chi Chang on the Fall of Jerusalem, Karnak (The inscription recounts the capture of Jerusalem by the armies of the Egyptian pharoah); Carlo Naya images of Venice life; images by Carlo Simmelli, Atget, and Gustave Eugene Chauffourier; and about 50 paper negatives (in portfolio boxes, so you will have to ask to see) by the likes of Dr. John Murray, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, Charles Marville, Charles Negre, Louis De Clercq, Baron Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard, Louis Alphonse de Brebisson, Marquis de Rostaing, Ferdinand Tillard, E. Nicolas, Gustave De Beaucorps and Ange Eugene Henri Mailand.

Just a bit further down this same aisle in the same direction in booth 204, fellow I Photo Central member Charles Schwartz, Ltd. will show a wide variety of 19th- and 20th-century photography. Some of the highlights include rare, historic photographs of Central Park (1860s) by Victor Prevost and S.A. Holmes; Lee Friedlander prints; Atget's Fête des Invalides; Heinrich Kuhn's Rubber Tree; Japanese photography, including a very rare cased image of a samurai warrior from the 1860s.

On the first floor in booth 145 is Lee Gallery, another I Photo Central member, who will feature 20th-century photographs by Bill Brandt, Eugene Atget, Ilse Bing, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward and Brett Weston, and Weegee. Photo-Secessionist photographs by Anne Brigman, Robert Demachy, Frederick Evans, Gertrude Kasebier, Heinrich Kuhn, George Seeley, Karl Struss and Edward Steichen will also be exhibited. And from the 19th century, Lee Gallery will show American, British and French photographs by Edouard Baldus, George Barnard, Bisson Freres, Adolph Braun, Eugene Cuvelier, P.H. Emerson, Hill & Adamson, Charles Marville, Timothy O'Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, some early American salt prints by G.K. Warren, and many others.

Of course, if you do not make it to the show, be sure to see these members' photographs online at www.iphotocentral.com .
 

(Note: because of my involvement in this sale, I have left most of the article relatively unedited as it came to me from Phillips. A more in-depth preview article is planned next issue and will be written by Stephen Perloff of the Photograph Collector newsletter. Just to reassure all my various friends and clients: I have no plans currently to stop working. For personal reasons, I just wish to simplify my life a bit, while providing more resources for the I Photo Central website.)

Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg has announced the upcoming sale of a collection of fine photographs that demonstrate key achievements in the medium through its first century. Entitled "A Century of Fine Photographs: 1840s-1940s", this exceptional selection of historic material is consigned for sale by Alex Novak from his personal collection and from the inventory of his trading company Vintage Works.

The material selected for this auction focuses principally on the earliest decades of photographic activity and on the flowering of avant-garde ideas within the photography of the first 40 years of the 20th century.

The 19th-century images include fine examples of pioneering British and French photography, with work by such masters as William Henry Fox Talbot ,David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson ,Julia Margaret Cameron, Hippolyte Fizeau, Charles Nègre, Gustave Le Gray, Bisson Frères and Edouard Baldus, as well as historic early American works on salt paper and in daguerreotypes. An important aspect of the sale is the work of the first generation of explorer-photographers, particularly the British and French adventurers who traveled with their cumbersome equipment to bring back magical images of the relics of past civilizations around the southern shores of the Mediterranean or from as far afield as India. Foremost among these were Dr. John Murray, Francis Frith, Charles Clifford, Louis de Clercq, Auguste Salzmann and Félix Teynard.

The 20th-century material includes American work by such luminaries as Edward Steichen and Edward Weston, and is particularly strong in its representation of experimental European practice. The collection includes stimulating examples of the varied exploration of photography's artistic potential, with a strong bias towards Surrealism and expressive abstract or near-abstract imagery. Works by numerous innovative photographers, including Raoul Ubac, Brassaï, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Pierre Jahan and Franz Roh, provide a strong insight into the exciting years in which the avant-garde might be said to have reinvented the medium.

While a number of the most celebrated and highly regarded names in the history of photography are represented in the auction, an exciting aspect of the selection offered for sale is the inclusion of exceptional images and fine prints by less celebrated but equally gifted photographers. The consistent thread is the historic and aesthetic interest of the images and the high quality of the prints.

The work will be sold at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg's New York City, Chelsea headquarters on April 22nd and 23rd at 450 West 15th St, New York, NY. Previews will be held in London, 3/29-3/30 Monday-Tuesday; Paris 4/1-4/2 Thursday-Friday; Berlin 4/4-4/5 Sunday-Monday; with the NYC Preview on 4/16-21 Friday-Wednesday 10 am-5 pm.

Special private by-appointment previews can be arranged during AIPAD week and the week after. For details on the auction material contact either Philippe Garner in London, phone: + 44-207-318-4021 or email: philippe.garner@phillips-dpl.com or Joshua Holdeman in New York, phone: 1-212-940-1244 or email: joshua.holdeman@phillips-dpl.com . To order a catalogue, call 1-800-825-2781 or 1-212-940-1200.
 

Photo LA set new attendance records with 7,400 people attending over the four days, according to organizer Stephen Cohen. The opening reception on Thursday night was up nearly 50% from the previous year and it showed. Booth space had sold out and there was a decided up tick in the general quality of material being shown. Several important dealers--notably Weston Gallery, Julie Saul Gallery, Galerie Clairefontaine, Galerie Hypnos, Atlas Gallery, Jackson Fine Art, Joel Soroka Gallery and Keith de Lellis Gallery--were either back exhibiting or exhibiting for the first time, and gone were some of the "filler" organizations. Seven European dealers joined the mix, including three from the above list. This is fast becoming the show to beat in the U.S.

While sales were somewhat erratic (my own company Vintage Works had one of its weakest shows in terms of sales in years and a number of other dealers reported only mediocre sales), most dealers reported that they had done very well--a number reportedly sold well into six figures at the fair. Contemporary work was clearly the star at this year's Photo LA, although a few vintage dealers, in particular Howard Greenberg, reported some major sales in this category.

Greenberg said, "I did sell three very important Weston nudes for six figures, plus an important Frank, Bourke White, and three Arbus's (none vintage), as well as a smattering of other prints. I only wish LA had the class and feel of Paris." Greenberg also noted that he still has a number of good Arbus later-printed images in the 7-20K range.

In the "most improved dealer inventory" category, Adam Gendell of Artseal Gallery must take home the prize from this show. Gendell continues to get and sell some very impressive vintage, largely American pieces at reasonable (for the images) prices. I watched another dealer buy a Lewis Hine portrait that just seemed to glow off the wall. Gendell told me that he also sold August Sander's "Portrait of the Painter's Wife" (a later Gunter Sander print of a 1926c image), W. Eugene Smith's 1945c "Portrait of Terry Moore, Horace Bristol's 1946c "Melee for the Batons", plus work by Felice Beato, Will McBride, Robert Stivers, Flor Garduno, Todd Webb, Danny Lyon, Weegee and others. He is still looking for a buyer for the well-priced Dorothea Lange's 1933c "Man with Cap" at $25,000 and her portrait of San Francisco painter Charles Duncan at $12,500. I also liked the Otto Hagel/Hansel Mieth 1938c image of a "Black Woman in Her Home" at only $8,000. He also had several Edward Weston portraits, including one of son Neil, a possibly unique vintage print of Marion Post Wolcott's 1939c "Man with Pipe" at $7,500, and, finally, a 1934c portrait of Alfred Stieglitz by Dorothy Norman at $4,500.

Yossi Milo Gallery reported selling up a storm, especially for contemporary work from Loretta Lux and Alec Soth (from the latter's project, "Sleeping by the Mississippi").

Jackson Fine Art Galley's 30 x 40 inch dye transfer of William Eggleston's Peaches drew a lot of attention, as did Rose Gallery's Eggleston of the white car against the brick wall from the 14 Pictures Porfolio. These are two of my personal favorites of Eggleston's work.

Carl Mautz told me, "Photo LA was good, not great for me, but good." Mautz also confided that he did better with his contemporary photographers, "particularly Paul Kozal who shattered his previous record with the sale of over 20 prints and five books with original prints." I liked Mautz's Todd Webb images of Paris, which surprised me by how strong they were. Most were later printings but a few were vintage images.

Mack Lee of Lee Gallery said he was pleased with the show. "The mood was very upbeat, the selling went very well and was better than last year. A number of customers said they thought the show looked good." Lee Gallery sold images by Hine, Noskowiak, Ulmann, Walker Evans and Dassonville.

Andrew Daneman of Northern Light reported that he did about double last year's business at the exhibition. He promptly sold three "motion wheels", which I must admit that I coveted, plus the great blow-up of an ant. Daneman noted, "I received very positive reviews of my mix of vintage images and Danish contemporary. I'll be doing Photo L.A. again, for sure."

Amanda Collins of the Martin Gordon Gallery said, "Counting a few post-show sales, we did extremely well at Photo LA--almost double last year. We were very busy--at times swamped." She sold several Morris Berman images of "Y.A.Tittle Toppled". The gallery has the Berman estate and this is one of Berman's most recognizable photographs. Still available was Manuel Bravo's "Typical Beauty", a vintage 1947 (and possibly unique) print at a reasonable $6,950. Also available was a 1955c vintage Marilyn Monroe color image by Richard Avedon for $3,600.

Robin Venuti did well with a "collection of Lewis Hines that came directly from the son of Hine's doctor. Venuti told me, "I sold two of the five I brought (to the show) and have 10 more available."

Keith De Lellis showed some great images, including several by Japanese-American photographers, one of which was one of my favorites of the show. It, of course, sold.

Paul Hertzmann had a number of goodies, including images by Marcel Bovis, Berenice Abbott and a group of images by California School of Fine Arts photographers who were influenced by Minor White. Hertzmann has produced a catalogue of this latter work, which is a fine contribution to the history of photography on the West Coast. Most of the work is reasonably priced from between $1,500-$4,000. I particularly liked the work of Zoe Brown, Donald Ross and Charles Wong.

Michael Dawson noted that "any show can turn on the whim of one or two customers and luck was not on my side for this show." But Dawson did note that he sold " several Muybridge collotypes ($1600 to $3500), as well as several large contemporary pieces by Roger Vail ($1200 to $2500). Claudia Kunin's fabric pieces (three-dimensional representations based on 19th-century daguerreotypes) continued to attract interest and attention from both institutional and private collectors."

My neighbor Burt Finger from Photographs Do Not Bend told me: "We were pleasantly surprised with our results at Photo LA--literally tripling what we did last year." I can always count on Burt to shoot straight. His appraisal of the contemporary work at the fair was the following: "Although many of the booths showed "wanna-be contemporary" large color photographs, most would not make the cut; however, I believe the level of contemporary work (at the show) is rising."

Arnaud Delas of Galerie Hypnos, who shared the booth here with me this year, sold a number of prints, including two great balloon images by Jean Delton. He brought wonderful early travel/ethnographic material and Paris fashion images from the 1950s and 60s.

Joel Soroka reported a split between the results of contemporary and vintage markets: "Photo La was strong for me and particularly for my contemporary photographer Beatrice Helg from Switzerland. Just one of her images Presence VII, 2003 had six red dots. Other images had almost as many. Lynn Bianchi's works were also well received; I sold many. Vintage prints sold less well. All my vintage material is of high quality, in my opinion. I had a Koppitz movement Study, carte postale, a Steichen of Garbo, two wonderful Ilse Bings, a Lartigue and a great Quigley light abstraction among others. The crowd generally was unqualified for that caliber of material in my opinion."

Frankly, I pretty much have to agree with Soroka's and Finger's evaluations. We too had a lot of admirers of our top vintage pieces, but the actual buyers appeared to be more focused on lower end vintage material or splashy contemporary work at this particular Photo LA. But that begs the question then: how does this show attract and/or educate sophisticated buyers? I think the answer has to be partially in the accompanying educational sessions, which unfortunately seem mostly to serve as platforms for photographers to promote themselves to other photographers here. There are several weaknesses at Photo LA (small size of booths and low walls, no real vetting of exhibitors and poor food vendors), but this is one that stands out for me and is the easiest to fix.

Organizer Steve Cohen emailed me tongue-cheek: "I hope to hear from your research that many did great, artists found galleries, galleries found artists (I did), museum shows were set up and world peace was achieved." Well not quite, but Photo LA 2004 was a very good start for most in this new year.
 

100 Books with Original Photographs, 1846-1919

This fascinating catalogue documents a collaborative passion for seminal images married to words, all on the part of San Francisco photography dealers Paul M. Hertzmann and Susan Herzig, and Santa Fe antiquarian booksellers David Margolis and Jean Moss. Compiled in the course of their four-year search for bound rarities, it is a beautifully printed and thoroughly annotated compendium of photographically illustrated books.

The treasures within stretch from the very beginnings of the medium, in the mid-1800s, to photography's early adolescence in the early 20th century, when silver prints of solar eclipses and Royal Navy submarines were feeding the nascent modern thirst for documentary wonder. Thus, there are descriptions of four 1846 copies of "The Art Union", a publication that shared the birth year of photography, 1839, and with which editor William Carter Hall championed the new medium, to the extent of including an original Talbotype in every copy of the June, 1846 issue (William Henry Fox Talbot had published "The Pencil of Nature", the first photo-illustrated book, only two years earlier).

Indeed, there are a lot of firsts here, including the first American book with an original photograph, "Homes of American Statesmen", published in 1854 by Putnam. The book features a mounted frontispiece crystalotype photograph of Boston's Hancock House, from the studio of John Whipple of Boston. There is also the first scientific work with original stereographs: a personal account of Scottish Royal astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth's 1856 journey to Teneriffe in the Canary islands. The book holds 20 mounted "photo-stereographs" taken atop a dormant volcano, each pair of images measuring 2 3/4 x 4 /34 inches (70 x 121 mm.). Less inspirational, perhaps, is the first photo-illustrated book of skin diseases published in Spain (1880), but there is no arguing against its place among early medical texts.

The pride of this 64-page catalogue may well be the remarkable, bound-as-one, two- volume history of the Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria's famous arms and armor collection, begun in 1547. With photographs by Austria's great photo pioneer Andreas Groll, the volumes were published in 1859 and 1862, and feature 128 superb images, 105 of them mounted salt prints, and 23 early albumen prints. Size is a great value factor here, with the salt prints averaging 11 x 6 inches (279 x 152 mm.) and the albumens as large as 11 x 9 inches (279 x 229 mm.). The catalogue shows Groll's handiwork to be rigorous and exemplary, with well-detailed exposures of the ornate filigree of rifles and pistols, horse armor and helmets.

Yes, there is a fair amount of highly arcane material here of minor historical value--photos of floral arrangements for a deceased New York mayor, for example, or a report on a group of Pacific Ocean sponges called Turkey Legs. But many of the books seem revelatory, among them a complete portfolio of 24 toned silver print photographs from James McNeill Whistler's 1892 London painting exhibition, including 'Whistler's Mother,' and a group of 98 mounted albumen photos of paintings by Camille Corot. And the portraiture of Australian aborigines, or Egyptian mummies, convey real anthropological gravity.

While the usual decision to present the books in chronological order was made to illustrate the development of the major 19th-century photographic processes, a more reader-friendly catalogue could have resulted from a logical grouping of subjects: botanical photo-books, architecture, paintings, objects and so forth. But that is a quibble. This catalogue rewards all the attention you give it, with scholarly depth and worthy reproductions.

Published under the dual imprint of Paul M. Hertzman, Inc. and Margolis & Moss, the catalogue's $20 price seems more than reasonable, and copies may be available from either Hertzmann (P.O. Box 40447, San Francisco, CA 94140; tel.: 415-626-2677; fax: 415-552-4160; pmhi@hertzmann.net ) or Margolis & Moss (P.O. Box 2042, Santa Fe, NM 87504-2042; tel.: 505-982-1028; fax: (505-982-3256; mmbooks@comcast.net ). --Matt Damsker


Josef Breitenbach: Munich, Paris, New York

The art world awoke fully to Josef Breitenbach after his death in 1984, and since then the German-born master of photographic experimentalism has become an easily acquired taste to viewers and collectors who cherish fresh ways of seeing. This slim, beautifully printed 32-page catalogue (with 26 prints) was produced for a recent exhibition at Chicago's Stephen Daiter Gallery. It surveys the photographer's work in Europe and America, and makes a vivid case for Breitenbach as a strong influence on later approaches to photography.

Breitenbach's odyssey-as a Jew who barely escaped Nazi Germany and Vichy France before settling in New York for the rest of his life-was marked by immigrant hardship. Eventually, he enjoyed the security brought on by recognition and key teaching posts at such academic oases as Black Mountain College, Cooper Union and The New School. From his earliest to his latest photographs, Breitenbach teased and pleased the eye with imagery that mixed realism with a surrealist delight in the painterly possibilities of the medium. His 1928 image of a misty Seine glimpsed through a crosshatching of Eiffel Tower girders is pure modernism. By 1942, his black-and-white images of scrap iron and steel pipes in New Jersey junkyards are overlaid with rust-colored washes that add tonal beauty to industrial detritus.

These and other images--such as a 1948 photogram of erotically swirling fluid, a solarized nude, or 1942's "Omen," in which a Dali-esque flayed figure is posed against a New Jersey beach while warplanes track across the sky--prefigure styles and statements that would emerge decades later, in the work of Andy Warhol, Lucas Samaras and Vito Acconci.

Breitenbach's vision was truly protean, and his restless sensibility ranged easily, yielding not only formal breakthroughs but also such classic portraiture as his sensitive Munich readings of Marianne Hoppe, Max Ernst, Josef Schaffner and a playfully color-washed 1933 shot of the performer Anabella.

Even in his most pointed work--the tombstones of New York's Trinity Church Yard strung with confetti on V.E. Day in 1945--Breitenbach avoided sentimentalism through his attention to the conflated details of foreground, middle distance and architectural backdrop. Indeed, there are no easy effects in his photos, though his artistry has a deceptively effortless air. The catalogue essay, by gallery director Paul Berlanga, does a fine job of chronicling Breitenbach's life and output, and conveys a rich sense of his genius and hard-won victories.

You can order a catalogue through Stephen Daiter Gallery at 1-312-787-3350; email stephen@stephendaitergallery.com . --Matt Damsker


Modern Hungarian Photography

The crisp black-and-white reproductions in this 49-page catalogue (with as many prints), produced last year for an exhibition at the Vintage Galeria in Budapest, speak volumes for themselves. Still, these prime early examples of eastern European modernism would have benefited from a well-wrought essay that might have gathered together their potent visual energies from a freshly curatorial point of view.

Without that scholarly dimension, the catalogue amounts to a time capsule filled with the starkly formal spirit of Hungarian photography as it began to grapple with a modern world on the verge of great change. Most of the images are from the 1930s, and all are silver prints, but the brace of photos shot in 1917 by Istvan Kerny, especially an illusionistic one of a man serving up another man's head on a platter, expresses a darkly playful tone that resurfaces in later work.

For example, Marta Aczel's 1935 still lifes of matchboxes, milk bottles, light bulbs and bowls are bathed in raking light and dramatic contrast that make ponderous icons out of everyday objects. And Klara Langer's 1930s series of smashed, bandaged, and bedridden dolls is creepy, political and presages an era of conceptual art that would blossom much, much later. Meanwhile, Erno Vadas's 1930-32 street scenes, looking down from lamppost height on the curvature of streetcar tracks in the snow, are dense with filigree and shadowy geometries. Zsuzsa Sandor, also from a high vantage, explores the dust, rock and man-made furrows of the countryside, with the elongated shadows of human figures casting a ghostly pall on the otherwise bright exposures.

Then there is the great Brassai, represented by two 1930s prints of the Dagiljev Ballet--one of a dancer rehearsing in a mirror and the other of dancers and impresario watching a performance from the wings--that capture the edgy casualness of modernity with a master's flair and eye for the decisive moment.

Meanwhile, irony and social realism collide in the work of Karoly Escher, who shoots everything from a priest playing tennis to newspaper editors feverishly examining movie-star publicity stills to a grimy gaggle of homeless men warming themselves by a stove in a night shelter.

Finally when Hungarian eyes find the United States in a series of 1930s photos by Jolan Gross-Bettelheim of New York rooftops, elevated train tracks, smokestacks and suspension bridges, the old world brings its rigorous, rueful vision to the new.

You can order a catalogue through Vintage Galeria at +36 1 3370584; email vintage@c3.hu . --Matt Damsker


Gerard Petrus Fieret: Photographs

Born, bred and still very much a fixture in the Hague, photographer Gerard Fieret is a Dutch national treasure. His eccentric style--he'll stamp his prints repeatedly with his name and P.O box number, and sign them obtrusively--is the mark of a rule-breaking sensibility that came into its artistic prime in the 1960s and helped pull photography into the edgiest of post-modern realms.

This catalogue, a 28-page collection with 20 plates, chronicles an exhibition of 1960s photos by Fieret, all vintage gelatin silver prints, at Deborah Bell Photographs in New York, and the quality is first-rate. It is enhanced by a brief but revelatory recounting by Susan Herzig of a meeting with Fieret in The Hague. "He has a story, often a long one, about each photograph," writes Herzig. "Earthy, sexy, warm, they are pictures by a man who cares genuinely about women."

Indeed, these studies, several of them classic Fieret nudes posed indelicately, perhaps, but with an unmistakably loving eye for the grace and vulnerabilities of the female form, are rich in evocations. It is hard to miss the echoes of Bonnard, Renoir or Daumier in Fieret's grainy exposures and hand-worked prints of calves, thighs, and limpid breasts. And when Fieret zeroes in on the faces of his women, they can haunt us with all the complexity of a Vermeer, or the chiaroscuro force of a Rembrandt, as in one shot of a girl in a dark bonnet, clutching her coat collar to her chin, or another of a black-clad beauty shadowing her face with her hand.

Fieret's camera looks unforgivingly, and his subjects look back, with reserves of dignity, intelligence and a delicately balanced trust in the artist's vision. It is a truly liberated vision of a photographer that knew, before a good many fellow fine-art photographers, that photography was meant to be stretched, scratched, pushed to its limits and graphically redefined. Signed, stamped and rife with Fieret's gesture, fetish and feeling, these photos press their subjectivity upon us and upon their subjects, transforming the objective moment into a life experience.

The catalogue is a co-production between Deborah Bell Photographs and Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. You can order copies of the catalogue through either Deborah Bell at 1-212-691-3883; email: deborahbell@rcn.com ; or Paul Hertzmann at 1-415 626 2677; email: pmhi@hertzmann.net . --Matt Damsker
 

Helmut Newton Dies in Car Crash

Noted fashion photographer Helmut Newton was reported to have apparently lost control of his Cadillac while leaving the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood, CA and crashed into a wall across the street, according to a police spokesperson. Newton was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he died a short time later.


Gitterman Gallery Opens with Inaugural Exhibit on Jean Morel

Tom Gitterman has announced that his first exhibition, "Jean Moral", opens Tuesday, February 10th from 6 to 8 pm at his new gallery at 170 East 75th St., New York, NY. The exhibition will run from February 10 to April 10. The gallery's phone number is 212-734-0868.


Sotheby's Refinances Existing Credit Agreement, Which Was about to Run Out

Sotheby's has announced that it received a commitment to refinance its existing senior secured credit agreement with a new senior secured credit facility of up to $200 million. The refinancing will be led by GE Commercial Finance Corporate Lending, which has made a commitment of $100 million under the facility and will seek to syndicate the balance with other financial institutions. The lenders under Sotheby's existing credit agreement have extended the maturity of this agreement for one month to allow completion of the new facility, and the commitment is subject to customary closing conditions. The new commitment is for a three-year term.


Dag Society Members John Delph and Marion Rinhart Pass Away

In the last Daguerreian Society Newsletter, it was reported that collector/dealer John Delph died this past July at his home in Seattle surrounded by his family. At 61, Delph had been very active in the organization, having served on its board of directors.

The newsletter also reported on the passing of long-time historian and author Marion Rinhart at age 87 on November 17, 2003. Along with her husband Floyd (who passed away in 1996), Rinhart co-authored American Daguerreian Art, American Miniature Case Art, America's Affluent Age and the classic American Daguerreotype. She is survived by her son George.