>Re-PHOTO

Where I in New York rather than old England, I would be making my way to the  Howard Greenberg Gallery, which currently has several shows worth a visit.

New York in Colour has quite a few interesting images, but it perhaps somewhat of a ragbag show of gallery inventory.  The odd web design probably means many visitors never get to see the 42 images on show, as the link from the thumbnail only works close to its top edge. In the main it is the earlier work that has most interest for me, and perhaps the only interesting image from this century is one of Abelardo Morell’s Camera Obscura images.

Among the earlier work are some good images by a number of photographers, including Danny Lyon, Micha Bar’am, Evelyn Hofer, Helen Levitt and Erwin Blumenfeld (and a few rather weak works by some others) but I was particularly pleased to be introduced to the work of Marvin Newman, who has an enviable biography, having studied for his BA with Walter Rosenblum who suggested he take classes with John Ebstel at the Photo League, and later studing with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Chicago Institute of Design where he was one of the first students to gain an MS in photography in 1952. The best place to see more of his work is probably at the Bruce Silverstein gallery.

Those who manage to find the 24 images for An Italian Perpective will also find some images worth looking at. I’ve always found the work of Luigi Ghirri (1943-92) extremely uneven, but there are a few intriguing images among those shown here even if it is hard to imagine why he felt others worth taking or printing. I’m always pleased to see work by Gabriele Basilico, and there isn’t too much else. And although there is a picture by Massimo Vitali, his work always looks much better small on the web than it does large on the gallery wall, where I find it curiously devitalising.

But most interesting of all for me is the third show, like the others ending 17 March 2012, on the work of the Photo League, including pictures by some of the well known names as well as a couple I’ve hardly heard of before.  But of course the place to go to see more of their work is the Jewish Museum, where the show
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 continues until 25 March 2012, and has a fine web site, which I could and probably will spend hours looking through. I wrote several pieces about the Photo League in my earlier on-line life, as well as on a number of the photographers involved, and ten years ago there really was very little information about them on the web.

One oddity which emerges in the New York in Colour show is in the description of the prints. Greenberg appears to have invented the “Chromogenic inkjet print“, a curious hybrid of two very different and competing methods.

Chromogenic refers to silver halide based processes in which the development of a silver image is accompanied by the production of coloured dyes from the oxidised developer molecules by reaction with dye couplers. Normally we call such prints ‘C types’. Nowadays most C types are made from digital images – something that is sometimes called a ‘digital chromogenic print’ – and you can see and hear on his web site what Richard Benson thinks about that.

Benson points out that digital chromogenic prints have all the disadvantages of darkroom C-types – fairly poor colour reproduction and rapid deterioration, whereas good inkjet prints can give much better colour and last longer than the photographers who make them. But he stresses more that while digital chromogenic prints require hugely expensive lab equipment, good inkjet prints can be made on cheap printers, enabling photographers to do their own printing.

I don’t particularly buy that. The important part of printing, the magic laying on of hands that we used to do in the darkroom that made some people better printers than others has now moved away from the actual physical printmaking stage to the preparation of the file on the computer. And if I then send my file off to the lab, I’ve already done the creative part of the process.

But of course ‘chromogenic inkjet print‘ is just nonsense. Either it is chromogenic – a C-type – or it is an inkjet. Certainly not both. Just another indication that many guys in galleries don’t have a great deal of knowledge or understanding of our medium. Their expertise and knowledge is all about making money.

I tend to agree with Ctein‘s view on The Online Photographer “that most decent art is capable of speaking for itself. With occasional exceptions—and there are always exceptions—I think that work that cannot be understood in its own vernacular is not successful work.”

And having belonged to a number of informal photographic groups over the years – although none that centred around a “potluck” or my waistline might be rather larger – I certainly think that there are some photographers who talk too much about their own work. But that doesn’t mean I’m against talk, just that if you are going to benefit from such meetings (other than in culinary satisfaction) then you need to come ready to listen and reflect on what other people have to say about your work rather than try to con them into thinking how you do.

And I’ve learnt much (or at least I think I have) from looking carefully and thoughtfully at the work of other people and then attempting to articulate those thoughts. It’s a process of sharing ideas that can be stimulating, and has often been stimulated by the presence of a little alcohol, though too much can lead to trouble.

I’ve also been to many exhibitions where the true work of art has not been the photographs on the wall but the artist’s statement – and some of our fine art photography courses seem to be far more directed to producing these than meaningful and well-crafted images.

But although I’ve never been to San Francisco and visited Andy Pilara‘s Pier 24, a photography museum (entrance free but by reservation only) which displays work without text in the galleries – though there is an exhibition book you can pick up which may give you some basic information, I think that unlike Ctein I would find the experience annoying rather than indescribable.

I felt a little of this at the brief visit I was able to pay to Lise Sarfati‘s exhibition ‘She‘ at London’s Brancolini Grimaldi gallery in Albermarle St (as usual I was in Mayfair to photograph a protest outside the US Embassy.) Although there was what I think is an excellent gallery handout, with information on the photographer and the work – and with San Francisco connections, with the text – written in English rather than Artspeak – was by Sandra S Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and some of the pictures were taken in San Francisco, the 27 pictures in ‘She‘ were displayed on an otherwise bare white wall.

Very arty perhaps, but not very practical as I struggled to relate the positions on the wall to the numbers on a plan of the gallery. Because ‘She’ is a work about identity, and all of the 27 images show one of four American women, two sisters and the two daughters of one of them, who often wear wigs or makeup that makes them hard to distinguish, it is  important at some stage in viewing (though possibly not initially) to know who it is in the picture. I would certainly have welcomed some small and discreet labels that gave me the information such as ‘Christine #10 Hollywood, CA 2006‘ or at least the numbers of the images rather than having what seemed to me to make it into a kind of parlour game, working out from the position on the wall the number of the picture I was viewing and then turning over the sheet to consult the list to find the caption.

Perhaps if I was the kind of person who, in an otherwise empty gallery, would look at the plan first and then go around it in the sequence indicated by the numbers I would have found it easier. In crowded galleries you really have to stay in line, which is one reason why I tend to avoid the blockbuster art shows; I always like to do things my own way.

But ‘She’ is certainly a show worth visiting, and continues until 17 March 2012. I’ve written about Lise Sarfati before, mainly elsewhere, though I did find the five pictures from  ‘She’ on the Brancolini Grimaldi stand one of the highlights of my 2010 trip to  Paris Photo. She was one of the three or four Magnum members I remember enthusing about on a lengthy car journey with a person from Magnum in 2005, not long after I had written about her work. You can read a review of the show by Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian, which also has a short video and seven of the images.

So while I often find the words on gallery walls or the photographer’s spiel an annoying distraction, I think that it isn’t because there are word with pictures, but because they are things that don’t help you to confront the images. But there are sometimes words that are necessary, and sometimes those that enhance the experience. Let’s have shows with that kind of texts and not just pictures on blank walls.