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News, Commentary & Tips For Collectors Of Rare Photography Books
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Magnum Photographers to Attend Aperture "Access To Life" Book Signing on April 23
Aperture Gallery in New York will host a book signing for the publication, Access to Life , on Thursday, April 23rd at 7pm. Magnum photographers who may be present for the event include Jonas Bendiksen, Jim Goldberg, Alex Majoli, Steve McCurry, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, and Larry Towell. Aperture will announce which of these photographers will attend prior to the event.
The publisher describes Access to Life as follows:
"For the past twenty-five years, the AIDS pandemic has inflicted excruciating pain upon humanity, having ravaged the lives of millions of people around the world. Over the past few years, however, a quiet global revolution has enabled millions infected by HIV to live healthy lives through the free antiretroviral treatment program initiated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
In Access to Life (Aperture, March 2009), eight of the world's leading photojournalists, all members of Magnum Photos, follow thirty individuals in nine countries before, and four months after, they began the antiretroviral treatment, documenting the transformative effect on their bodies, their lives, and the lives of their families..."
Aperture Gallery is located at 547 West 27th Street in New York City (212-505-5555).
Sales Brisk At AIPAD Photography Show In New York
More than 8,000 photography enthusiasts turned out for The AIPAD Photography Show New York held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York from March 26 to March 29. The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) reported that galleries in attendance enjoyed "a surprising number of robust sales" despite the weak economy and noted that "many dealers commented that business was much better than they expected."
Sam Haskins & The First Edition of Cowboy Kate
Over the course of a long career, photographer Sam Haskins worked in all facets of the field: industrial, commercial, fashion, even hiring out for corporate annual reports. For all that, his reputation rests primarily on one publication, Cowboy Kate (Bodley Head, Crown, 1965). "I did a few books because I wanted to do projects where I controlled the whole process, from conception to the final thing. As subject matter, I chose nudes. And of course, that's what I became famous for," Haskins ruefully recalled in a 2006 interview with journalist Jack Crager, published on occasion of the Rizzoli re-issuance of "Cowboy Kate and Other Stories," his most famous book.
Alongside David Hamilton and John Green, Haskins was one of a casual school of London based photographers who became known for risque and/or erotic photography. While some of it now appears dated, a cartoonish recollection of London-swings-like-a-pendulum-do circa the mid 1960's, Haskins and his informal trilogy ("Cowboy Kate," "November Girl" and "Five Girls") has only grown in stature; he's the only one of the group to be recognized in all three books of the canon, Parr, Roth and the Open Book. (The Rizzoli re-publication of "Kate" did not seriously affect the value of the book in the 1965 Bodley Head (UK) and Crown (US) editions, as is often the case. In fact, the Rizzoli re-issue actually seemed to slightly boost the value of the 1975 second edition, which Haskins self-published.)
Haskins, who now lives in Australia, continues to publish new books and to re-issue new editions of older publications, all of which find a receptive and appreciative audience. As time goes by, however, the evidence suggests that of all his work the impact and influence of "Cowboy Kate" will become his defining achievement.
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Book Signing Etiquette
As more and more photography books are published, more and more photographers find themselves in a position many literary authors know all too well: behind a table, pen in hand, signing their books. Oddly enough, many of the people attending these events seem completely unaware of the etiquette that has grown up around book signings. The new photography book enthusiast apparently thinks nothing of engaging the photographer in long, technical discussions and/or highly detailed questions about specific works, a discussion they seek to continue even as those in the line behind them present their books to be signed. They don't bother to open the book to the title page and present it thus to the photographer, instead creating an extra moment or two of work for the photographer. And they seem to delight in asking for tediously detailed personal inscriptions, which drag the process out even further.
The informal rules of a photography book signing are simple:
1. Have the book open and ready to sign. Pay attention to the person in front of you: if the photographer signs on a particular page, have the book open to it.
2. A brief comment or two is certainly permissable, but starting a Q&A isn't. There are people behind you, and even the most stalwart photographer quickly grows fatigued. At some events hundreds of people line up, and everybody wants the same thing.
3. Personalized inscriptions at lightly attended events are fine. In a crowd, however, they're not. Wait until the end of the event and see if you can be accommodated, or settle for the usual "To [your name here], best wishes."
4. Do not hang around the signing area and attempt to engage the photographer in conversation as he or she signs other people's books. That is hugely annoying to everyone.
5. Some photographers will sign just about anything that's put in front of them, such as postcards, reproductions, posters and the like. Many others, however, won't.
These conventions are more or less ingrained in literary book signings. They're applicable to photography book signings too.
Photographer Deborah Turbeville To Sign Books At ICP April 24
Photographer Deborah Turbeville will be signing her new book Casa No Name (NY: Rizzoli, 2009) and presumably earlier works as well at the ICP Museum Store on April 24. The ICP Museum Store is located at 1133 Avenue of The Americas in New York City.
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The Photography Books of Ed Ruscha
The Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha, has never sought recognition as a serious photographer and, in fact, made it clear that he uses photographs as an armature for his work, an underlying structure that supports his paintings and graphics. Even so, the influence of his early artists books, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires and Milk, Every Building On The Sunset Strip, all composed
primarily of photographs, has been profound. Cited in all the major
references, Ruscha's camera work introduced elements of conceptualism and process art into photography, which had in large part been a previously unexplored medium for those concepts. Ruscha's dead-pan, flatly ironic, and uninflected explorations of various locales, apparently chosen for their near total lack of inherent aesthetic interest, forced the question of what makes a photograph interesting.
By the mid 1970's, Ruscha had all but stopped making photographic books. By then, however, his work was known and discussed among artists and photographers around the world; Bernd and Hilla Becher, the German photographers and teachers, had early on used his work in the classroom, where their students included such currently promenient photographers as Thomas Ruff and Andreas Gursky. Ruscha's esthetic of exhaustively exploring a single, often banal setting had become a common exercise among photographers. Ruscha may have stopped taking photographs, but his lack of recent work hasn't diminished his influence.
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Photographer Robert Frank To Speak About The Americans At National Gallery March 26
Robert Frank's The Americans, is by general consensus the most important photography book of the modern era, the genre-defining example of the category. Much written about, much discussed, much coveted by collectors, surprisingly little has been heard from its creator on its origins, and how Frank sees it today, on the 50th anniversary of its publication. Robert Frank is well known for his disinclination to make public appearances, so his uncharacteristic talk/lecture on March 26 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is the subject of much anticipation and speculation.
Robert Frank's last public appearance several years ago was thought by many to be something of a performance piece; he gave monosyllabic responses to many questions, and did not respond at all to others, while his interlocutor obliviously plodded on. It was later rumored that the dull and entirely unenlightening experience had been conceived, planned, and executed by the pair. This time Frank is to share the stage with Sarah Greenough, a senior curator at the Gallery; the expectation is that whatever questions are asked of Robert Frank will actually be answered. Perhaps.
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Photographer Bruce Davidson Will Be Among Artists In Attendance At Howard Greenberg Book Signing Extravaganza
The Howard Greenberg Gallery will be hosting a Book Signing Extravaganza on March 28 from 4-6pm. The signing will highlight new publications from artists in attendance, including Saul Leiter, Bruce Davidson, Jessica Lange, Vince Aletti, and Eric Lindbloom. The Howard Greenberg Gallery is located in the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, 14th floor(Suite 1406)in New York City.
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Diane Arbus And Hubert's Museum Work: Another Arbus Mystery
The mystery that clings to the life and career of Diane Arbus continues. The Phillips de Pury auction of original Diane Arbus photographs, taken at Hubert's Flea Circus and painstakingly assembled over a number of years by book dealer Bob Langmuir, was abruptly canceled last October, literally hours before it was scheduled to begin. A day or so before, a shouting match had erupted during an appearance by Gregory Gibson, the author of "Hubert's Freaks," an account of Langmuir's discovery and recovery of the Arbus photographs. Bayo Ogunsanya. the Brooklyn man Langmuir had accquired a number of photographs from, disrupted the reading with his claim that he had been cheated in his deal with Langmuir. Shortly thereafter the auction was canceled, with Phillips offering the transparently dubious explanation of a "private sale pending."
Phillips had gone to the expense of printing a catalog and had marketed the sale aggressively. Although media speculation had the cancellation being the result of a lawsuit by Ogunsanya against Langmuir, it was noted by some observers that the suit had been filed months before the auction, with the auction house well aware of it long before the sale was scheduled. Later, more informed speculation had Phillips becoming nervous about the lackluster results at the Berman sale of Arbus photographs at Christie's, and backing out of its guarantee to Langmuir.
Ogunsanya, however, recently announced his suit had been settled on favorable terms to him, but in keeping with the Arbus mystique, details were kept under wraps. Langmuir won't comment, and neither will Phillips. Ogunsanya let it slip he'll collect "a percentage of the gross" when the sale finally does take place but refused further comment. What's not known is when, or if, the auction will be rescheduled. Langmuir isn't saying. In the meantime the auction catalog, Diane Arbus: Hubert's Museum Work 1958-1963 (April 8, 2008, New York, Photographs, has become something of a collectible, as it's uncertain if the photographs will be shown any time soon, if ever. In that, as in all things Arbus, the mystery remains.
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Robert Frank's The Americans Featured In National Gallery Exhibition
Collectors of Robert Frank photography books should be sure not to miss The National Gallery of Art's Exhibition, "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans," being held January 18 to April 26, 2009. The exhibit "celebrates the 50th anniversary of the book's publication by presenting all 83 photographs from The Americans in the order established by the book, and by providing a detailed examination of the book's roots in Frank's earlier work, its construction, and its impact on his later art." Can't make it to Washington in time? No worries. The exhibition will move to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art May 16–August 23, 2009 and then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, September 22–December 27, 2009.
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Finding The Ellusive First Edition of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph
 Cited in Andrew Roth's The Book of 101 Books, The Open Book, and Photobook by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is clearly a must have for any collector of rare photography books. Published by Aperture in 1972, the book was issued in collaboration with the MOMA retrospective of Arbus's work a year after she committed suicide.
The first issue of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is the only copy worth collecting. The first printing of both the hardcover and softcover edition includes an image entitled "Two Girls In Identical Raincoats" which was removed from subsequent printings, apparently because Arbus did not obtain permission from the girls' parents to reprint the photograph.
Prices for a near fine copy of the first hardcover edition currently range from $2500to $2750. The softcover edition can be had for $300 to $600 depending on condition.
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