Author: JH

Christie’s has its big photography week with works from the Miller-Plummer Collection, and “The American Landscape: Color Photographs from the Collection of Bruce and Nancy Berman.” And more. With the auctions due later in the week, most of the work has been on display since Saturday. If you are in town, I strongly recommend to go and see it. The American Landscapes are nice, too much so almost. There’s much alikeness, and a romantic desire to please the eye. So much of it in the same place, and you feel (with some nostalgia perhaps) that the 1950s/60s/70s were an era when ‘America’ could be captured in perfect type, cool car design, and the ideal mix of pastels and straightforward color. The glorious, sometimes whimsical past of color photography! But if you want to see a lot of Eggleston, Shore, etc., hanging side by side, you must go. Sally Mann I never understood, to me this is the lowest form of 1980ies kitsch (lowest because of the pretense); but it’s there too.

So which one would I buy? I would not buy “Madrid, 1933” by HCB, but I think it’s a masterpiece, albeit in the dead language of the ‘decisive moment.’ I would buy an ingenious, timeless piece by Ray Metzker (“Ray Metzker, Untitled, 1983-1984, 14 gelatin silver contact strip composite, signed and numbered ‘5/20’, 30 x 13 3/8 inches”). There is no point in following the link (here) to Christie’s abysmal website, even the zoomed in version does not translate at all. The detail is most intriguing, you can look for a long time, and the longer you look, the more you see. And with the all-too-rare sensation that not just the work, but this kind of visual experience is quite unique. You have to go and see the thing in the flesh.

When Martin Parr has his latest book printed in an ultra-cheap print shop in Mexico and, while they’re at it, lets them do the sequencing and design as well, I think that’s a good thing. Good as in necessary – as an irreverent counterweight to the technically perfect (and perfectly boring).

However, when I took a walk through Chelsea last week, technically horrendous did not make much sense at all. When galleries try to sell large format fine art prints for a couple of thousand dollars each and, for example, every single print on display has the same (admittedly faint, but clearly visible) marks that suspiciously look like the result of clogged print heads, I think it’s a disgrace. Call me old fashioned, but I go with the adage that you should know the rules of your craft before you break them – with skill and imagination, and not by accident.

That said, I think I’d like to do a show with prints from a large format inkjet printer too, only with the print heads removed altogether. Makes perfect sense, does it not?

When Richard Burton was asked about the first thing he is looking for in a woman, his answer was (allegedly): “She must be at least 30 years old.” I trust that, until you figure out what to look for, choosing a man is complex too. But when it comes to traffic cones, things have always been easy for me: I’m looking for attitude, and good taste in choice of location. This indulgent ambassador of traffic cone values shows both while reclining on the shores of Hudson River.