Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Photo LA, January 9-11, 2009

When we lived on the West coast, Photo LA was just a quick and inexpensive plane trip down from the Bay area, and so we visited this photography show regularly every year, and more often than not, came home with something wrapped in cardboard and bubble wrap. Since we have found our way onto quite few lists, our mailbox has been full of brochures for this year's fair, but sadly, we will not be joining the fun in Los Angeles this year.

In the past, the show was dominated by familiar California and Arizona based galleries and private dealers (Bellows, Cohen, Etherton, Fetterman, Hertzmann, Nichols, Singer, Smith etc.), but over the years, the base has expanded to included galleries, dealers and book publishers from all over, totalling just under 70 exhibitors for this week. The show had previously been held in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (when we attended), but is now in the Barker Hangar.

In conjunction with the action in the exhibit hall, there are lectures, "collecting seminars" (as if we didn't know how to collect already), book signings, and other events scheduled at various times over the run of the show. The "conversations" between LACMA photography curator Charlotte Cotton and David Maisel (12-1PM on 1/10) and Susan Meiselas (5-6PM on 1/10) look interesting, and we certainly wouldn't miss the lecture by Catherine Opie (1PM on 1/11), having recently seen her retrospective at the Guggenheim.

As always, if you're a collector going to this show, feel free to post a few comments, so the rest of us can live vicariously.

January 9-11
Barker Hangar, Santa Monica

No comments: