Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Checklist: 03/17/11

DLK COLLECTION

Checklist 03/17/11

New reviews added this week in red.

Uptown

TWO STARS: Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Met: April 10: review

Midtown

TWO STARS: Pictures By Women: MoMA: March 21: review
ONE STAR: Mark Power: Amador: March 26: review
ONE STAR: Abstract Expressionism New York: MoMA: April 25: review
TWO STARS: The Mexican Suitcase: ICP: May 8: review
TWO STARS: Wang Qingsong: ICP: May 8: review
ONE STAR: Staging Action: MoMA: May 9: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Coke Wisdom O'Neal: Mixed Greens: March 19: review
TWO STARS: Michael Schmelling: ClampArt: March 19: review
ONE STAR: Michael Benson: Hasted Kraeutler: March 26: review
ONE STAR: O. Winston Link: Robert Mann: March 26: review
ONE STAR: David Nadel: Sasha Wolf: March 26: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Mariah Robertson: Museum 52: March 25: review
THREE STARS: Laurie Simmons: Salon 94 Bowery: March 26: review

Elsewhere Nearby

No current reviews

1 comment:

RedSardine said...

Photographers A-Z

It's a shame that publishers don't make more of an effort to produce a balanced and complete review of photographic history and unfortunately Taschen's "Photographers A-Z" by Hans-Michael Koetzle is yet an other example of this.

I will not comment on the inclusion of photographers where to state that they are "internationally recognised" and "beyond question" have made a contribution to the "culture of the photographic image", seems a stretch to me, but I will comment on one remarkable omission, namely Chris Killip.

I cannot understand why Chris Killip and his In Flagrante work is not included, when Nick Waplington's work has been on the grounds that he is an "internationally acclaimed exponent of a New British Photography developed parallel to the Thatcher era". I certainly do not have a negative view on Nick Waplington, he is a very important photographer and very much deserves inclusion and broad recognition, but I think to exclude the work of a photographer who produced what is widely accepted as the most powerful work in UK during the Thatcher years, does not make sense.

Apart from Killip, I would also like to have seen Graham Smith included as a result of his breathtaking and intimate work (certainly blew away much of the other work of the time), but of course that would be a challenge for the format of this particular book given that his work has never been published. I was also dissapointed to see no signs of John Gossage, Susan Meiselas, Luc Delahaye, Keith Arnatt and Raymond Moore, to name but a few very important photographers whose work has made a significant and long lasting impact.

In the forward to the book, Hans-Michael Koetzle states that completeness was never his intention. However, if one calls one's book an "A-Z" and one states that those included have made contributions to the photographic image "beyond question" and that taken together they represent "a history of 20th century photography", exclusion suggests otherwise and risks cementing ongoing distortions created by an incomplete and imbalanced history of photography around the world and especially so in the United Kingdom. In other words, I think that there is a responsibility to the medium associated with these reference books and if they are to be no more than a collection of one man or woman's favourite photographers that's great, just make sure that is what it actually says on the can.