Photography Collection - News for Art Buyers

For the second consecutive year, LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph will convene for a 3-day program of exhibitions, outdoor projections, workshops, interviews with world-famous photographers and special events that will transform downtown Charlottesville, Virginia into a "living image." This year’s festival will take place June 12-14, 2008. LOOK3 2008 will feature three legendary photographers: Mary Ellen Mark, Joel-Peter Witkin and James Nachtwey.
Mary Ellen Mark’s images of our world's diverse cultures are landmarks in the field of documentary photography, exhibited worldwide and published in over 16 books. "I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture" explains Mark. Mary Ellen’s numerous awards include the ICP Cornell Capa Award, three NEA grants, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Joel-Peter Witkin began making photographs at the age of sixteen. While pursuing graduate work at the University of New Mexico he refined his work in relationship to the history of painting and sculpture. Witkin stages visceral, timeless compositions that "confront our sense of normalcy and decency, while constantly examining the teachings handed down through Christianity." Among his awards are two Ford Foundation and four N.E.A grants, the ICP Award for Visual Arts and the Commander de L’Order des Artes et des Lettres.
James Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984, and is one of the founding members of the photo agency, "VII". Nachtwey’s work, especially wartime photography, has been exhibited internationally, and his numerous honors include the Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times), the World Press Photo Award (twice), and Magazine Photographer of the Year (seven times). Nachtwey says of his photography: "I am a witness and I want my testimony to be honest and uncensored."
On each evening of the Festival, National Public Radio’s Alex Chadwick will host in-depth conversations and big screen projections with the three featured photographers in the historic Paramount Theater.
The LOOK3 Festival is an outgrowth of the "Hotshots" shows that National Geographic Photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols hosted in his backyard for the last twenty years. The intimate, informal spirit of those gatherings continues. LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph’s name signifies "3 days of peace, love, and photography" featuring 3 renowned photographers. Jeff James, Manager of Photography at Rosetta Stone describes his experience at last year’s festival, "…I feel lucky and proud to be a photographer after witnessing the brilliant presentations from my heroes as well as the rising stars in our profession… This is the "Sundance" of photography."
Nichols is Co-Executive director of the LOOK3 Festival, along with Jessica Nagle of Charlottesville. The project’s Board of Advisors includes: Melissa Harris, Editor-in-Chief of Aperture Magazine; Kathy Ryan, Photo Editor of The New York Times Magazine; and David Griffin, Director of Photography at National Geographic Magazine.

How to administrate a photography collection? There are three softwares for collectors to do it: GallerySystems is one of them and a very renowned product, because the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, is working with it, the Museum of Modern Art and the Albertina in Vienna, Austria. There are two versions: The Museum System to manage a collection through ten integrated record types or modules and TMS light for small to medium size institution and private collectors with three record types.

Museografic is much less expensive than GallerySystems and offers a search engine for the art works, an export function (Excel, txt) and you can personalize the screens with your logo, url and email address... Interested collectors can download a full working test version.

As long as you manage not more than 5000 records there is a free software: Adlib Museum Lite. It is available in different languages. You can choose between English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Greek and Arabic and the following type of data can be stored: identification, creation and dating, physical description, techniques and materials, condition, documentation, location, insurance and acquisition.

It sounds like a highbrow fairy tale: an unsuccessful artist turned cable TV host snags an interview with one of the world's most reclusive and glamorous art stars, Cindy Sherman -- and the two fall in love. This is what actually happened to Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, aka Paul H-O, who uses it as the premise for the documentary he co-directed, "Guest of Cindy Sherman." But to cling too tightly to that romantic story line is to seriously misrepresent this movie, which is screening this week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and is slated to run eventually on the Sundance Channel.
In fact, "Guest of Cindy Sherman" feels more like three or four docs fused into one entertaining (and sometimes squirm-inducing) concoction. We get a sidelong view of the art world and its symbiotic relationship with commerce and celebrity, as well as an exploration of the awkward life of a famous person's "plus one." (H-O's own complaints are bulked up by an amusing interview with Elton John's companion, David Furnish.) At the center of it all is Sherman, in a fragmented portrait of a woman H-O calls "the most famous mystery girl of art," a photographer who has used her own image as the basis for a hugely influential body of work.
All this is strung together with H-O's confessional voice-overs, which present him as a goofy dude who has stumbled into the force field of a radiant, powerful woman and found himself devastated by his own lack of stature and lost sense of self. "I'd sort of been swallowed up," he complains. For five years he tags along as Sherman attends galas, hobnobs with celebs and collectors and jet-sets around the globe, spending his days as "the person hardly anyone wants to talk to." The final blow, at least as he presents it, may just be when H-O brings Sherman to see his therapist in an attempt to save their five-year relationship, and the therapist chooses to take her on as a client, jettisoning him. "Even my shrink would rather be with Cindy!" They eventually break up, though he carefully avoids showing any of the actual drama on-screen.
"Guest of Cindy Sherman" arrived at Tribeca wreathed in controversy: Sherman has officially disassociated herself from the doc, even going so far as to apologize to friends who are interviewed in the film for involving them. However, Sherman herself comes off surprisingly well -- whether working in her studio (where we watch her experiment with an endless permutation of outfits and makeup until she finds the perfect amalgam) or chatting with her sister. H-O says that Sherman got something close to final cut (at least as far as her own appearances are concerned). But for an artist whose work revolves around manipulating her own image, and yet who has very deliberately shielded herself from the publicity machine, it must feel like very unwelcome exposure -- by an ex-boyfriend, no less.

From 9th May the first extensive retrospective of the Russian photographer Jewgeni Chaldej is presented in the Martin's Gropius Bau, Berlin. Jewgeni Chaldej has reported as a photographer extensively about the second world war, the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Some of these images are world-famous and have become icons of the history of photography. Jewgeni Chaldej got famous not only by his spectacular documentary photographs of the second world war or by the staged image of soviet soldiers fixing a flag at the destroyed roof of the German Reichstag (above), but also by those photographs he took during the Potsdam conference and at the Nuremberg trial. The retrospective presents beside pictures that have never been published as well as early works from the 30s and the late work of the 80s.

Born in 1917 in the Donezk area in Ukraine, Jewgeni Chaldej received his first camera at the age of 13. In 1936 he became a photo reporter at the Soviet news agency TASS. He accompanied the Second World War with the camera since the 22nd June, 1941, the day of the raid of the German army on the Soviet Union. He became the witness of many battles, from the north with Murmansk to the Black Sea. Jewgeni Chaldej experienced as a soldier and photographer the retreat of the German troops and documented the advance of the Russian soldiers on Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna and, in the end, Berlin. With interruptions he worked till the seventies years of the "Prawda". He died on the 6th October, 1997. Jewgeni Chaldej travelled as a photo reporter of TASS across the whole Soviet Union. He took photos of the construction of dams in Siberia, the oil fields of Baku and the wheat harvest in the Ukraine, as well as the political rulers of that time. All photos of Jewgeni Chaldej come from the collection Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer as well as from the photo agency Soyuz, Moscow.

Magnum Photographer Martin Parr’s exhibit, New Typologies, highlights the use of the photographic series as an attempt to bring order to the chaos around us. The show features the work of WassinkLundgren, Donovan Wylie, Jeffrey Milstein, Jan Banning, Sarah Pickering, Ananké Asseff, Michel Campeau, and Jan Kempenaers.

Martin Parr was born in Epson, Surrey, in 1952 and studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic. Parr was the featured curator of the 2004 edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles. His monograph Martin Parr was published in 2002, accompanying a large retrospective of his work initiated by the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It has since been shown in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. Parr is also assembling an exhibition, “Parrworld,” curated by Thomas Weski for the Haus der Kunst in Munich, also opening in May 2008. This will show new work from Parr and his substantial print, objects, and photography book collections.

"We are able to present the extensive works of today most respected and renowned photographers to a rapidly growing group of fine art photography collectors in a contemporary format and make these accessible", is how Andrea Preiss describes the idea behind PhotographersLimitedEditions.com. The artworks of e.g. Andreas Bitesnich, Howard Schatz, Bruno Bisang and Timothy White are published exclusively for the company based in Vienna, Austria. Andrea Preiss, the founder of the site, is an enthusiastic collector and has worked for 20 years as a manager and creative director of an advertising agency.

artnet Online Auctions is another website to buy and sell photographs. Sellers in artnet Online Auctions are reviewed and approved; most, in fact, are professional galleries or dealers. If an item sold is other than described or found not to be authentic the sale is void and the buyers money is refunded. The site offers some information about how to value art.

Eyestorm was founded in 1999 and came under new management two years ago. The british site collaborated with photographers like Helmut Newton and there are alliances with art world organisations like London's Saatchi Gallery and Magnum Photos. Eyestorm offers some information about how to care for artworks.

PicassoMio is a good site for newbies on the art market and explains how to choose photographs for the collection and offers articles of journals and newspapers on how to start a collection. 90 % of the visitors are from Nort America and the European Union. There are partner galleries from around the world like Phaidon, New York.

Acclaimed US contemporary visual artist, Spencer Tunick, best known for his ability to pull large nude crowds, has put out a call for those prepared to bare all in public in Ireland for his latest project. The sometimes controversial Tunick plans to create a new body and landscape sculpture in Dublin's docklands and in the southern city of Cork in June by photographing more than 2,000 participants, according to his website. "We want everyday people, not exhibitionists," the New York-based artist, who has gathered thousands of volunteers for dozens of installations in locations worldwide, Tunick has told Irish media. Public nudity is normally a crime in Ireland and it was unclear Saturday whether an exception would be made for Tunick's art installations. His invitation promised that subjects "will only be nude for a short period of time."Mary McCarthy, executive arts manager of Dublin Docklands Development Authority, has praised Tunick for his ability "to create extraordinary images of the collective body in the environment."The Cork installation is scheduled to take place on June 17, while the Dublin one is due on June 21. People wishing to participate can register at www.spencertunickireland.ie. They will be informed of the exact venue in each city by e-mail 10 days in advance, Tunick told RTE radio on Friday.