Juliet Harrison

One of our 2011 Emerging Artists, Juliet Harrison is “cleaning house” providing collectors a nice opportunity.

I have run out of room in my attic for framed work. Before I go through the tedious effort of taking these Silver Prints out of frames to store them more efficiently, I am offering some for sale in a special auction format.

All pieces that I post will start at an opening bid price of $100.00 + Shipping. Bid increments will be set at $10.00 per bid. To bid on a piece all you need to do is to post your bid amount in the comments for that piece. You can post any amount as long as it is more then $100. or the previous bid posted and in increments of $10. 

For more information:

Auction Site

Courtesy Red Filter Gallery

A new exhibition at the Red Filter Gallery includes work by 17 artists from the well known artists’ co-operative: Soho Photo Gallery in New York.

The Soho Photo Gallery was established in 1971 by a group of New York Times photographers striving to break away from the commercial art gallery experience and offer something new. It is now the only non-profit cooperative photography gallery in New York City. The gallery is run entirely by members – over one hundred of them who direct, operate, and financially support the gallery. Well-known photographers have shared in exhibiting at the Soho Photo Gallery as well, including Ansel Adams, Andre Kertesz, Jill Enfield, Jill Freedman, and Joel Sternfeld. Regularly featured in local newspapers, trade and national publications, their website, www.sohophoto.com, offers regular updates with announcements of new exhibitions and other exciting gallery events.

Exhibit will run: January 26 –February 26

At the same time that A Monochrome Winter exhibits, the Red Filter Gallery offers an extended viewing of Kisa Kavass’ Moments de Curiosité, and John Andrulis’ Retrospective in Upstairs Gallery II.

For more information: Red Filter Gallery

Jan Groover, an untitled platinum-palladium print from 1978

A photographer that was instrumental in putting photography on the postmodern art map …. Jan Groover has died.

Instead of feast tables or objects in the rooms of the wealthy, the still-life tableaus that first brought Ms. Groover to prominence in the late 1970s focused on the everyday implements of the kitchen, arranged in the sink: fork tines, spatulas, butter-knife blades, whorled and scalloped cake pans, shot in such a way as to confound perspective and to transform light into a kind of object itself in the reflective surfaces.

The pictures resonated not only as subtle documents of feminism but also as unusually beautiful investigations of the fictions that are inseparable from facts in the conventions of photography – inquiries being similarly undertaken by other artists of the time, like Tina Barney, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince

For more information: NY Times Obit

 Anthony Friedkin, Woman by the Pool, Beverly Hills Hotel

Its that time again. Stop by and see top gallery offerings at Photo La:

Photo l.a. returns to the historic Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for its 21st edition January 12 – 16, 2012. Continuing the discourse on photography’s place in the fine arts, photo l.a. provides galleries from around the globe a platform for the exhibition of vintage masterworks and contemporary photography, as well as video and multimedia installations. This exciting juxtaposition creates the unique environment that characterizes photo l.a.

Over the past twenty-one years, photo l.a. has exhibited more than three hundred galleries, private dealers and publishers and has presented more than one hundred and fifty lectures and collecting seminars to the public. Our continued efforts to create a dynamic experience for our patrons has not only increased our loyal fan base, but has attracted over eleven thousand interested collectors, curators and dealers of photography each year.

JANUARY 12 – 16, 2012

For more information: Photo La

Vivian Maier

It is amazing the amount of domestic and international press that has been generated for a previously unknown street photographer: Vivian Maier. When you see the quality of the images from a large repository of her work, you begin to see what the excitement is about …

An eccentric nanny from Chicago, who often used a pseudonym, Vivian Maier’s street and travel photographs were recently discovered in an auction of her possessions from an abandoned storage locker. Always with a Rolleiflex around her neck, she managed to amass more than 2,000 rolls of film, 3,000 prints, and 100,000 negatives which she shared with virtually no-one during her lifetime. Maier’s black and white photographs – mostly from the 50′s and 60′s – are indelible images of the architecture and street life of Chicago. She rarely took more than one frame of an image and seemed to concentrate on children, women, the elderly, and indigent. The breadth and depth of Maier’s work also reveals a series of striking self-portraits as well as prints from her travels to Egypt, Bangkok, Italy, and the American Southwest.

December 15, 2011 – January 28, 2012

For more information: Howard Greenberg

Lauren E. Simonutti

The most popular article in our 2011 fine art photography coverage was the list of photographers we chose as the “Best of the Best” for 2010. The interest in this group of evolving artists at different stages in their careers exceeded our expectations many times over … but provides us encouragement to put together “the list” yet again for 2011.

The contributors to this website viewed thousands of fine art prints, attended dozens of galleries, museums and fairs throughout the year. To boil all that activity into a single brief list is obviously a difficult (but enjoyable) task and should foster days of discussion by visitors to BWGallerist.

So with that, here is the the 2011 “Best of the Best” list in no particular order:

1. Rita Bernstein

2. Hiroyasu Matsui

3. Mariana Cook

4. Michael Kirchoff

5. Tami Bone

6. Juliet Harrison

7. John Mack

8. Kelly Fitzgerald

9. Gary Salazar

10. Lauren E. Simonutti

We thank these artists for their continued progress and integrity of their work.

Jerry Uelsmann

One of our favorite artist photographers is interviewed in the NY Times today.

Q. How do you create these images?

A. When I was a graduate student, I was still trying to find this ultimate, complete, meaningful image. I would walk around with my camera and I would find something and if I thought too much, God herself could appear, and I would think, what does that mean? You’ve talked yourself out of it.

But I began finding that I had elements that I thought were interesting, but not quite interesting enough. So initially, it began with foreground/background relationships being put together. And once I accepted that idea, in my mind, that it was O.K. to do that, that really expanded the vocabulary, and it freed me up, in terms of taking pictures.

Q. There were a lot of people working visually in surrealism in the 20th century. Why photography instead of painting or collage?

A. In my case, all of my technical skills were in photography. I had taken basic painting and drawing courses, but I felt much more comfortable with photography. I began to realize that there was an incredible psychological dissonance created by combining images, because all photography has an inherent believability. Even when you look at Magritte you realize this is a painting. But from the time you’re a child, a photograph represents a specific time and place.

For more : NY Times

Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots

The pained, brief photographic odyssey of Francesca Woodman is currently on display with the blessing of her parents for the first time.

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was an artist decisively of her time, yet her photographs retain an undeniable immediacy. Thirty years after her death, they continue to inspire audiences with their dazzling ambiguities and their remarkably rich explorations of self-portraiture and the body in architectural space. This retrospective, the first in the United States in more than two decades, explores the complex body of work produced by the young artist until her suicide at age 22. Together with Woodman’s artist books and videos, the photographs on view form a portrait of an artist engaged with major concerns of her era – femininity and female subjectivity, the nature of photography – but devoted to a distinctive, deeply personal vision.

November 05, 2011 – February 20, 2012

For more information: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Kisa Kavass, “Nesting”

A portrait photographer from a different world, Kisa Kavass has a singular sensibility when it comes to places and people.

As a girl, I grew up hearing and reading stories that created a mood and an inquisitiveness about the natural world. It was not until a few years ago that I began to understand the importance of these stories, folklore and fairy tales and their purpose in the processes of human histories. These stories that we were enchanted with and still exist deep within our souls reveal a relationship with forces not understood, the shadows of intuition. Through my photography I return to the imagination and curiosity I experienced as a child. I was a creator as a child and I needed to become a creator again. We have all had stories told to us in childhood that are pushed back into the recesses of our mind. My images are meant to remind the memory of those stories and to ignite new stories. I encounter spaces filled with shadows and light filtering through natural surroundings and old structures that carry their own history. This is the journey, beginning with the concept and ending with the viewer becoming a creative participant. We walk the forest path and feel the rush of the wind with the same sharpened sight and awareness as the wild creatures do. This series is a compilation of work from various stages of my studies into the world of stories and the importance of curiosity and creativity in all that we act upon.

Dec. 1 – Jan. 22

For more information: Red Filter Gallery

Ralph Gibson, “Hands In Conversation”

One of our favorite galleries for visiting and viewing photographs is Lumiere in Atlanta. With a good selection of vintage photographs and a current exhibit always worth your time, you should plan a visit. Now they are featuring a great photographer: Ralph Gibson.

Ralph Gibson (1939), Born in Los Angeles, California, is a photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition. Gibson studied photography while in the US Navy and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. He began his professional career as an assistant to Dorothea Lange and went on to work with Robert Frank on two films. Gibson has maintained a lifelong fascination with books and book-making. Since the appearance in 1970 of THE SOMNAMBULIST, his work has been steadily impelled towards the printed page. To date he has produced over 40 monographs, his most current projects being “State of the Axe” published by Yale University Press in Fall of 2008 and “NUDE” by Taschen (2009). His photographs are included in over one hundred and fifty museum collections around the world, and have appeared in hundreds of exhibitions. He has worked exclusively with the Leica for almost 50 years. Gibson currently lives in New York and travels frequently to Europe and Brazil.

For more information: Lumiere