E-Photo
Issue #256  3/2/2023
 
Contemporary Works/Vintage Works Exhibits at AIPAD Show

By Alex Novak

Robert Frank, Covered Car--Long Beach, CA
Robert Frank, Covered Car--Long Beach, CA

We're back! My company, Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, will be showing at AIPAD's The Photography Show in Booth 223 this year. And we will be loaded for bear, as they say.

We will be showing photo art from 19th-century Masterworks to images made by Top Female Artists to Surrealism and Post War photography. Our booth will have something for everyone. If you are patient, you can ask to go through our many boxes in our closet, as well as peeking through a couple of bins of work that we are allowed to show.

Vicomte Joseph de Vigier, River in Pyrenees Mountains
Vicomte Joseph de Vigier, River in Pyrenees Mountains

And, yes, we came back from Paris with over $300,000 in new additions to our expansive inventory.

The 19th-century work shown will include a rare series of Maxime Du Camp Egyptian images printed by the master himself or by one of his assistants outside of the Blanquart Everard edition. These have only shown up as unique prints on the market, and we have a fine collection of important ones.

We will have a fine selection of landscapes and other images of ruins as a part of the 19th-century selection in our booth. Two particularly fine and early 1850s study of trees in salt prints made from paper negatives draws comparison to Henri Le Secq's work. There are also other important landscapes in early salt prints from paper negatives from the likes of André Giroux, John Beasley Greene, Edouard Baldus, Felix Teynard, Vicomte Joseph de Vigier and Charles Nègre.

Gustave Le Gray, Fontainebleau Forest: the Pavé de Chailly
Gustave Le Gray, Fontainebleau Forest: the Pavé de Chailly

Just purchased privately, we also have a very rare and beautiful print by Gustave Le Gray of Fontainebleau Forest: the Pavé de Chailly. Only one other copy of this rare image was noted in the Bibliotheque Nationale's catalogue, having just appeared on the market prior to its publication. This is clearly the superior print. Apparently the two Le Gray photographs of this part of Fontainebleau greatly influenced Claude Monet's similar painting of the same name. There is a major essay by Barthelemy Jobert on this subject. Of course, we also have a number of great works by Le Gray and other French and English master photographers.

We have some fine 19th-century portraits and nudes by Marconi, Jean-Baptiste Frenet, Nadar and his brother, Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, Hippolyte Bayard Julia M. Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Andre Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Charles Negre, Louis Pierson, Bruno-Auguste Braquehais, Auguste Belloc, as well as many others.

John Thomson, Craftsmen Engaged in Ivory Carving
John Thomson, Craftsmen Engaged in Ivory Carving

China also features in the 19th-century work exhibited, as three rare and important ethnographic studies by John Thomson will be available, including an image of two craftsmen carving a large piece of ivory on Daxin Lu during the late Qing Dynasty, Guangzhou.

We are following up our Paris show with a wall of Female artists and their stunning work, from early Julia M. Cameron and Amelia Bergner to between-the-wars work by Laura Albin-Guillot, Barbara Morgan, Ilse Bing, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Germaine Krull, Dorothy Norman and Eva Watson-Schütze. We'll also have available the post war and contemporary work of women, such as Joan, Myers, Lisa Holden, Claudia Kunin, Anita Au, Imogen Cunningham, Betty Hahn, Edith Gerin, Marsha Burns, Consuelo Kanaga, Tina Barney, Pamela Ellis Hawkes, Sabine Weiss, Sheila Metzner and others.

Man Ray, Untitled Rayograph
Man Ray, Untitled Rayograph

Besides these fine artists, we will also bring many other 20th-century masterworks, including photographs by Man Ray (two great Rayogram images), Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Tom Baril, Horst Paul Horst (a rare vintage "Barefoot"), Irving Penn, Hans Bellmer (a large unique Poupee), André Kertész, Brassai, Ray Metzker, Josef Sudek, Arthur Tress, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean-Eugene-Auguste Atget, Gyorgy Kepes, Robert Doisneau, Edward Weston, Wols, Leonard Misonne, W. Eugene Smith, François-Frédéric Boissonnas (a fabulous blue-toned carbon print of the Parthenon), Francois Kollar, Lewis W. Hines and many others.

To get a jump on the gun, go to our search images page: https://www.iphotocentral.com/search/search.php, and search using any and all of the various criteria there.

Novak has over 48 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formerly board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.