Like many of you, I was closely watching our Live Benefit Auction at the Metropolitan Pavillion in NYC Monday night…seeing months and months of work by my colleagues unfold into an incredible event. Also like many of you, I wasn’t there ‘live’…and am still on the hunt for amazing photography.  Luckily our Online Auction is still on!

Not too surprisingly, yes, I am in a New York State of Mind… and as much as I could not put the Auction Catalog down, I now find myself regularly browsing igavel. I’ve been spending alot of time in particular with works that hold the monuments, mood and memory of my former city. The hardest problem will be deciding which one:

 Cori Pepelnjak, JoJo, Untitled (Off Duty Cab), 2009

Except for the blond hair and all the pink this could be me!…(ok, maybe a few years ago)

Helen K. Garber, Flat Iron Building, 1997
Pigment print mounted onto a wood panel and coated with beeswax(!) Yes, I own the New York ‘Then and Now’ book from that series, and love how Garber’s image transforms 1997 into ‘Old New York’ again. Which of course gets me all nostalgic when I stumble upon J.S. Johnston’s, ‘Four New York City Views’, 1893-1897 (two scenes below)  

and IRT Subway Construction, Union Square, 1902 by an unknown photographer.

I go from the Bronx…

Charles Johnstone, St. Mary\’s Playground East, Bronx, NY, 2008

…to ‘Yonkeros’ in Queens:

Jaime Permuth, Untitled, 2010

Four views of two icons. First from Suzanne Vlamis…

View From Liberty’s Crown, 1984

Twin Towers Aerial #1, 1979

…forever linked with that still-unimaginable day:

Pictometry, Statue of Liberty, Sept 11, 2001

Pictometry, We will never forget, 2001

Neal Slavin, Times Square Boogie Woogie, 2009

Have tripped on these steps (and they weren’t even wet)…  thought I had seen just about every kind of interesting view of Times Square before stumbling upon this wonderful photograph.

Ahron Foster, Out of the Gates, East Drive at 61st 2/26/05, 4:00 pm, 2005

A few days before they took them down, I was in town for a meeting at the Museum of Modern Art. Right around 4:00 pm, facing rush-hour and already late for a flight out of JFK, I still remember RUNNING over to Central Park just to walk under the gates one more time.

Once again I’ve spent way too much time browsing through the the Benefit Auction catalogue. It innocently sits on the corner of my desk… and has quickly become my go-to piece of visual interest.  Last year it was landscapes, this year the portraits in our Live and Online auctions are standing out.

 Cindy Sherman, Untitled (Doctor and Nurse), 1980

Cindy Sherman photographs herself in different identities and situations, and I can’t recall ever seeing her work as a diptych.  This piece was created just following her Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980 series , which brought her international recognition. And, of course, this past May a 1981 Sherman portrait, Untitled #96,  became the record holder for a photograph sold at auction. I wonder if she’ll ever pose as a Suffragette? (see last portrait below)

 William Coupon, Jerry Garcia, 1988

Coupon’s medium-shot and single-light portraits reference Dutch painting masters and are less about fashion than about personality. I have to confess it is entertaining just to see Garcia posed à la Rembrandt. Among Coupon’s notable sitters is another famed musician featured in the auction, Miles Davis. He appears with his trademark deep, penetrating gaze on his face….and a baby in his arms.

Various Artists, Five Stars: A Limited Edition Collection of Classic Portraits 

Classic portraits from Vanity Fair including works by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Anton Bruehl, and Edward Steichen. Portraits of Louis Armstrong, Louise Brooks, George Gershwin, Katharine Hepburn, and Leslie Howard are featured in this portfolio.  It was fun for me to just imagine these stars in conversation based on their expression, gesture and (especially in Leslie Howard’s case) wardrobe.

 Nickolas Muray, Frida (Blue Dress), 1938

Known for his commercial images and celebrity portraits, Muray photographed some of the twentieth century’s best-known icons,  such as this portrait of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Their relationship is legendary… and as a former latina art student myself, Kahlo as a subject in portraits (both in her own painting as well as photographs taken of her)- and the public interest in them- has been continually fascinating.

Gertrude Kasebier, Untitled (studio portrait of a woman),  ca. 1905

Inscription in unknown hand in pencil reads ‘Carrie Chapman Catt’. A close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, Catt served as president of the National American Woman Sufferage Association (Anthony selected Catt to succeed her) and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. One of the things I have always loved about moving to Rochester is the Susan B. Anthony House and how it serves, like this photograph does, as a reminder of both the leaders and the many ‘Untitled’ people who have been involved in a struggle to bring about change.

As was the case last year, we are sure you will notice some very familiar faces to the Museum in the 2011 Benefit Auction. Our Wish You Were Here Travel Photography Series continues to be one of our most popular lecture offerings, and we’ve been thrilled to revisit the work of some of our recent exhibitors who have garnered high praise and engaged our audiences.

 Wish You Were Here  series speakers

John Isaac, Studying Together, Karachi, Pakistan, 1981

Featured in our Online Auction. Series Speaker, 2010. VIEW

Burt Glinn, Untitled [Elizabeth Taylor in Segaro, Spain on set of Suddenly Last Summer], 1959

Featured in our Online Auction. Series Speaker, 2005.

 Doug Menuez, Friends, Rakai Home, Uganda, 2006

Featured in our Online Auction. Series Speaker, 2009.

Todd Hido, #2552, 1999. Series Speaker, 2011 VIEW

Larry Towell, Isaac’s First Swim, Lambton County, ON, Canada, 1996. Series Speaker, 2006

Denis Defibaugh, Birds of paradise, Veracruz, Mexico, 2011 . Series Speaker, 2006

Ed Kashi, City of the Dead, Cario, 1993. Series Speaker, 2008 LISTEN IN

Douglas Kirkland, Coco Chanel, 1962. Series Speaker, 2010.

Phyllis Galembo, Mami Wata Masqueade, Alok village, Nigeria, 2004 . Series Speaker, 2008. Exhibition: West African Masquerade: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo

Exhibition Photographers

Steve McCurry, Rabari Man with Henna Beard, Rajasthan, India, 2010

Featured in our Live Auction. Series Speaker, 2002 & 2005. Exhibition:  The Last Roll of Kodachrome, 2011. BLOG  VIEW 

Eastman Kodak Company: Sam Campanaro and Marty Czamanske, Fifteen Babies (Colorama #510), June 25, 1984

Featured in our LIVE AUCTION. Read this Colorama BLOG.

Roger Ballen, Boy Under Lamp, 2001.

Featured in our Online Auction. Exhibition: Roger Ballen: PHOTOGRAPHS 1982-2009, 2010.  VIEW

 Larry Merrill, Tree, Central Park, 2008

Featured in our Online Auction. Exhibition:  Larry Merrill: Looking at Trees, 2011.

Anthony Jones is one of the few remaining photographers who still looks for the beauty in everyday objects and places, who looks for the abstract in the concrete and captures images that have the flavour of urban life. In an age of digital, he still holds steady the tiller of silver based photography and the elegant beauty of images created with a critical eye looking for the innate beauty and design in everyday life.

Anthony Jones, London Taxis, 1998. One of fourteen photographs donated by London- based photographer Anthony Jones, that will appear in our upcoming benefit auction.

It’s not fashionable but it is classical and though bigger, brighter and more colourful images are in vogue now, like the fads of the past they will seem old before their time and the classic modernist work of Anthony will still seem relevant, significant and beautiful.

Working in black and white with a medium format camera, Anthony walks the streets of his native London looking for momentary juxtaposition of disparate objects creating a pattern that only black and white can reproduce. His image of a London taxi in front of the Bank of England holds both the motion and constant change of urban life and the solidity of tradition and steadfastness.

His work has the flavour of Paul Strand’s images of New York in the 1930s and of Bill Brandt’s London work a decade later. Anthony’s work comes from a long tradition of the lone photographer, walking the streets with his eyes open to the moment when balance occurs and an image can be made.

His work does not speak of today or yesterday or tomorrow. Instead they speak of the abstract patterns created by the momentary conjunction of objects and places in the modern metropolis. His images are quiet reflections in the midst of a noisy city. His images both define and belie the facts of modern urban life.

Editor’s Note:  Look for more in our 2011 Benefit Auction blog series leading up to the big event October 3rd.

Alejandro Cartagena’s long-term photographic study focuses on the expanding suburbs outside of his home in Monterrey, Mexico. Wandering around the region for over five years, Cartagena was originally drawn to the infrastructure sprouting up in the hills seemingly overnight. These prefab, cookie-cutter, single family homes were emblematic of an expanding middle class but also of a creeping encroachment upon the natural landscape.

Alejandro Cartagena, Fragmented Cities, Santa Catarina, 2008

Photographing with a large format camera, Cartagena aesthetically references the topographic surveys of the American West undertaken by photographers such as Carleton Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry Jackson. Spurred by curiosity, economics and notions of “manifest destiny” these photographers recorded the majestic West before it became subjugated to the needs of private interests and expanding population.  Jackson’s photographs, in fact, were an inspiration behind the creation of Yellowstone National Park (America’s first) in 1872.

The stark contrast in Cartagena’s photograph is suggestive of his intent. In the image, a parade of identical concrete-block housing units march unrelentingly towards a magnificent peak. This progress, if we are to call it that, will inevitably contribute to the forces eroding the grand rock-face of nature, in Mexico and beyond.

Read more about Michael Itkoff’s publication Daylight Magazine and browse his Street Portraits series, one of which is featured our 2011 Benefit Auction.