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World Photo

Photo L.A. by Mary Panzer This year will mark the 16th annual Photo Los Angeles art show, featuring exhibitors, photographers, and speakers from all over the world for a weekend of informative and fun photography. Article rating: 7.75

What brings photography fans to Los Angeles in the middle of January? Not just the sunshine: For the past fifteen years, Photo LA has drawn thousands of regular visitors from the US and abroad.  Whether you want to see huge contemporary art photographs, rare modernist masterpieces, or vernacular treasures, the show is one of the best places to look and learn.  For the price of a ticket -- daily tickets are $20, and there are discounts available --  you can see dozens of booths set up by individual dealers, each complete with framed photographs on the walls, bins of photographs in archival mats, and big tables for viewing, along with dealers ready for your questions. It’s far better than an ordinary day at a museum or art gallery --- no long trek from one spot to the next, no hushed reverent atmosphere, no need to go to Paris or New York or Prague.  Organizer and dealer Steve Cohen sums it up neatly, “Simply the best of what galleries have to offer, all on one weekend, all under one roof.”

There is a distinct international character to Photo LA.  Seventy dealers from the US as well as well as Sweden, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic will attend this year. Along with images by established photographers young and old, they will show photographs from Latin America, China, and South Africa, many of whom are new to the American marketplace.  And there is always work by emerging stars.  They can be young artists just out of school, or older ones, newly discovered by some hardworking scholar. This is the chance to make your own discovery, or even vie with the museum curators who come searching for new material for their exhibitions and books.  And it also offers the rare chance to learn to evaluate individual prints (the technical term is connoisseurship).  This is where you can compare two or more made from the same negative, but made at different times, and now being sold by different dealers. This is where you can learn what makes one photograph greater (and more expensive) than the rest.

Photo LA runs from Thursday January 19, 2006 through Sunday January 22, 2006 and takes place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Diane Keaton hosts the opening gala on Thursday night, with proceeds to benefit Photo Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At various times throughout the weekend you can attend individual lectures on collecting by the following speakers:

• Steven Perloff, editor of both The Photograph Collector, the leading source of information on the photographic art market, and of The Photo Review, a leading critical journal of photography
• Rick Wester, Director, Worldwide Head of Photographs, Phillips de Pury & Company
• Philippe Garner International Head of Christie’s Photographs (Garner’s talk will focus on the market for contemporary art). 
• Photographers Eikoh Hosoe, David Hilliard, Lucien Clergue, Jeff Brouws, and Martin Paar will give hour long talks about their work. 
• Noted conservator Paul Messier will talk about the technical and ethical aspects of deciding what is a vintage photograph, and what is not (i.e. connoisseurship – see above).  For $80, Photo LA also offers a “Collecting Seminar” --- in which small groups get an intimate guided tour of the show before it officially opens to the public. (This requires advance registration and includes a pass for the weekend). (See a complete schedule at http://artfairsinc.com/photola/2006/#]

On the Friday January 20, Santa Fe Center for Photography with Photo LA, also offers a “Creative Edge” afternoon seminar for photographers, “On the Business of Being an Artist.” Advance registration required. (See http://www.sfcp.org.)

However exciting the program, a photo fiend with a taste for serendipity will be happy just to stroll and browse. You will find high art images by famous people, spooky old press photos by anonymous camera men, and incomprehensible digital creations by modern artists. Perloff calls Photo LA “the leading West Coast photography fair” where the spectacular range of dealers is “a boon to the serious collector” -- and quickly adds there is something here to fit everyone’s budget. “And for those who just love photography, but don't collect it, it's an opportunity to see thousands of photographs all in one place and to hear lectures by leading figures in the field. (But be forewarned, the collecting bug is very infectious and can strike when you least expect it!)”

This year, the gathering also has a somber note.  Photography fans all over the country and the world, mark the passing this July of Robert Sobieszek, 62, prolific scholar and creative curator who wrote ten books, and organized over 50 exhibitions over a career of more three decades.  In 1990, Sobieszek left George Eastman House to become curator of Photography at LACMA, where the collection grew fourfold, and came to include major works of contemporary art photography.

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