AIPAD and Photo Miami Draw Focused Audiences

Photography has always played second fiddle in Miami, but this year the genre is well represented. The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has set up its first Miami edition of the New York mainstay fair, and Photo Miami has opened a tent next door, for one-stop photo shopping.

“The buzz was that Photo Miami was going to be better than AIPAD,” said one visitor, New York dealer James Danziger. “But I think they both look really good. AIPAD is a lively show, and there are more surprising pictures here than elsewhere.” Danziger, who is blogging this week at pictureyear.blogspot.com, added that he was surprised by how much photography was at ABMB as well. “It’s interesting how galleries are responding to the question of photography in the context of contemporary art.”

AIPAD dealers were pleased that foot traffic had picked up once ABMB opened, with collectors officially making rounds at the small fairs. Even Calvin Klein attended and perused the booths of the 40-plus dealers at the fair, and  photography curators from such museums as the Getty and the Cleveland Museum of Art were sighted.

“Today is a bigger day,” said Beverly Feldman, director of Stephen Cohen’s Los Angeles gallery, which is represented at both photo fairs. The gallery’s AIPAD booth was slightly more traditional, though it included Camille Seaman’s prints of disappearing icebergs, which have recently caught the attention of enviro-guru Al Gore.

Among the gallerists who split their booths to display both vintage and contemporary fare were San Francisco dealer Robert Koch, who is showing gorgeous, large Edward Burtynskys from his quarry series—works that can be seen dotting several booths around Miami—as well as a selection of 1920 shots by Frantisek Drtikol.

Hackelbury Fine Art Ltd. from London is banking on the buzz surrounding Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, who won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale. The gallery has filled a small room with his large-scale prints, and had already sold two, including the 1963 gelatin silver print Christmas Eve, of a young couple dancing, which went for $9,650.

Throckmorton Fine Art of New York is setting its sights on vintage, with a few major photo collectors making eyes at Tina Modotti’s gelatin silver print Two Women in Street with Jars, circa 1929 ($75,000), while Chicago dealer Stephen Daiter’s booth has a wall of large, color-saturated prints by Martin Parr. The shots are from Parr’s Mexico series and include a delicious shot of a women elbow-deep in cotton candy, a shimmering pink confection.

Boston dealer and AIPAD president Robert Klein’s booth is drawing serious interest, partly for Kenro Izo’s deep-blue prints from 2004, created with five layers of cyanotype and platinum and depicting barely visible body parts ($6,500). “The response is coming from people at a very high and knowledgeable level,” remarked Klein. “It’s a more focused audience than you find at most art fairs.”

Over at Photo Miami, the feel is definitely more contemporary, with large-scale, color-swathed works taking up most of the space. Stephen Cohen’s Photo Miami booth features a selection of works by Zachary Drucker—an artist who has appeared in Jeffrey Deitch’s reality show Artstar—that capture aging drag queen Mother Flawless Sabrina, a major figure in the 1970s who was photographed by Diane Arbus. A double portrait with the artist, Blue Hair from 2005, is on offer for $2,800.

New York dealer Claire Oliver is building on the attention surrounding AES+F’s presence at the Russian Pavilion in Venice with a group of photographs and a video by the artist group. And some galleries made an effort to go beyond just photography, such as Basel-based Marc de Puechredon, who is showing a series of sculptures by dNASAb featuring an explosion of plastic items surrounding iPods.

One crowd favorite was from Berkeley dealer Charles Guice, who has a wall-size installation by New Mexico–based N. Dash. The artist begins her process with a piece of fabric, which she repeatedly twists and molds, then photographs as if it were a precious object, as in Guardian 2, priced at $6,000. Beneath the print is wallpaper fashioned after the same image, and with a black background, at $250 a yard. The piece was such a hit that another gallery participating in Photo Miami brought their own clients over just to show off the work.