Photo Booths

NEW YORK—Photographs bound in books are wonderful, but the individual print is a potent thing, too. A vast array of them are available at the 28th annual Photography Show of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), in New York. The event, being held at the Park Avenue Armory from April 10 to 13, includes more than 75 exhibitors hailing from as nearby as Chelsea and as far away as Osaka.

In his booth, the Boston dealer and AIPAD president Robert Klein is paying tribute to John Szarkowski, the legendary Museum of Modern Art curator and acclaimed photographer who is being honored at the opening-night benefit (proceeds will support the MoMA acquisitions fund named for him). Klein is showing works by artists Szarkowski championed, including Mark Cohen, who burst onto the scene in 1973, the year he turned 30, with a solo show at MoMA. Cohen’s disconcerting black-and-white street scenes are available for $5,000 to $10,000.

Manhattan dealer Spencer Throckmorton is showcasing vintage prints by Latin Americans, most prominently Manuel Álvarez Bravo. The Mexican photographer’s 1929 image of two lions, once owned by the Surrealist poet André Breton, is priced at $75,000; another 1929 photo, depicting smokestacks, is tagged $45,000. Barry Singer, of Petaluma, California, is bringing 1940s and ’50s street scenes, starting at $3,000, from the estate of the New York photographer Lou Stoumen.

This year the auction houses are having their sales before the fair rather than afterward. On April 7 and 8, Sotheby’s offers more than 40 Edward Westons consigned by descendants of his sister, Mary, as well as the collection of the investment group Quillan Company, featuring Imogen Cunningham’s Banana Leaves, from before 1929 (est. $70,000–100,000). Phillips de Pury & Company is next, on April 8 and 9, with the collection of the Corbeau & Renard Foundation, including Frantisek Drtikol’s 1929 nude Torse (est. $60–80,000), and 20 vintage Diane Arbus prints. Christie’s April 10 and 11 auctions feature 50 Arbus images from the Los Angeles collectors Nancy and Bruce Berman, including Girl in a Watch Cap, N.Y.C., 1965 (est. $20–30,000).

"Photo Booths" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.