Lee Marks Fine Art, in Shelbyville, Indiana

Mariana Cook, "Barack and Michelle Obama, Chicago, Illinois, 26 May 1996"

Higher Pictures, New York

Jaimie Warren, "Untitled (Self Portrait, Decoration Girls, Tokyo)" (2007)

June 2009 Fair Reviews

Joburg Art Fair

SOFA

Lottie Davis Leni Riefenstahl AIPAD Dealers Looking for Right Exposure Reinventing the Fair Experience at Art Cologne

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NEW YORK—Seventy-three dealers and 8,000 visitors gathered for the 29th Association of International Photography Art Dealers show, better known as AIPAD. Spotted in the crowd were Hollywood and art world celebs, including Jeremy Irons and Richard Prince. And many dealers reported better-than-expected sales. Particularly popular, says Magdalena Zopf, of Paris’s Serge Plantureux, was vintage material that has "stood the test of time." Another hit: a pre-White House portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama.

+ Serge Plantureux sold two circa 1940 stills, from Leni Riefenstahl’s film Tiefland, showing Gypsies "borrowed" from a concentration camp, for $6,000, and a 1930 shot by Evgueni Yavno of Stalin, his son and several comrades for $22,000. Collectors "will do what they can to buy the things they want," says Zopf.

+ Lee Marks, of Lee Marks Fine Art, in Shelbyville, Indiana, sold several gelatin silver prints of Barack and Michelle Obama, Chicago, Illinois, 26 May 1996, at prices ranging from $3,200 to $12,000. One of the most-talked-about pictures of the fair, the image was recently featured in the New Yorker. It hails from a book project about American couples that photographer Mariana Cook did in the 1990s.

+ Eric Franck, of London, had success with works from Lottie Davies’s 12-image "Memories and Nightmares." Early in the fair, two prints of The Day My Brother Was Born, from the series, sold for $4,000 each. "If one does sell, one is always happy — but that is not the main objective," says Franck, explaining that AIPAD is about meeting people and initiating book deals and shows.

+ The youngest gallery at the fair was the two-year-old Higher Pictures, located on New York’s Upper East Side. The dealer spotlighted works by Jaimie Warren, a young Kansas City, Missouri, photographer who often has passersby capture her in humorous, candid-looking shots. Warren’s prints sold quickly at $150 a pop in editions of 15. Pictured is the artist’s Untitled (Self Portrait, Decoration Girls, Tokyo), 2007.

"AIPAD" originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2009 Table of Contents.