PHOTOFAIRS New York is the art fair dedicated to the intersection of contemporary photography, video art and new media, and platforms some of the most exciting works on a global stage. We take a closer look at selected exhibitors who encapsulate these three strands.
PHOTOFAIRS New York took place at the Javits Center September 8-10, 2023. VIP Preview (invitation-only) was on Thursday September 7.
Voice #29, 2019 © Jungjin Lee, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
PHOTOGRAPHY
CLAMP examines the natural world through the work of six lens-based media artists who address the evolving relationship between humans and nature in the face of climate change. Aziz + Cucher’s Scenapse series represents the natural world through highly pixelated imagery, pointing to the fact that the world, like the body, is constructed of tiny particles and elements. Olaf Otto Becker’s Ilulissat series documents traces of human overpopulation left behind in nature, particularly in the Arctic. Brian Buckley employs experimental processes to comment on our uncertain moment in history and Zack Seckler pushes the line between reality and abstraction when shooting some of the planet’s most remote locations. Robert Voit’s large-format color photographs from the series New Trees seem to depict everyday woody perennial plants, until closer inspection.
Howard Greenberg Gallery brings to PHOTOFAIRS New York a collection of exquisite prints by some of the medium’s most renowned photographers. Nude on Sand (Charis, Oceano, California) by Edward Weston shows how the photographer’s semi-abstract black & white photograph expanded the aesthetic and conceptual boundaries of photography when the image was created in 1936. Impressive large-scale prints by Edward Burtynsky will also be on show, as well as Arnold Newman’s collage portrait of Andy Warhol and Jungjin Lee’s striking monochrome images.
An evening dip in Fjaerland, 2021 © Ole Marius Joergensen – courtesy of Momentum
Another gallery championing the art of photography is Momentum, with a presentation of cinematic landscapes from Norwegian artist Ole Marius Joergensen’s latest series, exploring the mysteries of rural life. Joergensen will also be debuting his new book titled Obscure Sphere.
Staley-Wise Gallery’s presentation showcases two never-seen-before works created especially for PHOTOFAIRS New York, including a photograph by Ellen von Unwerth and a one-of-a-kind collage by Stephanie Pfriender Stylander. Stylander’s piece includes the first photographs taken of a young Kate Moss in New York in 1992. Staley-Wise will also exhibit works by established artists including Peter Beard, Steven Klein, Horst P. Horst, Arthur Elgort and Melvin Sokolsky.
Riva Maid, 2019 © Ania Freer – courtesy of Jamaica Art Society
VIDEO ART
HESSE FLATOW brings a vibrant presentation of photographs, prints and video works by New York-based artist Adama Delphine Fawundu. The display will include a selection of old and newer works completed during her recent residency at Fountainhead, Miami, all of which explore themes of indigenization and ancestral memory.
Another video-focused exhibitor is Jamaica Art Society with Memories Don’t Leave Like People Do. The exhibition of video works, curated by Jamaica Art Society founder Tiana Webb Evans, explores the tension between knowledge, memory, and history. The display features work by artists Simon Benjamin, Zachary Fabri, Ania Freer, Timothy Yanick Hunter, and Jamilah Sabur.
Udrivinmecraz, 2014 © Kenny Dunkan – courtesy of Postmasters Gallery
Postmasters Gallery will be showcasing The Path, an exhibition featuring photographs and video by Kenny Dunkan, Damjanski’s AI-assisted app alongside photographic works, and a sculpture by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy that employs cinematic footage created through an algorithm. Kevin McCoy is also widely recognized for creating the first art NFT in 2014.
NEW MEDIA
Fahey/Klein Gallery’s presentation will demonstrate how the medium of photography has been transformed by groundbreaking artists. In collaboration with the blockchain platform, Tezos, and the NFT gallery, The VERSEverse, attendees can interact with an AI Allen Ginsberg that will discuss the photographic works on display.
Anime Villany, 2020 © Huntrezz Janos – courtesy of TRANSFER
TRANSFER’s showcase of Huntrezz Janos’ multilayered AR face filters, which use augmented reality to explore the mythology of self. Drawing upon a long lineage of masks used as symbolic narrative devices, Huntrezz’s filters introduce fantastic and impossible characters that represent different real, imagined, and daydreamed happenings in her life. Huntrezz synthesizes sharp renders with anarchic vaporwave aesthetics to explore fantasies of a Black, Non-Binary artist grappling with her lived realities of systemic violence and exclusion.
© Sarp Kerem Yavuz – courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery
Von Lintel Gallery showcases Eight Radically Different Approaches to Photography, with a group of artists that force the viewer to reassess photography and its limits. The gallery will be exhibiting three artists who are new to the gallery: Lucia Engstrom, Jeffrey Rothstein, and Sarp Kerem Yavuz. Sarp Kerem Yavuz prints AI-generated, photorealistic images as Polaroids, depicting an alternate reality where the Ottoman Empire continued to exist into the 21st century, presenting a clandestine network of queer individuals plotting a rebellion in the nightlife, intertwined with orientalist portraiture.
