Photo L.A. 2019: Programming at the Fair
Jo Ann Callis, Tub. Image courtesy ROSEGALLERY
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, Opening Night 4-5PM (prior to the show opening)
Weston Naef, Curator Emeritus, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum
In 1984 Weston Naef was named founding curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. His appointment was simultaneous with the acquisition of a group of stellar collections of photographs--among them collections formed by Sam Wagstaff, Arnold Crane, and André Jammes—along with a dozen other American and European pioneer collections of photographs. For twenty-five years before his retirement from the Getty in 2009, Weston Naef guided the growth and publication of the Getty Museum photographs collection, supervising more than 100 exhibitions and 50 publications. Before coming to Los Angeles he was in charge of rare photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the author of numerous books on the history and art of photography, including: The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Getty Museum), Photographers of Genius at the Getty, and Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs (with Christine Hult-Lewis). Complete Mammoth Photographs, published by the Getty and weighing in at eight pounds six ounces, was more than twenty years in the making. It was awarded the Kraszna-Krausz prize for best photography book of 2011.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1
10-11AM (prior to the opening of the show that day), Docent Tour: Ryan Linkof, Curator of Film at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Ryan Linkof is Curator of Film at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Previously, he served as assistant curator in the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and most recently, as part of the founding curatorial team of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He has organized numerous exhibition projects, includingRobert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium (LACMA and the Getty Museum), and Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa – Art and Film (LACMA). He is the author of Public Images (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), and his research has appeared in multiple exhibition catalogues, edited volumes, and scholarly journals, including Media History, Photography and Culture,and Études photographiques. His writing has also appeared in a number of online and print journals, including the New York Times, East of Borneo, This Recording, and Document Journal. He holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where he has also served as a visiting professor.
11:30AM, Aperture Magazine: Los Angeles – City of Images. Photographers Janna Ireland, Mona Kuhn, and Mark Ruwedel in conversation with critic, urban and media historian, and novelist Norman Klein
From iconic examples of modernism and post-modernism to an eclectic range of vernacular forms, Los Angeles is home to a wide array of architectural traditions. This panel, presented by Aperture magazine, gathers a group of photographers who have turned their attention to the city's architecture, from the work of Paul Revere Williams and Rudolf Schindler to everyday, formulaic apartment buildings and the urban landscape more generally.
1:30PM, The Image, The Event, The Body: artists Nicole Miller, Christopher Richmond, Miljohn Ruperto and Jennifer West moderated by Ryan Linkof, Curator of Film at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Ryan Linkof will be in dialogue Miller, Richmond, Ruperto and West to examine common themes that unite the work of these multimedia artists. Through their diverse practices, each artist has engaged with the tension between representation and reality – with the power of images to simultaneously reveal and conceal. The conversation will examine the artists' use of narrative structure, materiality and a post-documentary approach to lens-based practice.
3:30PM, Underfire: a Film Screening and Conversation with photographer Tony Vaccaro
In 1943, with the Allied invasion of Europe imminent, a newly drafted 21-year old Tony Vaccaro applied to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He had developed a passion for photography and knew he wanted to photograph the war. "They said I was too young to do this," Tony says, holding his finger as if taking a photo, "but not too young to do this," turning his finger forward, pulling a gun trigger. Not one to be denied, Tony went out and purchased a $47.00 Argus C3, and carried the camera into the war with him. He would fight with the 83rd Infantry Division for the next 272 days, playing two roles – a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who would take roughly 8,000 photographs of the war.Following his tour in World War II, Vaccaro started a career as a photographer shooting for Look, Flair and Life magazines. In the years to come, he would photograph luminaries such as Sophia Loren, John F. Kennedy, Picasso and Frank Loyd Wright. Following the screening, Tony Vacarro will be available for questions from the audience.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2
DOCENT TOUR 10-11AM (prior to the opening of the show that day, Edward Goldman Art Critic, Art Advisor, and Host of KCRW's "Art Talk"
Both fearless and fun, Edward is a favorite on-air presence, offering a unique "accent" on art. Born and educated in Russia and formerly employed by the famed Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, he offers impassioned views on what he sees in galleries and museums and at cultural events throughout the world, and he is not afraid to "speak truth to power."In 1998-1999, Edward appeared regularly as a commentator for the weekly TV program "Life & Times Tonight" on the LA Public Broadcasting Station KCET, where he served as the Arts and Culture Editor. In 2005, Edward began leading a seminar on art collecting at Otis College of Art and Design. The seminar became so popular that Edward launched his own regular series of classes, "The Fine Art of Art Collecting." Through these classes, participants have privileged access to artist studios, private collectors' homes, art galleries, and museum exhibitions, where they engage in informal, spirited conversations about art and culture. In 2007, The New York Times published an article about these seminars, "The (Art) World According to Edward Goldman." Edward has also written reviews for numerous art publications and served as a panelist, moderator and speaker for various museums and arts organizations.
11:30AM, Etching a Tabula Rasa: photographers Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin, Michelle Groskopf and Rodrigo Valenzuela, moderated by Peter Lunenfeld, Vice Chair of the Design Media Arts department at UCLA
Great cities offer endless webs of connections, and Los Angeles needs to tend to these connections. The old line about Hollywood the industry – scratch the phony tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath – has tended to apply to too much of the representation of the city. As it flourished, Los Angeles fostered a uniquely creative spirit, its cultures reflecting a horizontal city rather than a vertical one, the width of new frontiers offering opportunities to multiple and seemingly endless escape routes from top-down cultural hierarchies. In Los Angeles, all was change and novelty for a century, and the city's history was seen to be of little use to its future. There would be no end to it: Los Angeles, the city fated to be eternally at the edge of forever. Treating Southern California as an ever-refreshing Etch-A-Sketch, a tabula rasa that could never be filled, absolutely freed generations to explore their own possibilities, but all of that worked better when history was thinner on the ground. Now those looking to build new and improved futures need to be familiar with what worked, what didn't, and even what was never allowed to be tried out at all. To understand where the city is and where it's going demands we look at Los Angeles' photographic record and its photographic future.
1:30PM, Michael Fried, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins in Conversation with artist Thomas Demand
Characterized by intensive analysis, historical depth and unembarrassed fervor for aesthetic imperatives such as intentionality and presentness, Michael Fried will continue his investigation of the truly modern, paradigmatic relationship between beholder and art object in a one-on-one discussion with Thomas Demand. Demand, an artist of immense sophistication, is no stranger to creative interventions in the beholder-work relationship. Demand's recent works made as high definition animations serve to challenge and perhaps re-enforce Fried's decades-old preoccupation with issues such as intentionality, autonomy, and presentness.
3:30PM, Jo Ann Callis, photographer and 2019 Photo LA Honoree, with independent curator Claudia Bohn-Spector, Rebecca Morse, Curator of Photography at LACMA, and artist Brandy Trigueros
Jo Ann Callis has long exploited the photographic process to narrative ends. Widely regarded for her conceptual images of people in mysterious settings, she has worked in photography, sculpture, painting, set design, and digital imagery. She uses the camera often, yet never pursues it as an end in itself, instead employing it as a studio tool to capture the pleasures and occasional uneasiness of domestic life. Her critically acclaimed pictures are both seductive and unnerving, tantalizing visions of interior states and astute reflections on cultural norms, that speak provocatively about female experience in the modern world.The lively resurgence of Callis' mid-1970s images suggests that her creative preoccupations remain relevant and fresh to this day. The uneasy tensions, strange vibes and fetishistic delights conveyed in her work continue to inspire young image-makers and point to Callis' lasting impact on contemporary art. This panel, with curator Rebecca Morse and artist Brandy Trigueros, explores what Callis' work can tell us about womanhood and female art-making during a politically charged time in which her concerns appear as germane and compelling as ever.
5:30PM, New Models for Old World Occupations: Collector Stefan Simchowitz, Amy Cohn of Crypto Kitties and gallerist Nick Fahey in dialogue with Jonathan T.D. Neil, Director, Sotheby's Institute of Art, Los Angeles
From art rental firms, to furnished vacation homes, to the auction market for digital assets, to paths yet charted, solutions to a sense of radical destabilization in the monetization of art are desired by many. At the same time, the future of profitable models for unique art objects remains unknown. Jonathan T.D. Neil, sits down with Simchowitz, Cohn and Fahey to hash out the future of the art market.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3
10 - 11AM (prior to the opening of the show that day), DOCENT TOUR with Paul Martineau, Associate Curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum
Before joining the Getty in 2003, Paul worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Martineau has organized numerous exhibitions, covering a diverse range of topics spanning the birth of the medium to today. He is the author of over a dozen books and articles, his most recent include: Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography (2018), Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs (2016), and The Thrill of the Chase: The Wagstaff Collection of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum (2016).
12PM, Between Totalization and Difference: Opticality and Optical Technology in Art Today. Artists Matthew Lax and Victoria Fu in dialogue with Britt Salvesen, department head and curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Department of Prints and Drawings, LACMA and Carter Mull, artist and Director of Programming for Photo LA 2019
This panel discussion, moderated by Carter Mull and Britt Salvesen, raises questions about the intersection and interdependence of art and technology in our time. Stipulating that the art-technology relationship is always fraught with ethical dilemmas as well as creative potential, renewed scrutiny is called for at moments of changing stakes and shifting public perception. If artists today do indeed enjoy unprecedented access to high-tech tools and expertise, what are the resulting challenges in terms of installation, dissemination, and preservation? And what new kinds of experiences are artists engineering for audiences? To the extent that those experiences may traffic in realism (material or virtual), we will ask what that category means in 2019, as thresholds of belief are more contested than ever before.
2PM, Access to Excess: A discussion centered around the internet & the art market and its impact on patterns of collecting. Jennifer Stoots with Jennifer DeCarlo, Director - jdc Fine Art, Paula Ely, Collector and Board Member, Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles, Michael Hulett, Director - Peter Fetterman Gallery, Michelle Dunn Marsh, Publisher, Minor Matters and Executive Director & Curator, PCNW, Dr. Till von Wachter, Collector & Professor of Economics, UCLA
The number of makers is virtually incalculable. Patrons, collectors and casual buyers are, however, potentially quantifiable. Trends are tracked and access is 24/7. The internet has democratized and decentralized the art market, as was hoped, but getting a fix on what's selling, who's buying and where from is a work in progress. "Access to Excess" will open with a brief historical review of how we got here, followed by a panel discussion with industry luminaries and mainstream collectors about promoting, selling, discovering and buying artwork and photographs online.
