NEW YORK— Stephen Bulger, a Toronto gallery owner and current president of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), called the most recent annual show—which ran from March 17–20 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan—“one of AIPAD’s most successful shows ever.” Organizers reported attendance of approximately 10,000 visitors, up from 8,300 last year, at this 31st edition of the event.
“We had a fantastic fair,” said Manhattan photography dealer Bryce Wolkowitz, who noted that this was his third time exhibiting at AIPAD. “We did better than last year, and last year we thought was very strong.” He credited this improved showing to a more expansive approach by the fair organizers, who now include a new-media category, which Wolkowitz features in his gallery.
At the fair, there were four sales of the work of one of those new-media artists, Jim Campbell, whose large public-art installation Scattered Light was recently featured at Madison Square Park from Oct. 21–Feb. 28; each of the four pieces sold at the armory went for $75,000.
New York gallery owner Bruce Silverstein, who was exhibiting at AIPAD for the sixth time, told ARTnewsletter, the show was “the best by all measures, including not just sales but the quality of attendees.” Among the artists whose works he sold were Diane Arbus, Henry Moore, Man Ray, Frederick Sommer, Edward Weston and Michael Wolf, with prices for individual prints ranging from $5,000 to “well into the six figures.” He added that some of the buyers were museum curators, although he declined to name their institutions.
Tom Gitterman sold a 1904 platinum print by Clarence White, The Kiss (The Reynolds Sisters), whose $100,000 asking price was one of the highest at the show. Gitterman said he sold prints dating from 1900 to 1970, including works by Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Kenneth Josephson, André Kertész and Charles Traub.
Kraige Block, director of New York’s Throckmorton Fine Art, which specializes in Latin American artists, reported 15 sales at the fair, including a black-and-white print by Mexico’s Manuel Álvarez Bravo that sold for “above $30,000,” as well as works by another Mexican photographer, Flor Garduño, and images by the contemporary Brazilian Christian Cravo.
Paul Berlanga, director of the Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago, reported sales of works by Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Siskind and Berenice Abbott.