Photography lovers can put their senses on burst mode over the next three days at the aptly named Photography Show at Pier 94. Presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, the expo features works from more than 90 galleries based all over the world, including several from here in New York.
From fine art crafted with computers to candid street photography, there’s something for every taste. If there’s an emerging theme to an exhibit so vast and varied, it would be art focused on identity, rendered via the trust established between photographer and subject.
Brooklyn-based Lissa Rivera has been photographing BJ, her “romantic partner and muse,” for five years. Their current series, “The Silence of Spaces” at ClampArt, was made at an unoccupied religious complex upstate. BJ, who is nonbinary, wears dresses in many of the photos; in others, nothing at all. Even though BJ does not identify as a man, Rivera said she has never had a problem displaying photos of BJ topless, whereas her own topless photos would get her kicked off Instagram.
“We’re kind of exploring the inherent shame related to women’s bodies,” Rivera says.
Another timely work is Rania Matar’s "A Girl and Her Room — 50 photos" from the Boston-based Robert Klein Gallery. The Lebanese-American photographer captured 50 different girls, including her teenage daughters and their friends, in both the U.S. and the Middle East, from 2009 to 2011, resulting in a mosaic of young women by turns posed or casual, bareheaded or wearing a hijab, embracing childhood or attempting maturity.
Despite the rising profile of climate change, there are relatively few photos cataloging its effects, although it would be hard to top Stephen Wilkes’ “Hurricane Sandy, Seaside Heights, New Jersey” at the Monroe Gallery, which shows the Jet Star roller coaster in the ocean after the 2012 superstorm.
Other notable large-scale works include those by German photographer Christian Voigt, who shoots with handmade Rodenstock lenses that allow a uniformity of focus across astoundingly large spaces. Two of his four photos here show dinosaur skeletons from European museums; and Alex Cesaria, co-founder of Unix Gallery, says that Voigt has been asked to shoot the local dinos at the American Museum of Natural History.
Nancy Richardson, at the Voltz Clarke Gallery, achieves her oversized art by overlaying scores of photos. One showing the intersection of Broadway and Prince Street comprises 400 images.
For those who like celebrities in their art, there’s plenty, including Audrey Hepburn (by Norman Parkinson), Truman Capote in his early 20s (by Henri Cartier Bresson) and Bob Dylan, posing for the Elliott Landy shot that became the cover of “Nashville Skyline.” Another highlight is a Harry Benson series showing the Beatles having a pillow fight in a Paris hotel room.
New Yorkers can find plenty of historic black-and-white photos of the city, including a placid André Kertész aerial of snowy MacDougal Alley in 1965, as well as prints that could hang in current shows at the Guggenheim — a 1975 Robert Mapplethorpe photo of Patti Smith — and MoMA — prints by the trio PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French and Margaret French), who are included in the Lincoln Kirstein exhibit.
The Photography Show presented by AIPAD runs through Sunday at Pier 94, 711 12th Ave., tickets start at $20, for more info visit aipadshow.com.
