NY Photo Week 2022

Prior to the pandemic, the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers (AIPAD) sponsored The Photography Show, and the Spring auctions and photo shows in New York City drew curators and collectors from around the world. Usually, the photographic auctions cluster around AIPAD in late March or early April, but due to the pandemic, with difficult planning and coordinating of schedules, the event moved to late May 2022.

This is the first-year AIPAD was back to in-person participation, drawing 45 dealers from across the North and South America, including our own Terry Etherton of the Etherton Gallery in Tucson,  and European dealers from Paris, London, Vienna, and Antwerp.

AIPAD began Thursday night May 20 with a VIP opening at a new venue on 5th Avenue, and the show continued through Sunday. With two floors of exhibition space, AIPAD showcased thousands of amazing original photographs from classic vintage images taken by icons of the medium to the contemporary images of emerging photographers.

Friday started with a “shadow show” at a hotel around the corner from AIPAD on 36th Street. Pop-up Photography New York! was a smaller show with 10 dealers from Europe and America, including Andrew Smith from Tucson. Offerings ranged from daguerreotypes and other early processes to contemporary work with prices from the hundreds to more than $100,000. Opening before public access to AIPAD later in the day, this show drew a lively crowd including curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Houston Museum of Art, St. Petersburg Art Museum, Rijksmuseum, and scores of private curators and collectors.

Saturday both AIPAD and Pop-up Photography New York! continued, and a tabletop show for postcard and photograph dealers, the 2022 New York City Postcard Fair opened at the Windham New Yorker. The show had planned for this date and when AIPAD moved to later in the spring, the show dates aligned – much to the delight of the promoters and dealers that joined to take advantage of the weekend New York photographic audience.

Other collateral events included two photobook shows. The New York Public Library (NYPL) hosted What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women with examples from their collection ranging from the 19th century Anna Atkins cyanotypes to contemporary work. The International Center of Photography (ICP) hosted their ICP Photobook Fest show focused on contemporary photographers and photo book publishers and was hosted at their Lower Manhattan space.

There were also lectures by curators and collectors sponsored by several of the events throughout the week and weekend. AIPAD Talks began their lecture series in early May (past talks available here) to share information and build interest in the upcoming events. The paper and vernacular photography show at the Wyndham New Yorker hosted Assistant Professor of Art History at Hunter College Lynda Klitch and MFA Boston Senior Curator Ben Weiss for a presentation on the new MFA Boston/Leonard A. Louder Collection exhibition Real Photo Postcards from a Changing Nation.

Browsing the events in New York is like a pop-up photography museum, providing an amazing opportunity to see great original photographs in person, and to rub shoulders and chat with curators and collectors from around the world that share a passionate interest in the images. There is also the backdrop of the regular gallery and museum profile of the city – the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan Library, Whitney, New Museum, Guggenheim, ICP, NYPL, New York Historical Society, Museum of the City of New York, and galleries across Chelsea, the Lower East side, and sprinkled across the city.

In the Image Gallery above are a few photographs of the events I was able to grab as I browsed. It is a truly amazing experience.