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Peter Hujar’s Delicate, Devastating Portraits of Life and Death

By in Photography

Peter Hujar’s Delicate, Devastating Portraits of Life and Death

April 22, 2024

Lead ImageDivine, 1975© The Peter Hujar Archive/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Do we live on in photographs; can they offer us a kind of immortality? Or do we figuratively die the moment our photograph is taken, after which the image painfully recapitulates death itself? Perhaps the photographed subject occupies a space between the two, not quite alive, not quite dead.

These are just some of the questions that arise in the work of New York photographer Peter Hujar, whose series Portraits in Life and Death is currently showing in Europe for the first time. Walk through the rooms of the exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale and you’ll run into some familiar faces; John Waters, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz and William Burroughs are among those Hujar photographed in his studio, all of whom were his friends. But the show offers more than a hall of fame. Alongside the portraits of celebrities are those of lesser-known figures from Hujar’s 1970s Lower East Side artistic milieu, captured in intimate states of repose and vulnerability, as well as a haunting set of images taken a decade earlier, in the early 60s, of embalmed bodies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy.

22Portraits In Life And Death by Peter Hujar

That these photos of eerie and entombed remains sit alongside the black and white portraits of contemporaries was Hujar’s intention; he placed the two series side by side in his first and only monograph, also titled Portraits in Life and Death, published in 1976. Hujar’s friend, the writer and critic Susan Sontag wrote in the book’s introduction, “Photography … converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also – wittingly or unwittingly – the recording angels of death. We no longer study the art of dying … but all eyes, at rest, contain that knowledge. The body knows. And the camera shows, inexorably.”

We often think of death as the great equaliser. We all die eventually. One of the most striking images in Hujar’s collection – a masked corpse that appears to be laughing, and the cover image for the monograph – seems to make this point. Yet the reality presents a more complicated picture. Death may be accelerated for those without the means to stave it off through access to the right healthcare, as the untimely death of many of Hujar’s subjects illustrates. There is also the question of who is granted the privilege of remembrance. Take the catacombs where Hujar photographed the mummified bodies, which attest to this uncomfortable fact: the people preserved there were well-known or elite figures who could afford to pay for the embalming process and to be kept on view.

“The catacombs were created for the elite to remain as lifelike as possible, a space for visitation and remembrance,” explains the Venice show’s curator, Grace Deveney. “In those photos, Hujar is drawn to bodies in frames and set up for display. The catacombs were an early way of thinking about photography’s unique possibility to bring life and death together and fix them through these momentary glimpses. When he turns to portraiture he is capturing people with a sense of impending death in life.”

Like the catacomb photos, with their coffins and encasements, in his studio portraits, Hujar’s frame appears to encapsulate and hold his subjects, often as tenderly as they had just died in his arms. Some later did; one image in the show features James Waring, a dancer who died in his fifities, with Hujar taking care of him. Other images Hujar later took (not present in the Venice show) include an image of Warhol superstars Jackie Curtis – after death from a heroin overdose – and Candy Darling, on her deathbed before she passed away from lymphoma at just 29 (an image that later became an album cover for Anohni and The Johnsons).

When Hujar himself was hospitalised in 1987 from Aids-related illness, the artist David Wojnarowicz, Hujar’s former lover, turned the photographer’s camera around, capturing Hujar for posterity, as though not only to complete the Portraits In Life and Death series, but to document the grave tragedy and injustice of the ongoing Aids crisis. Look hard enough at Hujar’s portraits, and you might discern a knowing look in his subjects that seems to foreshadow how Aids would ravage the landscape of the East Village, taking the lives of this network of mostly queer performers and artists that Hujar surrounded himself with.

Although many of Hujar’s subjects are people of note, Deveney suggests “he was not drawn to photographing famous people” but – as Hujar himself put it – “those who push themselves to any extreme […] and people who cling to the freedom to be themselves.” Dancers and people with dynamic practices were a draw, says Deveney, referencing portraits of Kenneth King, a dancer and choreographer, and Larry Reed of the Trocadero dance troupe. “I think he photographed them in these moments of rest, not moments of performance, because he was interested less in performers on stage or as public facing artists but as people who, outside of the image, can do this extraordinary, transformational or transgressive thing.”

Speaking to AnOther, photography critic Vince Aletti (and a friend of Hujar’s), agreed that Hujar was not preoccupied with fame. Besides the fact that many of his subjects were not yet famous at the time their portrait was taken, Aletti remembers Hujar himself as an aloof person, wary of mainstream success, and interested in cultivating authentic relationships – both with those in his personal life and with his sitters, who were often one and the same. “Peter rarely photographed people that he didn’t care about. [He] waited for them to let go, rather than giving him their ‘camera face’,” recalls Aletti.

The irony is, however, that the more famous portraits have in part, contributed to Hujar’s recent recognition in the art world and among those with an interest in queer archives and histories. Ten years ago Hujar may not have been recognisable, despite his distinct good looks (best captured in his own mesmerising self-portrait). Now, with the Venice show, and a reissue of the book Portraits In Life and Death forthcoming in October 2024, things are  changing. Soon, the actor (and two-time Another Man cover star) Ben Whishaw will play Hujar in a film biopic. Little known beyond his immediate circles and barely earning a dime during his lifetime, today – long after his death – Hujar is becoming a photography superstar revered for his formal expertise and distinct ability to see into a subject’s soul.

This brings us back to the question of who is and isn’t remembered, and Hujar’s fascination with how photography can play an intervening role. As Roland Barthes put it: “In an initial period, photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs.”

Portraits in Life And Death by Peter Hujar is on show at Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà in Venice until 24 November 2024.

Earth Day: 12 Photos Capturing the Sublime Beauty of the Great Outdoors

By in Photography

Earth Day: 12 Photos Capturing the Sublime Beauty of the Great Outdoors
image

To celebrate Earth Day 2024, earlier this month we put out an open call on Instagram for images that distil the sublime beauty of our natural world. After receiving hundreds of submissions from applicants around the globe, we have selected 12 photographs, each with a joyful and unique perspective on the world. Amsterdam-based photographer Sophie Hemels’ submission depicts lovers entwined in nature, carefree amid the Dutch grasslands; London-based visual artist Will Bruce captures an idyllic landscape at the Accursed Mountains in Albania; while Annabel Holden ventured to Antarctica, capturing a magical photograph on film of a lonely penguin atop a melting bergy bit. Together, these works exist as a testament to the magic of the natural world, raising awareness of all that could be lost if climate issues continue to be neglected.

Take a look at our favourite submissions in the gallery below.

German Photographer Captures Wanderlust In Magnificent Landscapes (80 Pics)

By in Photography

German Photographer Captures Wanderlust In Magnificent Landscapes (80 Pics)

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Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Reimagined Historical Portraits of Women Scrutinize the Nature of Concealment

By in Art World News

Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Reimagined Historical Portraits of Women Scrutinize the Nature of Concealment

“Untitled (after Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun)” (2020), oil on canvas, 130 x 100 centimeters. All images © the artist, courtesy of Almine Rech, shared with permission

From elaborate hairstyles to hypertrophied mushrooms, an array of unexpected face coverings feature in Ewa Juszkiewicz’s portraits. Drawing on genteel likenesses of women primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries, the artist superimposes fabric, bouquets of fruit, foliage, and more, over the women’s faces.

In a collateral event during the 60th Annual Venice Biennale, presented by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Almine Rech, Juszkiewicz presents a suite of works made between 2019 and 2024 that encapsulate her precise reconception of a popular Western genre. Locks with Leaves and Swelling Buds showcases her elaborate, technically accomplished pieces using traditional oil painting and varnishing techniques.

Juszkiewicz’s anonymous subjects are reminders of the systemic omission of women from the histories of art and the past more broadly. Literally in the face of portraits meant to memorialize and celebrate individuals, the artist erases their identities entirely, alluding only to the original artists’ names in the titles. In a seemingly contradictory approach, by drawing our attention to this erasure, Juszkiewicz stokes our curiosity about who they were.

“By covering the face of historical portraits, Juszkiewicz challenges the very essence of this genre: she destroys the portrait as such,” says curator Guillermo Solana. In a recent video, we get a peek inside the artist’s studio, where she describes how elements of another European painting tradition, the still life, proffers a rich well of symbolic objects to conceal each sitter’s face, from botanicals to ribbons to food.

Locks with Leaves and Swilling Buds continues in Venice at Palazzo Cavanis through September 1. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

 

an oil portrait from a historic painting featuring a woman in a yellow dress against a burgundy background with hair and textiles tied all over her face

“Untitled (after François Gérard)” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 x 80 centimeters

an oil portrait from a historic painting featuring a woman in a blue and white dress against a neutral background with her blonde hair totally concealing her face

“Untitled (after Joseph van Lerius)” (2020), oil on canvas, 70 x 55 centimeters

two images side by side showing oil portraits of women, on the left a woman in an orange dress with fruit and ribbons covering her face, and on the right, a silhouette of a woman with red fabric over her whole top half with a pearl dangling from the top of her head

Left: “Portrait in Venetian Red (after Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun)” (2024), oil on canvas, 190 x 140 centimeters. Right: “Lady with a Pearl (after François Gérard)” (2024), oil on canvas, 80 x 65 centimeters

an oil painting of a female figure against a neutral background with numerous palm fronts and tropical plants totally concealing the face

“Bird of paradise” (2023) oil on canvas, 200 x 160 centimeters. Photo by Serge Hasenböhler Fotografie

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Reimagined Historical Portraits of Women Scrutinize the Nature of Concealment appeared first on Colossal.

Greg Shamus (Photography ’93) | College for Creative Studies

By in Photography

Greg Shamus (Photography ’93) | College for Creative Studies

April 22, 2024


Greg Shamus with camera.

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[embedded content]

For Gregory Shamus, anything is possible. From weeknights spent in the darkroom at CCS to Sundays spent on the ground at Ford Field, his story is one of determination and grit.

Gregory has photographed some of the most iconic moments in sports history, from the Olympics to Superbowls and The Masters. His work can be seen anywhere from ESPN to The Golf Channel and Sports Illustrated, to name a few. We had the privilege of sitting down with Gregory to talk about his journey, what inspires him, and what he’s most proud of.

The Interview

“It won’t be easy, and it won’t be given to you, but if you believe in yourself it can be done. Don’t let anybody tell you that it can’t.”

– Greg Shamus

DETROIT, MICHIGAN - OCTOBER 30: Jahmyr Gibbs #26 of the Detroit Lions celebrates with fans in the front row after a touchdown against the Las Vegas Raiders at Ford Field on October 30, 2023 in Detroit, Michigan.
(Gregory Shamus, Getty Images)

What led you to choose this career path in Sports Photography?

I’ve always been into sports. I played basketball in high school and was offered a scholarship to play basketball, but that college didn’t have very many programs that I was interested in. It was kind of a natural progression to go into a career in sports photography because It had been such a huge part of my life and my youth. It just seemed like the logical next step.

What motivates or inspires you?

What motivates me the most is that even if I’m going to the same stadium or the same arena, the game is always going to be different. Nothing repeats itself, and to me, that is the challenge. Trying to tell that story whether it’s the rookie playing their first game, or it’s some triple overtime win, or maybe there’s a celebrity there that needs to be covered, there’s always something unique about every game.

Kevin Durant #7 of Team United States celebrates following the United States' victory over France in the Men's Basketball Finals game on day fifteen of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Saitama Super Arena on August 07, 2021 in Saitama, Japan.
(Gregory Shamus, Getty Images)

What do you love most about what you do?

You know, you can take videos, and you can do other things but there is something about a photograph. It sits on somebody’s mantel or sits on somebody’s desk, or hangs on somebody’s wall and you can walk past it, you can stop and look at it and it immediately takes you back to that moment. Whether it’s Tiger reacting to a putt, or Tom Brady raising a Super Bowl Trophy, you can pinpoint exactly where you were, what you were doing, and what you were feeling when that moment happened. To be able to just relive it and continue on – to me that’s kind of the essence of a photograph. It’s not to sit down and watch for an hour, or to have a lengthy commitment to it – it’s to stop, look, remember, and move on.

I’ve had coaches that I’ve worked with tell me, and I’ve had players tell me, “I have that picture on the wall. I stop, I look at it, and I remember that moment,” and it doesn’t get much better than that.

“I’ve had coaches that I’ve worked with tell me, and I’ve had players tell me, ‘I have that picture on the wall. I stop, I look at it, and I remember that moment,’ and it doesn’t get much better than that.”

– Greg Shamus

PARK CITY, UTAH - FEBRUARY 02: Jaelin Kauf of the United States takes a training run for the Woman's Moguls during the 2021 Intermountain Healthcare Freestyle International Ski World Cup at Deer Valley Resort on February 02, 2021 in Park City, Utah.
(Gregory Shamus, Getty Images)

How did CCS prepare you for your career?

CCS helped with my career path in many ways. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Commercial Photography. I’ve used many of the techniques that I learned at CCS when I’m out doing portraits, studio lighting, and arena lighting with strobes. I’ve used metering techniques that I learned in those classes. Even though you wouldn’t think that a commercial photography degree would translate, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve used things I learned at CCS.

And then look at the fine art classes that I took. That’s where I learned what makes a pretty picture, how to compose a picture, and how to look at the background, foreground, and subject matter. So, you take it all together and apply it in the sports world, and it’s amazing how many things I use that I learned in those classes with those amazing instructors.

More about Photography at CCS. →

Craig Anderson #41 of the Ottawa Senators can't make a save on a shot by Chris Kunitz #14 of the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game One of the Eastern Conference Semifinals during the 2013 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at Consol Energy Center on May 14, 2013 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(Gregory Shamus, Getty Images)

What are you the most proud of in your career?

My wife is also in Journalism, she works for the Detroit Free Press, and we have three amazing children. It’s not an easy career to have with a family. You spend time on the road, you’re working weekends, you’re working nights. So to get that support first and foremost is amazing.

And to work for a company like Getty Images, the support I’ve gotten from them through many different challenges over the last eight years while I’ve been on staff is also incredible. I’m very proud of the company I work for and the colleagues I work with. We have some of the best sports photographers in the world, and I’d put our staff up against just about anybody.

From a professional standpoint, I’ve had people tell me that they may send a great studio photographer if they know it’s going to be “situation a,” and they may send another photographer if they know it’s going to be “situation b.” If they’re not sure what the situation will be, they always send me, because I can handle many different aspects of the business, whether it’s dealing with a client, or working with a subject, studio lighting, action, or whatever it might be. My talents take me beyond just the camera. Being told that is something I’m pretty proud of.

It’s not always just about having the camera to your eye. You need to be able to interact with people. You need to be able to raise a family. So, it’s kind of the whole thing put together that makes me the most proud.

US President Barack Obama holds the Stanley Cup as he poses with the National Hockey League champion Pittsburgh Penguins at the White House in Washington, DC, September 10, 2009.
(Gregory Shamus, Getty Images)

What would you say to people who are apprehensive about pursuing their dream job?

I can say that I wake up every day and I don’t feel like I have a job in the traditional sense. I say all the time that I get paid to do something that a lot of people pay to go to. That comes with hard work, and you need a little luck along the way, but it happens to people all the time. You can look at so many artistic fields that if you have the drive and the persistence you can make it.

There are 30 staff photographers for Getty Images Sport in the United States. So, for me to take a step back and think of it, there are 30 of us in the United States and I’m one of them. It lets me know that all that hard work paid off, and that goes right back to spending all night in the darkroom. Pulling all-nighters with my classmates, down in the basement in the darkrooms putting together that freshman black and white series. It’s a work ethic that started here and then it’s just continued.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t be given to you, but if you believe in yourself it can be done. Don’t let anybody tell you that it can’t.

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Macro Photography Adventures: Discovering Hidden Beauty in Nature  |

By in Photography

Macro Photography Adventures: Discovering Hidden Beauty in Nature  |

Macro photography presents a unique challenge: finding compelling subjects in a world often overlooked. While dedicated macro photographers might cultivate specific environments for tiny creatures or invest in specialized equipment, the reality is that macro opportunities exist everywhere, from your backyard to local parks. The key lies in training your eye to see the miniature landscapes and intricate details that most people miss.

Coming to you from Andrew Lanxon Photography, this insightful video takes you on a journey through the Blair Adam Country Park in Scotland. Lanxon, an experienced macro photographer, demonstrates his approach to finding macro subjects in a vast and diverse environment. He emphasizes the importance of slowing down and observing your surroundings with a keen eye, highlighting the potential of seemingly mundane elements like decaying wood, moss-covered stones, and even fallen leaves. 

Lanxon’s exploration reveals the abundance of macro subjects hidden in plain sight. He captures the delicate textures of tree bark and lichen, the vibrant colors of mushrooms and moss, and the intricate patterns formed by fallen leaves and pine cones. His approach emphasizes experimentation with composition, angles, and camera settings, showcasing how different lenses and techniques can transform ordinary scenes into extraordinary macro photographs.

Beyond the technical aspects, Lanxon’s video underscores the importance of patience and a curious mind. He encourages viewers to explore their surroundings with a fresh perspective, reminding us that the most captivating macro subjects often reside in the most unexpected places. By embracing a slower pace and a willingness to experiment, you can unlock the hidden world of macro photography and discover the beauty in the miniature details of our world. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Lanxon.

If you would like to continue learning about macro photography, be sure to check out “Mastering Macro Photography: The Complete Shooting and Editing Tutorial With Andres Moline!”

The bigger picture: lifting the veil on the art market

By in Art World News

The bigger picture: lifting the veil on the art market

As the art world descended on Venice for the opening of its prestigious Biennale last week, the talk was of an industry at the peak of its powers. Such global extravaganzas, together with the big-money fairs and auctions, have transformed the art market. What was still a rarefied, slightly niche business at the turn of the millennium has evolved into a juggernaut with estimated total annual sales running to $65bn. Venice’s rich displays of art, old and new, now compete with parties in private palazzi and on billionaires’ boats.

Yet the market has a problem. For all the thousands of visitors to its sparkling events, traders are struggling to convert the next generation of enthusiasts into committed buyers. The sense that an overhyped market has hit a wall is captured in a crop of new books that illuminate some of the darker sides of the art world.

Persistent opacity around issues such as prices, ownership and condition reveals the limits of a market with no overarching oversight, and which still often relies on handshakes and hidden codes of conduct. Such grey areas have proved a playground for schemes ranging from opportunistic speculation to the downright criminal.

Recent scandals, while at the extreme of the largely legitimate and often mundane market, illustrate the need to question the status quo. In the past year alone, art adviser Lisa Schiff — who counted actor Leonardo DiCaprio among her clients — stands accused of running a Ponzi scheme amid legal claims that she owes other collectors nearly $7mn; art dealer Guy Wildenstein has been found guilty of tax fraud, sentenced to four years in prison and fined €1mn; and British artist Damien Hirst has been revealed to have backdated some recent works to his 1990s heyday. All this against a backdrop of the art world’s blind craze for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, with fortunes rising and falling in a matter of months.

The most sensational story so far has been that of Inigo Philbrick, an art dealer who flew too close to the sun — literally so, absconding to the south Pacific island of Vanuatu to hide from mounting legal claims before his FBI arrest there in 2020. Philbrick pleaded guilty to an audacious $86mn wire fraud scheme that took in collectors, investors and fellow dealers, and was handed a prison sentence of seven years.

Taking on his story is his erstwhile friend and colleague, Orlando Whitfield, with whom Philbrick had originally plotted to collaborate on a magazine feature to put across his side of events. Once Whitfield saw the paper trail documenting his friend’s behaviour, he wisely decided to go it alone. All That Glitters is the result.

Philbrick emerges as tough to turn down. Variously charming, persuasive and hare-brained, this is a portrait of a narcissist, always ready to star in the film of his life. “I don’t think failure ever even occurred to Inigo,” Whitfield notes. In a seemingly unchecked arena, his actions included creating a fake client and managing to sell 220 per cent of one artwork, a 2012 painting based on a photograph of Pablo Picasso by the briefly in-demand Italian conceptual artist Rudolf Stingel. (While it is more usual than many might realise for a hugely expensive painting to have more than one owner, obviously only 100 per cent of it is ever legally available.)

Alongside Philbrick, Whitfield, with a hefty dollop of British self-deprecation — he is described as “a failed art dealer” in the book’s brief blurb — comes through as the willing victim of his friend’s personality disorder. The book records his memories of 15 years of their unbalanced friendship, from meeting in their twenties at London’s Goldsmiths art school in 2006 through to intermittent conversations during Philbrick’s incarceration.

What the mismatched pair share, poignantly, are divorced parents and successful art-world fathers whom they were wired to impress — Philbrick’s was a museum director; Whitfield’s an auctioneer.

Some of these escapades seem barely believable. Whitfield admits he came to doubt many of Philbrick’s stories, including one in which the instinctive dealer buys a watch at one end of London’s Burlington Arcade then immediately resells it at the other end, making £500 in less than an hour.

More worrying for the art market is the potential for scams now that today’s buyers are more speculators than art lovers and don’t even see the works into which they park their millions. Philbrick sold another Stingel — one of his gold paintings in “hushed AmEx tones” — to a client and then, for $2.5mn, on to a joint venture that he himself ran with one of his early mentors, the esteemed White Cube gallery founder Jay Jopling.

Philbrick had originally bought the work for $300,000 because, as he knew, it was damaged to the extent that the artist wanted it destroyed. No one else knew the score and, unable to persuade his usual conservator to restore it, Philbrick found three people to execute a good-enough touch-up in a garage in London’s Mayfair. The work then got a clean bill of health (albeit unknowingly to the wider world) as “now a Philbrick-Stingel”, Whitfield writes. It is still in circulation somewhere.

The book proves as much about Whitfield as his anti-hero, but it is Philbrick who brings the pages alive. Such magnetism perhaps explains Whitfield’s enduring sympathy with Philbrick’s plight — a generosity that is hard to share. Philbrick seems anything but sorry, especially given what’s transpired since Whitfield wrote All That Glitters. At the start of this year, three years earlier than expected, Philbrick left prison on two years of supervised release. He marked this freedom on Instagram in a shared post with his girlfriend Victoria Baker-Harber, star of reality TV show Made In Chelsea; the pair were snapped on a picnic blanket with their toddler.

This happy family portrait was taken to accompany an article in Vanity Fair that gives Philbrick’s shame-free version of events. He was, he says, a novice rogue in an unregulated market of willing participants: “By no means am I blameless, but the people I was partnered with were all seeking an edge.” Perhaps this is the feature that Whitfield resisted writing.

Book cover of Token Supremacy by Zachary Small

Philbrick’s high-stakes deals were fostered within the art market’s increasingly financialised environment, with its promise of great returns despite flimsy data. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when in-person art events were nearly all cancelled, such promises morphed into a craze for digital, cryptocurrency-based, non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In Token Supremacy, journalist Zachary Small ably turns his forensic skills to the NFTs’ swift boom and bust.

Art comes across as offering a suitably shady environment. Small finds it was ripe for crypto-based speculation, partly because “it is one of the last major unregulated markets in the world”, offering “tactics that would be off-limits in traditional finance”, a recurring refrain and an environment that Philbrick says supported his schemes.

Token Supremacy tackles a jargon-heavy episode of art market history with welcome clarity and arch humour. The book is hooked on key characters, including the graphic designer turned artist Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, whose NFT of 5,000 daily digital images made since 2007, many of a puerile and cartoonish bent, sold for an eye-watering $69.3mn through Christie’s in 2021.

Small’s other crypto-hungry characters include Seth Goldstein, founder of New York’s Bright Moments Gallery — proof that even in a virtual world, people mostly prefer to congregate in a physical space. It opened in 2021 with mantras on the wall such as “you can’t spell culture without cult”.

Book cover of Art Auctions by Kathryn Brown

Small skilfully characterises the fine line between discretion and duplicity at the highest echelons of the art world, and has little love for the complicity of the auction houses in a frothy market. Their influence in this century is analysed further in Art Auctions by the academic Kathryn Brown, who offers a gentler look at the “theatre” of the salerooms in her slim tome. Her research into the psychology of buyers characterises the milieu that the likes of Inigo Philbrick could exploit.

A more grassroots perspective on the market’s machinations comes courtesy of another skilled journalist, Bianca Bosker, in Get the Picture, a page-turning romp around New York’s art world. Her quest, to determine what separates “good” from “bad” art, prompts her to find junior roles at art galleries, then with the artist Julie Curtiss and for the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, all while recording her findings. These reveal many of the baffling codes around intangible value, served up through genuine laugh-out-loud moments, not least her experience of having a social media “ass influencer” sit on her face in the name of art.

Book cover of Get The Picture by Bianca Bosker

It’s not all funny, however. Emerging artists and gallerists are illustrated juggling several jobs at the same time to make ends meet, all while helping “billionaires hang their second Rothko in their third home”. The sometimes cruel treatment of employers towards their junior gallerists is also exposed. Bosker finds behaviour “that was at best morally dubious, very frequently discriminatory, and at worst potentially criminal”.

As in Whitfield’s and Small’s books, she illustrates a world of accepted white-collar crimes. In one instance, a museum trustee buys two editions of a photograph — one to go in the museum, one for her home. “A little philanthropy, a little polite corruption,” Bosker writes, noting that the museum’s stamp of approval will increase the value of the personally owned picture. A fellow gallerist sympathises with her discomfort at the situation, soon after admitting that he has never paid any sales tax.

The stories might be extreme, but there is an uncomfortable familiarity to them. The industry’s integrity seems questionable at best when it is presented as a world in which someone like Philbrick can thrive, suffer disgrace and then set the stage for a sensational comeback. Brown notes the lack of any overarching responsibility. Auction houses, for example, “have no particular commitment to the sustainable functioning of art world of their markets,” she writes. Their remit is to sell art for the highest price for their consignors.

Midway through All That Glitters, Whitfield recalls a banker-collector who neatly sums up a world in which the dictum caveat emptor has rarely been more relevant: “‘The best thing about the art market,’ he told me, ‘is that it’s completely unregulated. However,’ he continued, ‘the worst thing about the art market is that it’s unregulated.’”

The reality, though, is that if the art market wants to grow, it can’t have it both ways. Before taking money from the next generation of buyers, some of their needs will have to be met. This means embracing the increased transparency and accountability that digital natives have come to expect. Regulation might not appeal to a world of freethinking creatives, but surely its time has come.

All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield Profile £17.99/Knopf $29, 336 pages

Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022 by Zachary Small Knopf £27/$32, 368 pages

Art Auctions: Spectacle and Value in the 21st Century by Kathryn Brown Lund Humphries £19.99, 104 pages

Get The Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker Viking $29/Atlantic £20, 384 pages

Melanie Gerlis is the FT’s art market correspondent

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen

ArtDependence | UBS Donates Major American Landscape Photographs to National Gallery of Art Washington

By in Photography

ArtDependence | UBS Donates Major American Landscape Photographs to National Gallery of Art Washington

The group of photographs was assembled in the 1990s by John Szarkowski, a photographer, curator, and former director of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The gift adds important photographs made by a diverse group of artists who worked throughout the United States and in Latin America. It will allow the National Gallery to tell fuller, more varied, and inclusive stories about how Americans have conceived of, used, and celebrated the richness and variety of the land from the 1860s to the 1990s.

“This wonderful, wide-ranging gift from UBS adds key works to the National Gallery’s photography holdings by a wide range of artists, many of whom were not previously represented in our collection,” said Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art.

The gift from the UBS Art Collection includes several photographs by western American photographers—F. Jay Haynes, John K. Hillers, Darius Kinsey, Frederick Monsen, and Isaiah West Taber—who recorded the impact of railroads, mining, and logging on the land in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other pictures made in the late 19th century, such as those by Henry Hamilton Bennett of the scenic Wisconsin Dells, show how photography was used to transform nature into a tourist commodity. Early 20th-century works by Laura Adams Armer, Jean Bernard, John G. Bullock, Nancy Ford Cones, Martha Hale Harvey, Gertrude Käsebier, William B. Post, Robert S. Redfield, and Edward Steichen evocatively reveal how pictorialist artists presented the landscape in a very different manner from their predecessors. Depicting nature’s quiet corners and intimate vistas, they domesticated and aestheticized the land, transforming it from a symbol of power and awe into one of manicured beauty and peaceful harmony.

A collection of social documentary work from the 1930s and 1940s includes key examples by celebrated Farm Security Administration photographers, such as Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, and Marion Post Wolcott. Many of their pictures poignantly demonstrate how the depleted land could no longer support the inhabitants who depended on it. Two of the most iconic photographs include Lange’s Power farming displaces tenants from the land in the western dry cotton area, Childress County, Texas (1935) and Rothstein’s Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936).

Works by photographers such as Robert Adams, Edward Burtynsky, Stephen Callis, Robert Dawson, Terry Evans, Emmet Gowin, Mark Klett, and David Maisel cast a critical eye on the impact of humans on the landscape. Often making aerial photographs, they depict vast stretches of land that have been utterly transformed by human habitation.

The gift also includes work by Latin American photographers such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Valdir Cruz, Agustín Estrada, Flor Garduño, Graciela Iturbide, and Sebastião Salgado. Active in Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala from the 1940s through the 1990s, the photographers made pictures commemorating the earth’s bounties—fruits, vegetables, birds, and fish that help sustain and enrich human life—as well as the people who lived and worked on the land.

Main Image Arthur Rothstein, Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 gelatin silver print ,National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of the UBS Art Collection

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