Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 Recap

This post was cross-posted in The Camera Club of New York's Blog.

Over the past ten years, I have attended Art Basel in Miami. Each year is a little different with an evolving program of events. The city of Miami has grown up along with this fair. There are so many events to attend that it can be overwhelming. Art Basel Miami Beach is a social event as much as it is about buying and selling art. If you have never attended, it’s a great opportunity to see photography, both old and new, mixed with other art in unexpected ways in this grand capitalistic experiment. Check out my highlights below.

Day 1

Art Basel Miami Beach Vernissage 2011, Art Public Opening Night, bass museum of art - erwin wurm: beauty business, Mr. Brainwash Miami Beach pop up.

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Part 2
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Part 4

Day 2

Clifford Owens at the On Stellar Rays booth.

NADA Fair, Design District and YACHT show.

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Part 2 

Day 3

Dietrich Wegner, Studies in Solitude, Cloud 1 at Carrie Secrist Gallery

Pulse Art Fair, Nike Shoe Launch at Shoe Gallery, Wynwood Walls, Random Party.

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Part 2

Day 4

Andrea Galvani, Higgs Ocean #6 and #7 at Meulensteen

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Part 2
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Part 4

Day 5

Edward Weston, Nautilus Shell, 1927 at Edwynn Houk Gallery

Standard Hotel Pool Party, Art Basel Miami Beach re-visit.

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Part 2
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Part 4

Cycles of the new and the old, part 2

This post was cross-posted in The Camera Club of New York's Blog.

The Carleton Watkins stereograph was taken around the time of the founding of the Camera Club in 1884. Watkins' journey to the falls was arduous. He and his assistants were literally carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment.

I have been thinking a lot about the journey it took to produce a picture and where technology stands today. The iPhone 4S is a game changer. It has me thinking about photography and meaning in our contemporary life. Many current smartphones are shooting images as big as 8 megapixels and above. This gives the public access to pocketable cameras that are now approaching 35 mm film in terms of resolvable detail.

As mentioned in my previous post, the iPhone 4S and the handful of other new phone cameras are shifting photography the same way that the Kodak Brownie did in the past. The Brownie pushed photography from a niche specialty into a popular pastime. Now the iPhone has pushed photography from a popular pastime to something more akin to breathing, eating and memory. What did you do today? Here is a picture on my phone. What did you eat today? Here is another picture. Whenever you attend an event, the scrum of people in front of you are no longer are holding a lighter. Many are holding up their phones.

I bring up the Upper Yosemite image partly because of the fantastic difference in degree of difficulty in attaining an image, but also because Apple's iPhone page seems to be referencing this historic tradition.

Now take a closer look at the image in the lower right:

This is nearly the identical view of Upper Yosemite that Ansel Adams was shooting, along with Carleton Watkins before him.

I don't think Apple's awareness of the history of photography is any accident. Like it or not, these devices are the new normal camera for amateurs and professionals alike. With these new devices come a host of new features and new questions for the medium.

Not only are phones and cameras fixed together, but they are attached to a GPS. As long as the device attaches location data, a permeant record of the photographer's location will be left for historians and writers to think about when discussing that image. Apple was kind enough to share this data with the image above so we know that the photographer for their Upper Yosemite photo was at:

37 44.64N 119 35.51W

I imagine this spot isn't too far from where Watkins stood to make this image below.

Yosemite Falls, photographed by Carleton E. Watkins, 1861.

I was curious how much the iPhone image could resemble this Watkins. So, I opened up Apple's iPhone Jpeg in Photoshop and in a few minutes I made the Apple image into this.

Not exactly there, but close enough for this example–the iPhone is not simply a contemporary Kodak Brownie with bells and whistles, but a machine that continually manufactures photographic simulacra. As anyone who had used any number of iPhone apps such as instagram or Hipstamatic, one of the adictivly fun features of this new technology is the ability to instantly transform any picture into a simulacrum of a process of the past. Think that picture looks good in black and white--similar to Illford XP2? Maybe you're unfamiliar with an Illford XP2. Who cares? It looks great, right?

Take a look at this 1000 memories Real world instagram guide below and their post:

With or without a guide like this (which most users will never see) what does it mean to use a filter on your images? And, for that matter, what does it mean to be producing images in traditional processes (when the simulation is now what many think of as the original)? In this era of people mistaking theme parks for real life, we are being removed from the original. There will have to be new ways of explaining this to the future generations to make sure we don't also remove originality as well.

TONIGHT: 2011 CCNY Photo Benefit Auction

Big event tonight for the Camera Club of New York (where I am their current guest blogger). I haven't been to the annual Auction before so I'm looking forward to seeing all the action. Many many great photographs (including the one below) will be available. Check out the press release and I hope to see you there.

Amy Stein, Cage, digital c-print, 20 x 16”, 2005

Join Us Tonight, Monday, November 7, 2011, 6 - 8pm

Location:25CPW 25 Central Park West (at 62nd Street)

Preview Works Here

Featuring work by emerging and established photographers, including : Mariette Pathy Allen / Rachel Barrett / Jacqueline Bates / Matthew Baum / Michael Berkowitz / Per Billgren / Anita Blank / Timothy Briner / Jesse Burke / Eric William Carroll / Sean Carroll / James Casebere / Lindsey Castillo / Jesse Chan / Vincent Cianni / Annabel Clark / Margarida Correia / Megan Cump / Pradeep Dalal / Bobby Davidson / Allison Davies / Isaac Diggs / Maureen Drennan / Emile Hyperion Dubuisson / Mark Fernandes / Larry Fink / Lauren Fleishman / Martine Fougeron / Jona Frank / Fryd Frydendahl / Theresa Ganz / Anders Goldfarb / Curtis Hamilton / Jason Hanasik / Daniel Handal / Kara Hayden / Jeanne Hilary / Francine Hofstee / Henry Horenstein / Michi Jigarjian / Erica Leone / Sze Tsung Leong / David Levinthal / Sam Levinthal / Wayne Liu / Feng Lu / Ryan MacFarland / Jerome Mallmann / Chris McCaw / Jo Meer / Dana Miller / Azikiwe Mohammed / Paolo Morales / Keren Moscovitch / Laurel Nakadate / Katherine Newbegin / Lori Nix / Heather O’Brien / Brayden Olson / Alice O’Malley / Cara Phillips / Libby Pratt / Richard Renaldi / Mauro Restiffe / Saul Robbins / Caren Rosenblatt / Michael Schmelling / Tina Schula / Manjari Sharma / Aline Smithson / John Stanley / Chad States / Amy Stein / Joni Sternbach / Motohiro Takeda / Maureen Testa / Sally Tosti / William Wegman / Randy West / Grant Willing / Jessica Yatrofsky / Rona Yefman / Pinar Yolaçan / Arin Yoon

Benefit Committee: Mariette Pathy Allen, Paul Amador, Brian Paul Clamp, Daniel Cooney, Michael Foley, Martine Fougeron, Susan Fulwiler, Françoise Girard, Tom Gitterman, Peter Hay Halpert, Henry Horenstein, David Knott, Michael Mazzeo, Lizanne Merrill, L. Parker Stephenson, Spencer Throckmorton, Sasha Wolf, and Alice Sachs Zimet.

$20 admission. All proceeds go to The Camera Club of New York (CCNY), a non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization that has been nurturing talented photographers since 1884.

Catering provided by Moustache.

To see the donated works, please go to CCNY’s online auction preview.

CCNY wishes to thank 25CPW Gallery for their generosity in hosting this year’s auction.

For further inquires, contact CCNY at info@cameraclubny.org or by phone: 212-260-9927

Please visit us at www.cameraclubny.org