Look alert, photo-fans. The Photography Show, presented by the Association of International Photography Dealers, is back at Pier 94 in New York this week, bringing with it more than 90 galleries, 30 book publishers, 12 special talks, and thousands of works by artists both living and dead. If you’re looking to add to your collection or populate your coffee table with a few new photo books, this is the place to be.
This year marks the 39th edition of the event—the longest run of any photography fair. Indeed, it’s an impressive feat, even if at times the show feels as old as it is. Sure, sometimes dealers trot out the same stuff that was on display last year, and even the year before that. But every art fair is going to have collector catnip—the Annie Leibowitz rockstar outtakes, say, or the secondary-market Walker Evans prints—and there’s always plenty of great new work to be found if you know where to look. Fortunately for you, we did our homework.
Made in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the incidents of police brutality that (literally) triggered it, Ervin A. Johnson’s series #InHonor is made of large-scale printed photos of young black youth coated in paint, mud, footprints, and other substances. Three of these 54-inch-tall unique works stare out at the AIPAD crowd from the booth of Atlanta-based gallerist Arnika Dawkins.
“He’s interested in negotiating the idea of pigment,” says Dawkins, referring to both skin tone and the paint on the surface of the works. “I think they’re a portrait of Ervin as well, how he was feeling at that time, trying to come to terms with what it means to be black.”
