Alighting on Pier 94 on Manhattan’s West Side for the third year in a row, after a long run at the Park Avenue Armory, the Photography Show put on by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers appears to be hitting its stride in the new locale.
The mood at the VIP opening of its 39th edition on Wednesday was buoyant, and while the aisles were busy, it didn’t feel crowded, thanks to the decision by AIPAD’s organizers to downsize slightly, cutting the number of special exhibitions from three last year to just one and pushing booths slightly to the sides of the pier, so that photography aficionados can now see all the way down its length. (Some 94 exhibitors are showing at the fair this year—roughly the same amount as 2018’s edition.) It’s been “a matter of figuring out what works at the pier,” AIPAD’s president, Richard Moore, said. Judging by visitor totals, the fair’s opening was a success. By end of Wednesday, AIPAD said it had welcomed more than 2,000 people, the most it had ever had on the first day.
Arnika Dawkins Gallery from Atlanta, which is exhibiting in a full-sized booth for the first time this year, brought with it a trio of massive, unframed portraits, each of them stained, smeared and stepped on, from the series “#InHonor” by Ervin A. Johnson.
Arnika Dawkins, the gallery’s founder, said the artist “used solvents to renegotiate the ink in the photograph[ic prints] and then various archival acrylic mediums—spray paint, paint, ink, etc.—to reimagine the images.”
The work pays homage to lives lost through race-related violence. Also on view at her gallery’s booth are works by Delphine Diallo, a self-described “visual activist,” who is showing a series of portraits that include models wearing African-style masks made of braided hair extensions.
