Though seen by many witnesses and described and recorded in the local papers, this image -- like much of the medium's incunabula -- seems to have disappeared. Yet, with its creation, documentary photography in the United States, and New York City's life as both a subject for photography and a center for photographic production, can be said to have begun.
Much of the world's traffic in photographs flows through New York. The world's first photography-specific galleries, the first departments of photography in art museums anywhere, the first major metropolitan showcase devoted exclusively to photography, all based themselves here. And, of course, this city is action central for many of the world's major press services, picture agencies, book and periodical publishers. So, for photographers and those involved with the medium in other capacities -- picture researchers and editors, critics, historians -- New York has long been a locus of activity without parallel on this continent, and with few equals (Paris, certainly, and perhaps London) elsewhere around the globe.
As the nation's oldest urban center, and a gateway through which so many of its inhabitants and their ancestors first entered the country, this city would have functioned inevitably as a major subject for photographic documentation even if so many photographers had not chosen to call it home. For a variety of reasons, New York proved always hospitable to the documentary impulse in photography, and one can trace its lineage here from that first image by Seager through Mathew Brady's studio on Broadway and Tenth Street and Timothy O'Sullivan's unmarked grave somewhere on Staten Island, into the work of Lewis Hine and Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz and Berenice Abbott early in this century, then to the activities of the Photo League and the emergence of what one historian labelled the "New York School" -- the work of that diverse cohort including Weegee, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and dozens more. Nor did this tendency stop with that generation: hundreds of contemporary photojournalists and documentarians -- Susan Meiselas, Eugene Richards, many others -- and thousands of photographers of all persuasions continue to make New York their home, their workplace, their support base, and their frequent, sometimes exclusive, subject.
As such, to date, New York has proven itself inexhaustible; the city and its residents have gone through good times and bad times aplenty since Morse broke the news, but from the moment Seager uncapped his lens until now there has never been a moment in which photographers could complain that there was nothing left here worth photographing.
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Photography, which entered the 20th century as the bastard stepchild of the visual arts, segregated from the other media in almost every context, its practitioners still struggling for legitimacy, respectability, and the right to call themselves artists, ended the 20th century as the dominant medium of the two-dimensional arts and a contender for preeminence in every mixed-media form. It can certainly lay claim to being the definitive visual-art medium of the early 21st century. Artists with established reputations in other media presently scramble to establish credentials in photography; the prices of photographs both historic and contemporary continue to soar, regardless of the state of the economy; the distribution system for photographic works as collectible objects constantly enlarges itself; the institutional embrace of photography, from the academic world and the museum world alike, grows ever more open-armed.
Arguably, the two events that symbolize that shift (and, to some extent, provoked it) are the creation of the first international photo festival and the establishment of the first commercial gallery devoted to selling photographic prints. Both occurred in 1969. The Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (R.I.P.) -- inspired, in part, by the photo-exhibition component of Photokina in Cologne, Germany -- took root in the small town of Arles, France, founded there by Lucien Clergue, Jean-Claude Lemagny, and several others. Dozens of such festivals now take place every year around the world, showing copious quantities of work from everywhere, visited by millions of people, steadily enlarging and educating the medium's audiences while also strengthening the professional networks that encourage new activity in all spheres of photography.
As Clergue and his colleagues were seeding that inventive idea, Lee Witkin -- expanding on the earlier examples of Alfred Steiglitz and Julian Levy, whose Manhattan galleries had presented photography alongside the other arts earlier in the century -- opened his own modest photography gallery in the heart of New York City, an unheard-of and seemingly foolish venture at the time. Today, thanks to the pioneering of Witkin and those who joined and succeeded him, there's a multi-million-dollar international traffic in photographic prints and other photographic works, thousands of photo galleries wordlwide, hundreds of photography departments in art museums, dozens of museums dedicated exclusively to photography, countless collectors, frequent and spectacular auctions of rare photographs. That all this emerged in a mere three decades represents a form of spontaneous combustion that leaves those who witnessed it still breathless, and has received far too little analysis as a manifestation of the zeitgeist of the late twentieth century.
Much of the current condition of photography germinated in New York City. As just mentioned, the first galleries to specialize in photographic prints for collectors found fertile ground in this metropolis, and the first contemporary art museums to accept photography as a medium worthy of its own department were already here -- the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. The first major auctions of fine photographs (and, still, most of the important sales) took place at Sotheby's, Parke-Bernet, and Swann Galleries, all located in Manhattan. The world's strongest collector base for the medium resides in the New York area. The Association of Independent Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), the world's most influential organization of photo gallerists and private dealers, holds its annual expo here; only the more recent Paris Photo event compares to it in importance. With its publishing industry, photo agencies, and stock houses, New York affects deeply the way that photography of all kinds circulates worldwide in book and periodical -- and, now, in digital -- formats. For all those reasons and more, the city's population includes a larger number of photographers than anywhere else on earth.
True (and, to some, surprisingly), New York City still doesn't have a photo festival of its own. But one could argue that such an event would be unnecessary and even redundant in this environment -- because, over the past two decades, New York simply has become an ongoing, permanent photo festival, if not a thematic or well-coordinated one. With upwards of 100 photography exhibits mounted at any given time, plus an extensive menu of related events (vernissages, book-signings, lectures, symposia, workshops, adult-education courses, undergraduate and graduate programs), the city now never lacks for anything related to photography.
Though it took some of them a ridiculously long time, all of New York's major museums -- the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the City of New York -- now collect photographs and show them regularly. And New York also hosts one of the world's most important photography-specific showcases, the International Center of Photography (which recently announced an affiliation and exchange program with perhaps the world's first such institution, the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY).
What circulates through this elaborate urban distribution system is an increasingly diverse mix of photographic imagery -- both photography and "photo-based art" -- from around the world. Until the mid-1980s, the U.S., and even New York City, demonstrated a distinct parochialism in relation to photography from outside the U.S.; most of what got shown and published here came from the States. But the rapid internationalizing of the photo scene that began with the "photo boom" of the 1970s stimulated the flow of information about photography, the travels of photographers and others involved in the medium, and the wider dissemination of photographs themselves. The internet has pushed that even further. While I find that the photo festivals have become the antennae of the medium's public outreach -- cutting-edge work often appears at these festivals years before it finds its way into the gallery-museum circuit -- it must also be said that what's seen in New York (and, indeed, across the U.S.) now comes from everywhere: our neighbors to the north and southem, Canada and Latin America; western Europe (predictably), but eastern Europe and the Nordic countries too; Japan, Israel, Korea, southeast Asia, Africa.
Some of New York's presentational venues for photography are eclectic; others specialize. The Whitney Museum concentrates, due to its original mandate, on American art. Gallery Ubu highlights dadaist and surrealist material. Howard Greenberg Gallery pays particular attention to work by the "New York School" (William Klein et al) and various mid-century figures like Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Leslie Tonkonow, in Chelsea, emphasizes the crossover between photography and conceptual art, Fluxus, and related movements from the second half of the last century; John Stevenson, also in Chelsea, devotes himself to platinum prints and other forms of handmade "alternative process" work. Uptown, PaceMacGill handles Nan Goldin and Robert Rauschenberg, while Edwynn Houk represents Sally Mann. And nowadays there's hardly a gallery of contemporary art that doesn't include at least one or two photographers or artists whose work is photo-based: Sonnabend (Hiroshi Sugimoto), Castelli (Ralph Gibson), Paula Cooper (Andres Serrano), Virginia Zabriskie (Nicholas Nixon and Joan Fontcuberta).
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And what of New York photography in the new century?
In an interview I conducted with him in 1980, a few years before his death, Lee Witkin told me, "What I see for the future of artists working in the medium of the photograph is a total integration into the art scene. . . . I don't think photography has to be isolated anymore. I think perhaps this is the time to stop showing photographs and to show the photographer -- to stop getting the medium confused with the man with a vision who used it. And I think whether this photography dealers' association [AIPAD, which was at that time just getting started] likes it or not, it may be obsolete before it begins. Because the major galleries across America are integrating photographers into their stables. And I honestly believe that is the right thing. . . . The photographic medium was neglected and underrated; that doesn't exist any more. So it may be time to let go of keeping photography as a medium all to itself, and let it go into that large sea of art where it properly belongs."
To a considerable extent, Witkin's prophecy has proven itself true. Yet archiving, conserving, and displaying photographs involves some very particular problems that call for specific training. And, beyond that, the fact remains that most critics, historians, and curators of art -- and certainly many dealers in art -- are still woefully uninformed about and ignorant of the history, morphology, and field of ideas of photography, and thus remain incompetent to integrate it correctly and intelligently into their accounts of that "large sea of art" as the major tributary that it is. Consequently, much significant work in photography -- and its makers too, needless to say -- continues to fall through the cracks. (To give just one example: no curator of contemporary art anywhere that I know of has revisited and considered thoughtfully the photography of the 1960s and 1970s -- one of the most explosive creative periods in the medium's evolution. And there's hardly a critic of art in the country informed enough to write knowledgeably about the photography of that era.)
The only ones likely to recognize and correct these oversights are critics, historians, gallerists, and curators committed to photography; for that reason alone, special attention to photography remains imperative. But there's nothing unusual in this. After all, we have museums devoted exclusively to the work of individual artists or particular kinds of art; we have galleries that show only sculpture; we have scholars whose expertise is in drawing, or "outsider art," or the late Renaissance; we have critics who devote themselves exclusively or primarily to painting, or site-specific sculpture, or performance art. When it exists and operates within a context that also includes a more generalized and interdisciplinary attention to all the extant media, such concentration represents a healthy and fruitful contribution to the discourse.
Moreover, photography (in the broadest definition thereof) has developed its own wide-flung distribution system, its own vast global audience, its own substantial and supportive collector base, its own growing ranks of critics and historians -- not to mention a complex and thriving discourse that addresses its particular and distinctive issues. It owns a remarkable and unusual history as an autonomous medium of creative activity, and a complex and rich field of ideas. Certainly there are reasons for considering (and presenting) photography in conjunction with the other arts; but there are also legitimate motives for addressing it separately from the rest. Perceiving photography as feeding into "that large sea of art" does not require ignoring its origins and uniqueness as a source. Given that situation, it seems likely that the photography-specific museum, gallery, and festival will not fade away quickly, perhaps not even slowly. And, for all the reasons given above, New York City will endure for decades and perhaps even centuries to come as a central vantage point for looking at, preserving, researching, writing about, discussing, buying, selling, and making photographs.
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Some online resources:
The bi-monthly gallery guide Photography in New York has become an indispensable tool for anyone coming to the Big Apple with an interest in photography; its listings of photo exhibits (well over 100 ongoing here at any given time) and related events make it a necessary reference for the visitor, and a source of important information about the New York and larger U.S. photo scene even for those not planning a trip here. Much of that data -- plus subscription information -- appears at its website: www.photography-guide.com.
Houston FotoFest International, the longest-lived photography festival in the U.S., has created Festival of Light, a Web-based portal to its own site and the linked sites of dozens of other festivals around the world: www. festivaloflight.org.
The magazine Photo District News is the bible of the world of professional photography in the U.S. It covers all forms of photography, from fine-art to applied. There's much at its website,Photo District News Online, for anyone interested in any aspect of the medium: www.pdn-pix.com.
Alex Novak, a knowledgeable east-coast dealer in rare photographs, recently inaugurated iphotocentral.com as a service for photo collectors, dealers, and curators. The site includes a great deal of content -- serious and useful commentary, and a huge gallery section: www.iphotocentral.com.
The International Center of Photography recently reopened its beautifully remodeled midtown space, just east of Times Square -- by far the largest space devoted to photography in New York City. To find its menu of current and upcoming offerings, plus much more, visit the ICP website: www.icp.org.
The Museum of Modern Art has long since lost its position as the single most powerful force in creative photography; now it's just one among many. The museum's website, unfortunately, is rudimentary in form and extremely light on content. Perhaps that'll change with the completion of the new building now under construction. Still, anyone coming to New York should stop by to see what was once the mecca for all photography. For information about current shows, go to: www.moma.org.
Finally, my own website, The Nearby CafŽ, a multi-subject electronic magazine, contains much material relevant to photography, including an extensive selection of my writings. Browse the main menu first -- www.nearbycafe.com -- and then click on Photography, or go directly there: www.nearbycafe.com/cafe/photo.html.
