“A Gallery for Fine Photography,” reads a wooden sign at 214 Chartres Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, a short walk from The Marigny. The gallery is usually closed on Wednesdays, but a smile appears on the other side of the red door’s window panes. It belongs to Joshua Mann Pailet, who opened the gallery here in 1975 after spending two years in a Houston gallery.
His studies in economics only fueled his passion for photography. They left him with the time and knowledge to practice it: for Pailet, selling is a means to further explore photography. “At some point you have to chose if you want to be a great collector or great art dealer,” he says. “I picked the second.” The gallery boasts a masterpiece and more works throughout the history of the medium.
All the big names are here, starting with Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose work is currently being exhibited alongside a local photographer, Richard Sexton. The forty Cartier-Bresson photographs in simple black frames are all iconic—”Jesus is Coming Soon,” the jump over the puddle and include a few surprises.
Sexton’s photographs are attached to the wall with magnets. They’re large prints, almost as vulnerable as the aging homes they depict. More of Sexton’s work can be seen at the non-profit Historic New Orleans Collection two blocks away. In addition to the facades of Creole homes from lusher years are the private interiors of New Orleans. The set shows the Caribbean influence through everything from elegance to decadence.
The Cartier-Bresson exhibition covers only two areas out of the thirty in Pailet’s labyrinthine gallery. All vertical spaces between the ceiling and the floor are utilized: the wall, the staircase, bookshelves, doors, the kitchen, closets, even drawers. The drawers open easily here. That morning there was a pile of prints from the 1960s which Pailet had laid out the night before for a curious visitor.
Pailet speaks eloquently and with a refined Southern accent. His collection tours regularly, and when showing off its medley of genres and eras, he likes to show it all. Lucky ones are invited through secret doors, bookshelves hiding precious libraries, rare photographs hiding even rarer ones that date back to the beginning of the medium: Gustave Le Gray, Henry Fox Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron.
The staircase leading to the first floor is filled with Newtons. Upstairs is also a mixture of early and contemporary photographs: long 19th century panoramas, the America of Edward Curtis beloved by Pailet, Sebastiao Salgado’s shocking reporting in Kuwait, and a 2013 photograph by Sandy Skoglund, who makes elaborate sets with thousands of details before inviting her subjects to be photographed. She then spends up to three years tailoring the image. Her long-term project is to photograph the four seasons. The music of Vivaldi, the painting of Arcimboldo, Skoglund will achieve a hybrid genre between photography, performance and obsession provided that, unlike Botticelli, she doesn’t stop at springtime.
Eadweard Muybridge, Jan Saudek—Pailet has Czech roots—Eugene Atget, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Man Ray, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Winston Link’s trains, Clarence John Laughlin’s New Orleans. This breathtaking list continues up the second, spiral staircase into increasingly cramped spaces: a portrait of a Peruvian dwarf couple photographed by Irving Penn; two photographs taken by Lewis Carroll of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the adventures in Wonderland; an explosive journal filled with personal writings and photographs published by Helmut Newton before his death. “He only shot when he was paid for it,” Pailet begins to say before a couple of tourists press their faces against the outside window. He invites them in and tells them to make themselves at home.
A Gallery for Fine Art Photography
241 Chartres Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
United States
Email [email protected]
Phone (504) 568-1313
Gallery Hours: 10:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Thursday-Monday Tuesdays & Wednesdays
by appointment Call to Confirm
http://www.agallery.com/pages/departments/joshuamannpailet.html
