The Milan Image Art Fair opened with a VIP preview on Thursday and then to the public on Friday. MIA was conceived by Fabio Castelli, collector and curator, with the help of the redoubtable Enrica Vigano. The fair is unique in that each exhibitor displays work by single artists, each of whom has a brochure which can be assembled to create each visitor’s specific catalogue. It is a good looking event, well organized with lots of space and light. There are also stands presenting artists representing themselves as well as book dealers and appropriate panels including my presentation “The Unseen Eye: A life in photographs and other digressions ….” on Sunday. For this collector, it has been a special introduction to the photography scene in and around Italy.
There was a group of international collectors brought in for portfolio reviews on Friday and Bjorn Sterri from Norway was judged the favorite for his “Family Photographs” a long term photo essay about time, intimacy, absence and presence. He makes toned gelatin silver – black and white – contact prints of portraits of his wife, his two sons and especially himself, shot with a large format Deadorff 8 x 1O” camera. He works in natural light in Norway and Spain. The work is comparable to Emmet Gown and Nicholas Nixon in its immediacy and consistency. The collectors including Paolo Agliardi and Massimo Buffetti, collectors and Contemporary Art Projects founders, Milan; Michael Benson, Prix Pictet director, London; Catherine Borissoff and Marianna Sardarova, art advisor and collector, Moscow; Anna Rosa and Giovanni Cotroneo, collectors, Rome; Lisa K. Erf, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection director, New York; Simone Klein, Sotheby’s – Photographs Department Europe director, Paris; Kai Loebach, collector, Los Angeles; David Raymond, collector, Asheville; Reyn van der Lugt, collector, Rotterdam; and myself.
Bonna fortuna from Milano.
WM Hunt
MIA Fair
May 10 – May 12, 2013
Superstudio Più
Via Tortona, 27
Milan
Italy
