A partial view of Photo Shanghai
Thursday 10/09/15 First Day – VIP Preview
I was a little bothered of not receiving an invitation to the different forums or talks that were supposed to take place before the Fair let all the “VIPs” in. The door of the former Sino-Soviet Friendship Palace opened at 4PM, the (VIP) crowd filled up the fair pretty quickly. And on the balcony of second floor it was so packed by hungry “buyers” asking price and talking to the gallery managers or the photographers present… After touring half the fair, at the Castel wine counter I passed a bottle of San Pellegrino to Christopher Philips of ICP and I said Sorry Christopher I missed your talk. He said “you know what I was ushered in the conference room and waited for the collectors to arrive, but as soon as they caught glimpse of the glamourous line-up of galleries, they simply vacated their seats and rushed to the galleries show. The organizers told me sorry we have to cancel the talk.” I asked innocently if they were Western collectors or Chinese, Christopher nodded helplessly “Chinese”. The second edition of Photo Shanghai happened between two major photo festivals in China, the Dali Photo Fest (closed 9/08/15) and the Pingyao Photo Fest (opening 18/09/15), among the crowded alleys between booths I kept bumping into Chinese photographers who have exhibited in Dali or who are scheduled to show in Pingyao, some are here because their works are on show, some have come to get inspiration and eventually to enrich their own collection. The excitement contrasts with the shocking rout in the stock market and the dramatic devaluation of the Yuan. Nevertheless there seems to be a genuine interest of new categories of photo buyers, not so much the expatriates in Shanghai or Western collectors who usually flocked to Asian art fairs, it is now mainly “locals”, still affluent Chinese businessmen, former contemporary art buyers now turned photography lovers, and professional photographers who have started collecting over the past five to six years.
Among the 50+ galleries present, visitors who have been here last year noticed the same galleries taking up the same spots, some hanging up the same prints as seen last year, although in general they display less documentary or less news photography (where is the Magnum booth?) but more conceptual event “salon” photography, to cater to the taste of emerging Chinese collectors. Last year Roger Ballen did not sell one single print despite attracting a lot of attention and despite having a retrospective at the OCAT museum, this year the Norwegian gallery Willas brought some Roger Ballen works, knowingly avoiding the funky freaky aspects but opting for more painting-like works , “with some likable animals”, they told me. At the after-vernissage party, I ran into Arno Rafael Minkkinen, still fit and standing tall like a yogi although he does not practice yoga. I reminded him we had breakfast with his wife in Lianzhou back in 2006. He is having old and new works showing here in Shanghai through Willas Gallery (Scandinavian solidarity). As I told him I did a lecture on “Self-Portrait to Selfies” including his work, Arno looked at me with his big eye and said he has been doing this way before Cindy Sherman or Francesca Woodman, over 45 years. He is preparing an exhibition and a book entitled “The Body from 1970 to the Body of the Future.” He definitely deserves a retrospective at the Musée Niepce.
11/09/15 Second Day – on the fringe of Photo Shanghai
With the director of the Dali Photography Museum we went to the home of Shanghai humanist photographer Lu Yuanmin who treated us to a lunch. Our conversation naturally focused on the value of works we saw at the fair. I was particularly moved by a tiny 4 x 2.3/4 inch yellowish portrait of Lee Miller by Man Ray a vintage silver print dated 1931, with a price tag of USD 125,000. A plain and austere frontal portrait with Lee Miller looking straight into Man Ray’s lens, portrait of a wife, portrait of a mother, the “punctum” of this portrait comes from the tiny hole on top and at the bottom of the card on which the picture was mounted, that led me into imagining Man Ray pinning this picture above his bedside looking at it, daily and lovingly, long after their romance had ended. Two other pictures have moved me, I found them at Taka Ishii Gallery, two nudes – 1970 vintage prints from Eikoh Hosoe’s “Embrace”, each of the 20x30cm absolutely sublime silver print is priced at “950,000 RMB”, the RMB labeling obviously was targeting Chinese buyers. The “Embrace” book prefaced by Mishima a year before his suicide, this “first edition signed” published in 1971 is the most expensive book I ever paid for, acquired last year at Paris Photo. With trepidation and regretting the not putting on gloves the gallery owner Takayuki Ishii-san allowed me to open and browse through Eikoh Hosoe’s two vintage books: the 1963 one on Mishima “Killed by Roses”, and his most beautiful haunting work and magnificiently printed 1969 book “Kamaitachi” on the Butoh master Hijikata. At Meg Maggio’s Pekin Fine Art’s booth the walls were completely covered up by the 120 “Envelopes” of Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao. The ever original and creative Zhang Xiao has retained those envelopes bearing names of companies and government entities where he did interview while working as a reporter. Those were so-called “red envelopes” stuffed with money, a general die-hard practice still widespread today as a thank-you but also as encouragement to write a positive report. On each of these envelopes Zhang Xiao c-printed a picture of the reportage. An absolutely unique edition of 120 envelopes out of the series of 240 for sale here at an undisclosed price!
After lunch I went to the newly set-up Shanghai Center of Photography (SCôP) to see the show “From Grain to Pixel”, a synthetic panorama of Chinese contemporary photography from the Mao era until today, starting with a small vintage portrait of Mao Zedong in Yan’an by veteran photographer Wu Yinxian and ending with the most seducing woman photographer today Chen Man, intelligently curated by two experts of Chinese photography: Liu Hengshing and Karen Smith. The show contains two prints by Lu Yuanmin in the section of the 1990’s, also one vintage print by the earliest Chinese master of photography Lang Jingshan who passed away in 1995 in Taipei at the sacred age of 104. The occasion was special because I have been accompanying Lang Jingshan’s daughter Eve Long the past couple of days, and introducing her to some of the important people in the photography, art museum and media circles.
Where Christopher Philips did not have much success with his lecture the day before, today Liu Heungshing’s talk (with a long title) “A picture is worth a thousand words. How about one million dollars?” at West Bund Art left no empty seats. The panel besides Liu and Smith from SCôP included Alexander Montague the founder of Photo Shanghai and former youngest head of photography at Christie’s, Peter MacGill of Pace gallery. But the talk was marred by the speaker and sound system, in a concrete and glass high ceiling space such as West Bund Art reverberated the sound through the vast volume interspersed with frequent Larsen distortion, I could barely make up what the luminaries were mumbling in their microphones so much so that I stood up and left in frustration. I only jotted down a few numbers from Peter MacGill’s Power Point: forty years ago, in 1975 the first Sotheby’s photography auction sold 145,000 USD, by 2014 Christie’s worldwide photography sales reached 76 Million dollars. My beloved Man Ray is still rated among the highest with his 1932 “Glass Tears” at 1,1 Mio USD and his 1924 “Violon d’Ingres” reached 3,5 Mio USD. That leaves room for imagination to the potential deep pocket Chinese “investors”. Last but not least, at the West Bund Art, the art and design fair showcasing outstanding contemporary artworks by Chinese and overseas galleries, with at least two walls presenting the photographic works of French photographer Patrick Alk, hosted by Life Magazine of the Modern Media Group. And a solo exhibition of one of the earliest Chinese contemporary artists Geng Jianyi staged by architect Margo Renisio is an absolute Must-See. The installations are all created or inspired by the theme of light and vision, like a tribute to photography and cellular films. There are three giant concrete kaleidoscopes and a treasure chest full of drawers inside which are mini projectors imitating the process of darkroom printing, a proper tribute to photography.
Jean Loh
En marge de Photo Shanghai: A mention for the highly praised “Heart Sutras” exhibition just opened at Beaugeste Gallery with YANG Yankang’s 10-year documentary on Tibetan Buddhism, and the first solo exhibition of Bernard Faucon at Mathew Liu Fine Art in Shanghai.
FAIR
Photo Shanghai
11-13 September 2015
Shanghai
