Pier 24 Photography, in San Francisco, has opened Secondhand this fall, a new exhibition exploring reuse and collection of vernacular images by great artists, new talents and common people. Christopher McCall, the founding director and curator of the art space, sat down to talk about its inception, this current exhibition and his personal vision of photography.
Can we go back to the founding of Pier 24 Photography. Why did Andrew Pilara, its owner, choose this location to open a space dedicated to photography?
Andy Pilara had been collecting photography for about eight years when he decided to look for a space where he could share his collection with the public. After looking for some time, he ultimately selected Pier 24, a former warehouse on the waterfront under the Bay Bridge that had been abandoned for nearly 28 years. He was immediately struck by the old building’s architecture and great location in San Francisco, the city where he was born and raised. The open floor plan of the warehouse provided us with the freedom to imagine and design a space specifically for the exhibition of photographs.
How did the idea of scheduled visits come to you?
Andy and I had many conversations about the type of experience we wanted to create. As we are neither a typical gallery nor museum, we focused on different kinds of arts spaces that we had visited, and the one that kept coming up was the Rothko Chapel in Texas; it had a particular feel when you walked in. Like the Rothko Chapel, we wanted the Pier to provide visitors with the opportunity to quietly experience and look at work. We achieved this environment by making all visits to the space by appointment only and by excluding explanatory text from the galleries’ walls. We do provide visitors with printed gallery guides that provide basic information about the works included in each room in addition to trained docents who help visitors navigate the space.
Every visitor needs to apply on the website, but how long is the average wait to be able to see a new show?
It books up pretty quickly at the beginning of each exhibition, but we strategically plan for our shows to be open for 10 months in order to accommodate as many guests as possible. At times, it can take a week or two to secure an appointment. But our website updates in real time, so if someone cancels, then someone else can take that appointment. Part of Pier 24’s mission is to make the space accessible to school groups. Through their regular visits, we have built strong relationships with many local teachers and institutions.
If the entrance is free, what kind of income does Pier 24 have?
The space is funded through the Pilara Foundation, a family non-profit that has a photographic collection, but also supports the arts in general.
In fact, do you consider Pier 24 photography as an institution?
Yes. We’re a non-profit art space, but we’re not a museum. And we’re not a commercial gallery because we don’t sell anything. I think some of the models for what we have created at the Pier are in Europe. I think of the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Schaulager in Basel, and the Walther Collection. Arthur Walther would be a good example; he has spaces in Germany and New York, produces books with Steidl and has his own vision of the medium.
Do you publish books?
Yes, we produce our own catalogues in house. We’re now looking into publishing monographs, which will happen in the near future.
How do you acquire prints for the collection?
Andy Pilara and I are looking at both gallery and museum exhibitions, blogs, magazines and books. I also do portfolio reviews through various institutions, which exposes me to new talents. Sometimes, we use other methods: for the current exhibition, Secondhand, four of the included bodies of work were purchased through eBay over the last 6 months, and most of the images were purchased for less than $10.
Could you tell me about the current exhibition, Secondhand?
Secondhand is an exhibition featuring artists who build repositories of found images, from which they appropriate, construct, edit, and sequence in order to create something entirely new. A few of the included artists are Richard Prince, Erik Kessels, John Baldessari and Joachim Schmid. What’s interest is the inclusion of found images that were bought for a couple of dollars and are hung next to photographs by masters. In the room dedicated to the Archive of Modern Conflict, there are works by Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Robert Frank and Gustave Le Gray on a wall with 30 other photographs from both known and anonymous photographers. This democratization of the medium is important to us: it makes people reconsider photography, think about the basis of this medium and reflect on what constitutes a great work.
Could you tell me about maybe your favorite artists presented in this show?
That’s a hard question, like picking your favorite child. I like all of them. Each artist in the show has a unique voice, which is defined by his or her craft and process along with a deep understand of the medium’s history. Although they are all reusing images, the resulting works are quite diverse, where no two artists look alike or could be mistaken for one another.
We have seen a lot of Erik Kessels work and vernacular photography in Europe these past years. Did a European programming for this show somehow influence you?
I’m influenced by everything in photography. Erik Kessels has been doing a lot of projects in Europe, like in Arles and exhibitions at institutions like FOAM. Erik epitomizes this blurring line between curator and creator, a notion at the heart of this exhibition. He’s not cutting up and collaging stuff; the key to his work is the lens through which he sees vernacular imagery, how is thinking about it and ultimately how he presents it to the public. Erik’s work hasn’t been shown that much in the US, but he is a great thinker about photography and his installations are really progressive.
Is this an unusual show for the US?
This topic hasn’t been widely considered by US institutions. People do vernacular shows, but they don’t put these everyday images with contemporary artworks.
Where do you put the subject of secondhand or found photographs in the history of photography? Is it an important one?
Without a doubt, artists have explored everyday imagery and the manipulation of its meaning for a long time. Hopefully, this exhibition and other shows like it will encourage the public reconsider how images are used in their lives. Not only the original context of an image, but also how their understanding of an image changes when it is presented in a new context.
For example, a political photo that was used in France in the 1920s – now a part of the Archive of Modern Conflict’s collection – has a totally different meaning for an American audience today than it had at the moment it was created. More now than ever before, images surround us and shape how we understand the world. So these topics are not only relevant to the art world, but also to every person.
This show features artists that use the Internet as a database, like Berlin-based photographer Viktoria Binschtok. Your impressive collection is more about prints by masters but you seem to acquire as well some digital images…
We collect both traditionally processed prints along with photographs that have been made digitally. Digital cameras, scanners and the Internet are tools in a contemporary photographer’s practice like film and the darkroom continue to be. The Internet and the overabundance of imagery seem to be a subject that a lot of artists are exploring. And we too are interested in this idea. In this exhibition, Viktoria Binschtok addresses this concept through the body of work, World of Details. In our third exhibition HERE., we were the first institution in the US to show Doug Rickard’s work. Le Bal in Paris had shown his photographs the year before.
What do you think of Le Bal?
It’s a great institution that is very important for the medium right now. Sometimes I get the feeling the feeling that we are exchanging brainwaves because we consistently consider similar themes and photographers.
Do you know Diane Dufour, its director, well?
Yes, she came here before Le Bal had opened and we were able to have conversations for several hours. It was very clear at that time that we had similar ideas about photography. She’s presenting shows that are relevant right away: like Paul Graham’s The Present shown when it just came out and not after a few years.
Can we talk a bit about you? What is your relationship with the founder Andy Pilara? Do you participate actively in the purchase of prints for example?
After studying photography under Larry Sultan and Jim Goldberg, I met Andy while teaching photography in San Francisco. I was preparing to open a gallery when Katy Grannan, Frish Brandt and Larry Sultan advised me to meet with Andy. In the initial meeting, we just talked about photography and San Francisco’s photographic community. After visiting my studio, we stayed in touch and after several additional conversations, he offered me the job of founding director. And yes, I participate in the purchase of photographs, and our conversations about the medium have continued.
39 years old is quite a young age to curate a space like this one?
Yes, I was hired when I was 33. It was challenging. It was a priceless education to work on the idea of the space and design it with Andy and Mary Pilara. I had never worked in a museum or a gallery before Pier 24. I’m a photographer, and although I never took a photo history course in my life, I’m completely obsessed with images. I know the medium based on making pictures and thinking about it as a practicing artist. I look at the thousands of books I have at home, blogs, magazines, exhibitions, etc. One of this job’s greatest privileges is that I now get to talk with people I have admired for a long time. I hear stories from Henry Wessel about hanging out with Garry Winogrand, the first time he met Diane Arbus, his relationship with Lee Friedlander etc. Without comparing myself to great figures, lots of curators like John Szarkowski, Ann Tucker and Sandra Phillips were photographers and then shifted to another role with the medium.
Is making pictures something you miss?
I miss it for sure, but what the Pilaras have afforded me to do here fulfills me so deeply in other ways. Working with photographers is one of my greatest joys. I don’t think a photographer’s practice is only going out and making pictures, it goes deeper than that.
Do you have favorite photographers, inspirations?
Yes. Stephen Shore for example, and I know specifically why. His photographs document my youth. They’re the color palette of my youth. Inevitably that nostalgia is evoked, even if it was not his original intention. I have an old book that I purchased in my early twenties called The Photo Book. It’s a dictionary of photographers including biographies and a single image from each person. Other than that, the first photobook I purchased was Wolfgang Tillman’s Burg, and it’s still one of my favorites. He pushed the boundaries of installation way before everybody else.
EXHIBITION
Second Hand
until May 2015
Pier 24
24 Pier The Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1(415) 512-7424
