Maybe it’s because I got my first iPhone when I was 11, or maybe it’s a sign of the digital times, but seeing a photograph framed on a wall always stuns me.
Even more arresting to me is a room full of physical photographs — vintage, rare, or contemporary — outside of a narrow museum or gallery setting. This year’s iteration of the Photography Show, held by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) at the Park Avenue Armory, brought 82 image exhibitors to its main floor in an overwhelmingly varied display.
Among the most trafficked booths on opening night, Wednesday, April 22, was that of Jackson Fine Arts, which displayed tender works portraying female tweenhood by Sally Mann and selections from Gordon Parks’s monumental Segregation Story series (1956). The display of Park’s works is timed to the 70th anniversary of their original publication in Life magazine, a commission documenting segregation in Alabama.
