I wanted to mention a few must see photography exhibits that I recently attended. I was fortunate to go to the opening of "Who Shot Rock and Roll" that just opened at the Brooklyn Museum and is up until January 31, 2010. Since I'm a Brooklynite, it was easy to get there, however, I wasn't able to stay very long and missed Blondie who I heard was terrific and played about 5 of their classic hits. Daniel Kramer has a wonderful early Dylan photograph in the show, and I was happy to see him and his wife Arline. I ran into Grayson Dantzic, and Julie Grahame also made it out to Brooklyn. If you haven't been to the museum recently, and even if you have, it is always worth a visit. Go to http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ for more info.

I went to the Metropolitan Museum (http://www.metmuseum.org/) a few weeks ago to see the Robert Frank show which is being exhibited until January 3, 2010. His photographs are terrific, and well worth looking at again, because of the depth of his subjects and the places he has been. There are interesting personal letters in the cases, and I liked seeing the contact sheets, but would have preferred seeing them larger, like the one at the start of the show. Unfortunately, I missed a panel discussion that was held back in September with Frank and Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the exhibition, but I did catch them on the radio on The Leonard Lopate show on http://www.wnyc.org/

This past Monday I attended the Aperture Foundation (http://www.aperture.org/) dinner and auction for the first time, which was quite an event. It was full of photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Davidson, Alex Webb, Lindsay McCrum and many others and I had the pleasure of sitting with Edward Mapplethorpe and Michelle Yun who were both charming. There were also many others from the photo industry including Vanessa Kramer from Phillips de Pury & Company, Yancey Richardson and Tom Gitterman. The honorees were Howard Greenberg, Joel Meyerowitz and Susana Torruella Level. There was a silent auction followed by a live auction that Denise Bethel from Sotheby's conducted with her expertise and charm, and the entire evening was a big success. The goody bag included Joel's new book, published by Aperture titled "LEGACY The Preservation of Wilderness in New York Citys Parks" which I'm looking forward to reading, and I heard him today on The Leonard Lopate Show as well.

Hope APAG members can make the meeting next week at ICP!

Regards,
Mary

I had a brainstorming meeting this morning over coffee at Tarallucci e vino with Melissa Stevens from the Sam Shaw archive. It was very productive, and we ran through lots of possible topics, panelists and locations for our upcoming APAG panel. We had been thinking of having it in the Fall, but have now pushed it for early 2010. If anyone has any suggestions for it, please let me know.

Keep an eye out next week for most of the major photography auctions. Hopefully, the market will be a strong one. Photo Expo is also at the end of the month at the Javits Center from October 22 - 24.

We will have another members meeting in early November, and will let you know as soon as I secure the date with ICP.

Regards,
Mary

Update #2

Dear APAG members,
We have heard a lot of positive comments about the panel we held in late October, and now you can see several segments of it on our website. Many thanks to Jean Bubley, our webmaster for this latest innovation, and for our new blog.

It was great to see so many members at last week's ICP opening, (which was packed) and had a fashion theme, from contemporary work to Steichen. I saw Victoria Haas, Irene Halsman, Emma Winter, Peter Kunhardt Jr, and I missed meeting John Broderick.

Some sad news to report, which is that one of our members, Joan Munkacsi passed away at the end of December. There was a a great small show of her father, Martin Munkacsi's photographs also at ICP of some lost negatives that were recently found on ebay, and then purchased by ICP. We send our condolences to her family.


If you don't already have it in your calendars, mark down March 26 - March 29 for the upcoming AIPAD show, with a gala preview on March 25.

We are planning a meeting for sometime next month, and I will let you know the date as soon as it is confirmed.

Regards for now,
Mary Engel