AIPAD was already almost a month ago, wow, it felt like yesterday. It was a whirlwind of activity, seeing lots of old friends, and always meeting lots of new people. Of course, I saw everyone from the Howard Greenberg Gallery, but I get to see them in NY fairly often, which is great. However, I see some of these dealers only once a year, and would love to see them more often, such as Burt and Missy Finger, Wendy Halsted and Thomas Halsted, Catherine Couturier, Stephen Bulger, and everyone from the Stephen Daither Gallery in Chicago, including Stephen Daiter, Paul Berlanga, and Michael Welch. I went to two of the panels, the first one on book publishing. It was titled: PICTURES INTO PAGES: PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK PUBLISHING NOW. It had a stellar panel, including Eric Himmel from Abrams and Gerhard Steidl from Steidl, and it was fascinating to hear everyone discuss the current state of publishing, and the fast rising ebooks. How the ebooks will effect the photography art book market is a big question, but they are certainly here to stay. Then I stayed on for more, and next panel was about the current state of photography at museums. That was titled NEW CURATORS/NEW DIRECTIONS and included Brian Wallis from ICP, Matthew S. Witkovsky from the Art Institute of Chicago and several others. It was a very enlightening discussion that touched on what different institutions are exhibiting, and how they feel photography works with the other departments at their museums. There were several other panels that seemed really interesting, but I wasn't able to attend any others. For more info go to www.aipad.org.

More to come soon...
Mary Engel