Fotografiska

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 88 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned My favorite picture in Fotografiska’s hip hop show is this iconic 1998 shot of Missy Elliott by Christian Witkin. It hits that perfect balance between posed and spontaneous, and she comes across as confident as hell.

Missy Elliott portrait at Fotografiska's hip hop show

At some point I’ll write a story about the superlative museums of New York. I don’t mean the best, but things like the smallest, the quirkiest, (which may well be one and the same), the oldest and so on. Fotografiska, a museum focused on photography, earns an unexpected superlative: It is the darkest museum I have visited in all of New York. I saw two different exhibitions there and both were lit very similarly: spotlights on photographs (and other work) in otherwise deep gloom.

Fotografiska, typical interior
Fotografiska, typical interior

 

It’s dramatic and unexpected — and a refreshing change to visit a museum where it’s actively challenging to take a selfie — or to take pictures for a museum review. But what else do I think about it?

A Snapshot of Fotografiska

Early in this project, I defined museums as non-profit organizations, thereby deliberately excluding museum-in-name-only experiential entertainment zones like the Museum of Ice Cream. I have been on the fence about Fotografiska since it opened in 2019.

Fotografiska is a mini museum empire, with outposts in Stockholm, Berlin, Shanghai, Miami, and Tallinn in addition to New York. It self-describes as “a destination to discover world-class photography, eclectic programming, elevated dining and surprising new perspectives,” and I’m pretty sure they’re in it to make money. And yet it also does use the m-word, and serious publications write about its shows.  So into the darkness I plunged.

Fotografiska's Renaissance revival NYC building

Fotografiska’s New York outpost occupies a landmark 1800s Renaissance Revival, former church mission house on Park Avenue South. The building’s interior was thoroughly transformed to house several floors of windowless gallery space and one of the fanciest restaurants at a New York museum, in keeping with the “elevated dining” part of the mandate.

Hip Hop Hooray

Fotografiska Hip Hop Exhibition, portrait of Biggie SmallsThe main show at Fotografiska when I visited celebrated the photography of hip hop, which is turning 50 years old this year. (Exact birthdate: August 11, 1973.) The show was organized into five zones:  an origins section, three geographic sections (East Coast, West Coast, and Southern, naturally), and a “hip hop today” closer. While breezy, hagiographic wall text introduced each section, there wasn’t a lot beyond that, and I really wanted more exposition.

Each photo did have a label identifying the photographer, the subject and date. Sometimes — too rarely — those labels also said something about the context of a photo, the when and why it was taken, which was a treat. Despite this, beyond identifying them by name the exhibition said nothing about the photographers of hip hop. It felt like a miss that a show in a museum of photography failed to focus on the artists behind the camera as well as those in front of it.

Fotografiska image of Jay Z
Chris Buck photo of Jay-Z from 1998, from a series that imagined what Jay-Z would be doing if he weren’t one of the most famous entertainers on the planet

There’s a great Vice article that interviewed three of the photographers featured in this exhibition about how they created specific images, including Christian Witkin on the one of Missy Elliott. It’s a big failing to me that those stories weren’t told as part of the show.

Even the title of the exhibition: “Hip Hop: Conscious/Unconscious” promised something that Fotografiska didn’t deliver. I’d love to have learned more about the process of imagemaking; how much of each of these pictures were “unconscious” capturing of moments versus consciously constructed images. I left feeling I’d seen a bunch of fantastic photos. And that was it. 

Second best thing I saw or learned at Fotografiska: Madonna and the Beastie Boys played Radio City Music Hall on June 6, 1985, almost exactly 38 years (and a handful of days) before I wrote this. I have no further comment on that, except: cool photo (by John Cheuse).

Beastie Boys publicity photo outside Radio City Music Hall

Sound and Fury

The second show at Fotografiska also disappointed. Titled “Listen Until You Hear,” I was intrigued by the cognitive dissonance of a photography show attempting to address to an aural phenomenon. However, that’s not what this was. Although all six contemporary artists in the exhibition included photography as part of their practices, much of the show featured videos and sculpture, which feels like cheating. It tried to coin”visual listening” but I’m unconvinced that’s a thing. 

I can imagine a great museum show about hearing and listening. The Rubin Museum pulled one off a few years ago. But this wasn’t it.

Should You Visit Fotografiska?

It’s hard to recommend Fotografiska as a museum. It’s very sceney and very cool. It has a distinct downtown vibe. And a museum of photography that’s so dark you can’t take good pictures there has an irony that I admire.

Fotografiska lobby and gift shop

However, both of the exhibitions I saw there felt like they were just for fun. And, particularly given the price of admission, that’s not enough to justify a visit.

If you like photography, there are several better museums in New York City. The International Center of Photography and the Aperture Foundation (currently closed because it’s moving) are both better, as well as much cheaper. The delightful Alice Austen House in Staten Island is also great if you like early street photography.

For Reference:

Address 281 Park Avenue South, Manhattan
Website https://www.fotografiska.com/
Cost  General Admission:  $30
Other Relevant Links
  • Verōnika, Fotografiska’s fancy restaurant
  • Bootleg recording of that 1985 Madonna concert at Radio City Music Hall (YouTube)
  • The birthplace (and birthdate of hip hop

 

Alice Austen House

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 62 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned There’s so much I liked about Alice Austen’s story and her home. However, I was blown away by Clear Comfort’s spectacular, panoramic views of the harbor. I’d go back there just to sit on the lawn and watch the ships go by.

New York Harbor View, Alice Austen House
Verrazano Narrows Bridge from Alice Austen House

Touring Alice Austen’s house in Staten Island, my guide quipped that if Alice Austen were alive today, she’d be one of those people who lines up for the new iPhone each time one comes out. I say she’d also most likely be an Instagram star.

That her life stretched from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, most of it spent in a lovely house on the shores of Staten Island, makes her even more fascinating.

Alice Austen House, Staten Island

That house, called “Clear Comfort” by the Austen family, isn’t the biggest, most historically important, oldest (though parts of it come close), or most melancholy house museum in New York City. But it vies with the Louis Armstrong House for the title of most charming. Continue reading “Alice Austen House”

Aperture Foundation

Edification value  2/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  2/5
Time spent 22 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned A picture from a series of night-in-Manhattan photographs by Richard Rinaldi.  It made me think of rewriting The Red Balloon to feature a lonely club kid befriended by a semi-sentient disco ball.

Richard Rinaldi at Aperture Foundation
From Richard Rinaldi: Manhattan Sunday

The Aperture Foundation is well known as a publisher: of the eponymous quarterly magazine, fine photography books, and photographic art prints.  It also has a gallery space in New York as well, where it shows, unsurprisingly, smallish exhibitions of contemporary photography.

Places like the Aperture Foundation straddle that ill-defined line between museums and commercial galleries. As such, I’m sometimes unsure I should review them. Still, as a not-for-profit foundation, they’re not in it to rake in the dough, so I will err on the side of inclusion.

Aperture FoundationLike the nearby International Print Center, Aperture occupies a classic West Chelsea gallery space.  Super stark white walls, unfinished ceiling, scattered columns, industrial floor.  They had the space wide open when I visited, but it feels very flexible.

What I Saw

Alessandra Sanguinetti at Aperture Foundation
Alessandra Sanguinetti, “Ivana, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris,” 2016

I saw two shows.  First, “Le Gendarme Sur La Colline,” pictures of changing life in France by Alessandra Sanguinetti, and second a small series of works by Richard Rinaldi titled “Manhattan Sunday.”  The latter’s gimmick is  that Rinaldi took all the photos on a Sunday  morning between midnight and noon. 

I liked, but did not love, both shows. Sanguinetti and Rinaldi each has a good eye for composition, and both included portraits and genre scenes and landscapes. Both also had a narrative or even journalistic flavor to them. But neither contained any pictures that will haunt my dreams–or that I’d want to own and look at every day.

Who Should Go?

I don’t think everyone needs to go to the Aperture Foundation.  Like so many museums, partly it depends on what they’re showing–some photographers would of course justify the trip. Aspiring and professional photographers must make a pilgrimage there.  And collectors of contemporary photography, too. But for the average fan of photography, or of art, I’d say consider skipping Aperture. Plenty of other places (like the International Center of Photography, or The Met) will serve fine if you just casually like the photographic arts.

Aperture Foundation Bookstore
Aperture Foundation Bookstore

I’ll offer one other reason to go, though. I have not said much about museum shops in these reviews (although I did rave about the design shops at MAD and the Cooper Hewitt). But Aperture’s bookstore takes up a healthy amount of their space. It’s fantastic, and of course heavy on their books.  If you find yourself needing a fancy art photography book…well, actually head to the Strand.  But if you find yourself in that need in far west Chelsea, go to the Aperture Foundation and I’m sure they will hook you up.

For Reference:

Address 547 W. 27th Street, 4th Floor, Manhattan
Website aperture.org
Cost Free
Other Relevant Links