E-Photo
Issue #26  3/1/2001
 
AIPAD Moves Venue/Dates For 2002 to Expand Scope

By Alex Novak

AIPAD--eclipsed this year by Paris Photo as the largest photography show in the world--intends to retake that title next year with a change in venue and time. Present plans are to move the location to the New York Jacob Javits Atrium (the smaller and more architecturally interesting area adjacent to the larger halls) in mid-March. There will be room for 106 versus the 93 dealers that exhibited this year, and booths will be four feet deeper than at the Hilton.

Given that Paris Photo is maxxed out, AIPAD may again have more dealers exhibiting (and, of course, more actual sales being made). The Atrium is also a more spacious area vertically as well as in square feet than the Hilton, making for a more interesting environment that will all be on one floor.

Contemporary NYC dealer Laurence Miller feels "the move next year to a more open floor plan with larger booth possibilities will have an impact. You just cannot show a lot of contemporary work at the AIPAD show, due to small booths, low walls and low lights. The new venue will make it possible for us, and others, to show large things in a professional way. We also heard many complaints from collectors (and dealers) that the fair is too much a flea market and not enough an 'art fair'"

Those were indeed the criticisms leveled by several dealers that I talked to, who would like to do away with most bins and restrain the number of images up on the walls in some way. They would like the show to take on more of the look and feel of Paris Photo, but at a higher level of dealer and material.

Personally I have mixed feeling on this. In my own bins, I had dozens of images $5,000 to $50,000, hardly low-end material. And many people who start collecting do not start at $10,000 and up levels. Many top collectors also feel that many lower priced images also have a place in the history of photography and in their collections. Would we be discouraging new collectors and a broader view of photo history by placing arbitrary limits on what a dealer (or even HOW a dealer) exhibits in their booth?

Some dealers have also suggested that booths be larger in size and that the number of smaller booths be more limited. Perhaps this move coupled with what appears to be a substantial increase in booth prices in the offing will limit more naturally which dealers exhibit and what they show at AIPAD. It remains to be seen if all of this makes a better photography market long-term.

And, to complicate matters, another controversial location is apparently still under consideration: Christie's Rockefeller Plaza facility. Stay tuned.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.