Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for The New Yorker‘s Goings on About Town section and writes a regular column about photo books for Photograph. He is the winner of the 2005 Infinity Award in writing from the International Center of Photography, where he was an adjunct curator for the museum’s 2009 “Year of Fashion,” including “Avedon Fashion 1944-2000” and “Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now.” Aletti wrote half of the 101 brief descriptive essays that form the backbone of Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century (2001) and has written introductions to books by Michael Thompson, Ingar Krauss, Mark Cohen, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Ryan McGinley, and Jed Fielding. Male, a book of photographs and other artwork from Aletti’s collection, was published by Andrew Roth’s PPP Editions at the end of 2008, following exhibitions of that work at New York’s White Columns and Vancouver’s Presentation House. The Disco Files 1973-1978, a collection of Aletti’s weekly columns on disco, was published in spring 2009 by DJhistory in the UK.
Daile Kaplan is vice president and director of photographs at Swann Galleries, New York’s oldest specialty auction house, where she is also an auctioneer. She is photographs specialist on P.B.S.’s nationally-acclaimed television program Antiques Roadshow, and has also appeared on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, HGTV, Plum-TV, City-TV (Toronto), and Capa-TV (Paris). A celebrated speaker about collecting photographs, she has written extensively about the convergence of photography and popular culture. Ms. Kaplan is the author of Premiere Nudes, Albert Arthur Allen (Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 2001) and Lewis Hine in Europe, The “Lost” Photographs (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988); and editor of Photo Story, Selected Letters and Photographs of Lewis W. Hine (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). Since the mid-1990s she has been a collector of 3-dimensional artifacts adorned with photographic images, and coined the term “pop photographica” to describe these unique works. Objects from Ms. Kaplan collection appear on the Smithsonian Institution’s website: Click! Photography Changes Everything. A feature and slideshow about this new genre currently appears on Design Observer’s website: www.designobserver.com. She curated the exhibition “Pop Photographica, Photography’s Objects in Everyday Life, 1842-1969” for the Art Gallery of Ontario, which was nominated for “Best Art Exhibition” of the year.
Slava Mogutin Siberian-born artist and writer Slava Mogutin was exiled from Russia for his queer writings and activism at the age of 21. In 1995, he was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International and PEN American Center. Mogutin is the author of two hardcover monographs of photography, Lost Boys and NYC Go-Go, and seven books of writings published in Russian. In the past decade, Mogutin’s photography, video and multimedia work have been exhibited internationally, including MoMA PS 1 and Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston, Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Estonian KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, The Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in Spain. Mogutin’s work has been featured in a wide range of publications including Flash Art, ArtUS, Modern Painters, L’Officiel Hommes, L’Uomo Vogue, Stern, and The New York Times. Get more acquainted with him by visiting www.slavamogutin.com or http://slavamogutin.tumblr.com.
Chris Steighner is Senior Editor at Rizzoli International Publications. Since joining the company twelve years ago, Steighner has acquired and developed numerous fine-art photography books including Uncovered: Rare Vintage Male Nudes, Jack Pierson:Desire/Despair, Vanishing America by Michael Eastman, and Alfred Steiglitz New York. Previously, he was an editor at Callaway Editions. George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, one of Steighner’s most recent releases, accompanied an exhibition at Throckmorton Gallery and was featured in Out and The Los Angeles Times. This month Steighner also served as a juror for the project competition at the Santa Fe Center for Photography. For more on Rizzoli books please visit www.rizzoliusa.com.
Reed Massengill (Moderator) is a widely published writer and photographer whose work spans the genres of biography (The Art of George Quaintance, 2010 and Portrait of a Racist, 1994, 1997), corporate history (Becoming American Express, 2000) and photography (Brian: A Nine-Year Photographic Diary, 2000; Massengill Men, 1997; and Massengill, 1996). As a passionate collector, curator and editor, during the past decade he has produced a number of critically acclaimed volumes of photography, including Uncovered: Rare Vintage Male Nudes (2009), Self-Exposure: The Male Nude Self-Portrait (2005), The Male Ideal: Lon of New York and the Masculine Physique (2003), Champion (2003), and Roy Blakey’s ‘70s Male Nudes (2001). As a photographer of the male nude, in addition to three monographs his work has been widely published and exhibited in the United States and abroad. His images are included in a number of important photographic anthologies, including The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions (2008), The Romantic Male Nude (2007), Male Nude Now (2001), and Exposed (2000). He is an avid collector of vintage male nude photography, with a particular focus on images from the era of classic physique photography. Because of his numerous books on the subject, his broad knowledge of the field and his extensive library and research files, today museums, gallery owners and private collectors frequently seek his advice when acquiring images, conducting research or seeking attribution.
Rainbow Book Fair 