April 28-May 4, 2005

art

Snapping to It

camera man: Martin McNamara hopes his Gallery 339, along with other exhibition spaces, can help restore Philadelphia'a reputation as a center for fine art photography. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Can Philadelphia ever compete with NYC as a hub for photography?

by John Vettese

The sound of clanging hammers and squealing radial arm saws greets Martin McNamara as he enters his corner property at 21st and Pine streets. It's a Friday afternoon two weeks before opening day. By April 29, the clutter will be cleared away, and the bright, airy two-floor building will become Gallery 339, the city's first commercial art space dedicated to photography in nearly 20 years.

"It's a little puzzling," says McNamara. "This city has a very vibrant photography community, a number of very good photo programs at universities, lots of nonprofit spaces that show work, but not a single commercial gallery dedicated to photography."

While spaces like the Wexler Gallery in Old City and Sande Webster Gallery at Rittenhouse Square show photography periodically, it is often mixed in among other mediums. Nick Cassway, executive director of Nexus Foundation for Today's Art, says he attempts to show the city's best photographers in the traditional vein as well as shooters who experiment with the process, but even his space has only hosted a handful of photo-exclusive exhibits.

"It's a shame that photography is sometimes perceived as an afterthought," says Cassway.

Surrounded by bustling work, McNamara says it was the mere lack of places to see and purchase photography that prompted he and partner Tom Callan to chance turning the corner storefront that was most recently the Phantom Fountain ice cream parlor into a photo space.

A Bucks County native and long-time Philly resident, McNamara is approaching the venture from his role as a collector of photography. After several years of buying work at shows across the country and on trips abroad, he was frustrated that there was no place to buy photography in his hometown.

A number of theories circulate about this phenomenon: The city is too conservative to support photography; the medium is still plagued by its stigma of being a second-class art form behind painting.

But there is an overwhelming agreement on one point.

"I can sum it up for you in two words," says Stephen Perloff. "New York."

Perloff edits the Langhorne-based trade mag Photo Review and has long been involved in the Philadelphia photography scene — to the point where he can quickly rattle off the name of the city's first commercial gallery (Photopia, later named David Mancini Gallery) and when it opened (November 1974).

The city has a rich photographic history, from Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies at Penn at the turn of the 20th century, to many big-name shooters like Louis Faurer and Mary Ellen Mark getting their start locally. This put Philadelphia ahead of the national curve initally, but when momentum began to dwindle, New York's concurrent scene was still swiftly ascending.

Perloff said the galleries that blazed trails in Philly were closing by the mid-'80s — sometimes for personal reasons moreso than financial — and with such a bustling photo community a train ride away, it became nearly impossible for new galleries to take their place.

"There were hundreds of galleries opening in [New York] and it just reached that critical black hole mass where it pulled everything toward it," Perloff says.

The movement took its toll on shooters locally.

Sande Webster represents Ron Tarver, an Inquirer staff photographer known for his fine art work detailing the black experience. He lauds her for running one of the few galleries that champions photography, but said just getting her to show his work took time and persistence.

"Even for galleries, it's a tough sell," Tarver says. "It's not a matter of putting up pictures and have everybody go "ooh, ahh.' In the end, they need to make money."

Since receiving a photo degree in 1997, Bill Kelly has refined a unique process that combines monotype printmaking with photography. But as far as exhibiting, he has stuck with group shows at spaces like Woodmere Art Museum and Perkins Gallery in New Jersey.

Kelly finds galleries like Nexus a positive for the photo community, as they keep the medium positioned "in the greater realm of the arts," but would like to see more.

"I like seeing these things come together, but I think photography needs to exist in a place of its own," he says.

Christina Molieri, a social documentary shooter whose work has focused on the LGBT community and civil unrest surrounding the Bush administration, sets up tables of her work on the Old City sidewalks during First Fridays. She has sold prints, gotten positive feedback from passers-by and was even picked up by October Gallery briefly.

"It's not that photography doesn't get a good reaction from people, because it totally does," she says. "It's just that you're sort of limited."

Given these trials, Callan and McNamara are taking a gamble with 339's sheer size, but they're looking to generate some critical mass of their own.

"We have to engage people off the bat," McNamara says. "That's why we've created a space that was substantial enough to create that interest in selling photos, and hopefully that will bring out other commercial spaces."

To that end, 339 aims to exhibit emerging international photographers that are not being shown elsewhere.

For the opening, the space will be divided between Britain's Edward Dimsdale, who will be showing in the United States for the first time, and South Korea's Bohnchang Koo. The former gravitates towards warm abstractions and wistful portraits, like the haunting gray "Gaze," while Koo's series centers around the passage of time through drying vines and melting snow.

The gallery also represents three locally based photographers: Paul Cava, Robert Raczka and Stuart Rome. Following the critical-mass tactic, McNamara says he looks to avoid work that is "shocking, disturbing or simply didactic."

"It's certainly a relevant aesthetic in contemporary art, but being somebody whose background involves living with the art, I gravitate toward work that is beautiful," he says.

At the same time, that doesn't mean the work isn't exciting. Perloff calls it "intelligent and challenging" and says the choice of photographers is a very clever move on McNamara's part. He makes an analogy to The Philadelphia Orchestra — they might program a modern piece along with a Beethoven symphony to broaden the horizons of the audience, but would probably drive away subscribers with a program entirely of avant-garde work by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

"It's not like he's showing pleasant, innocuous stuff," he says.

But is there an option for local shooters who work outside these confines? Over in Powelton Village sits Photo West Gallery, a cozy two-floor space with an outdoor garden that was once director Laurence Salzmann's studio space — until he installed track lighting five years ago and realized it could be used for shows.

After a couple years of renovation, it opened last fall, and Salzmann says his approach has been different. It's not quite commercial, but not nonprofit either.

"Money is not our motivation, selling is not our motivation," he says. "Our real motivation is providing a place for people to come to show their work, have a dialogue and exchange ideas."

Unlike in Old City, Photo West is one of the few show spaces in its neighborhood, so Salzmann figures people will stay at openings longer instead of rushing from gallery to gallery. They'll have more of a chance to pause and appreciate the work, as well as mingle with like-minded artists.

To further entice visitors into staying the duration of an opening, he says he wants to bring a cultural aspect to the openings — spoken word poets, Afro-Cuban musicians — that plays along to the theme of the artwork.

"People don't like to think about it, but our city is still very segregated," he said. "We'd like to bridge that divide."

The shows are curated by a "Friends of the Gallery" group, and Salzmann hopes to eventually see Photo West evolve into a foundation, disbursing grants to emerging artists.

Asked his thoughts on the lack of other commercial space in Philadelphia, Salzmann reasons, "So much photography is noncommercial, and your overhead is so high, it's just difficult. It can be up to $7,000 a month to keep a gallery going."

However, the tide might be turning. Perloff says he has seen a trend of the contemporary art market becoming more accepting of photographs as photographic processes are experimented with and the medium grows more established.

"The division between people who collect photographs and people who collect other mediums seems to be eroding," he says.

In which case, the gamble McNamara and Callan are taking could be a smart one that might put the city back on the photographic curve.

Watching the sawdust settle back on the first floor, McNamara says, "I'm hoping we'll be doing this in the right way at the right time and the city will support it."

Gallery 339 will open Fri., April 29 with a selection of work by Bohnchang Koo and Edward Dimsdale. Reception at 6 p.m., 339 S. 21st St., 215-731-1530, www.gallery339.com.

PhotoWest Gallery will hold a panel discussion on contemporary issues concerning Philadelphia's photographic community, Sat., May 14, 4:30 p.m., to accompany the opening for "RIT Connection Philadelphia," Fri., May 13, 5 p.m., 3625 Lancaster Ave., 215-222-2649, www.photowestgallery.com.