When I was in London I visited the Photographers’ Gallery, London’s pioneer space for the study and enjoyment of photography. It’s celebrating its 50th birthday, having opened in the days when most critics, curators, and art historians considered photography low-end art, if they thought of it as art at all. “All you have to do is click,” snoots believed. What they really hate is the camera’s threat to elitism. Most anyone can use it. Anyone and anything is, potentially, a subject. Praise the Lord, I’m not a snob, a snoot, or a clodhopper posing as a connoisseur.
In writing my story on the gallery and its nice retrospective of Helen Levitt’s career, I promised myself a visit to the International Center of Photography in New York. I hadn’t seen its new building on Essex Street in the Bowery. It opened right before the Covid calamity. I went to school with David Little, the new director. School chums notwithstanding, I’ve always liked the place. As artists go, photographers are scrappy, inquisitive, and entrepreneurial. They’re extroverts. As a place for scholarship, the ICP is cutting-edge good. They do smart shows that make a difference.
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