Classic Photographs at Bergamot Station

Judy Dater, Only Human, Santa Monica, February 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale

This past weekend Gerry Clausing and I took a small road trip from Orange County to Santa Monica for the Classic Photographs exhibition event. It is appearing that this will one of the few photographic exhibition events in Southern California with Photo l.a. and LA Art Book Fair not occurring this year. Gerry writes in more detail about Classic Photographs from a photographic viewpoint on SoCal PhotoExchange, while I am going to briefly discuss the photobook opportunities that we found.

In years past, there were a number of small exhibition booths for “classic” prints (predominately black & white, silver halide prints) and essentially no photobooks were present at Classic Photographs. But this time we were noting that Nazraeli Press was going to be present this year in conjunction with a couple of books signings gave me some hope. Thus it was nice to have some time to chat up photobooks and photobook designs with Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press early in the morning before the area became more crowded. Yes, my take-away was the recently published photobook by the husband and wife team of Deanna and Ed Templeton Contemporary Suburbium, an interesting leporello design book (second image below of Chris holding this book open).

One of the high points was an opportunity to talk with Judy Dater while her signing booth was being set up. Dater’s new book, Only Human, was just published this year (hot off the press!) by Loyola Marymount Press, which is associated with the University of the same name that is located in Los Angeles. My request was for Dater to display one of her favorite photographs in the book, seen above. I think that is also my signed copy that she is holding and now sitting near by me.

The third photobook to feature is the recently released photobook by Cat Gwynn, 10-Mile Radius, (directly below) an autobiographic photographic project that she developed while going through extensive breast cancer treatments. Her book is a combination of her writing, photographs and found inspirational text. Gwynn is local to Los Angeles and there is a very good chance that we will be on a photobook discussion panel together hosted by LACP next month. Yes, I acquired her book as well.

There were also two dealers, Michael Dawson Gallery (LA) and Stephen Daiter Gallery (Chicago) that brought some collectible and rare photobooks that regretfully remained hidden behind glass cases, unless you were actively engaged in purchasing one of these beautiful (and for some, rather expensive) gems.

Thus I am not sure how the Classic Photographs event will evolve over the next few years, but there is now some hope that it might be more inclusive of photobooks as art objects. Stay tuned!

Cheers