Karen Rosenberg sums up the AIPAD show in a few short paragraphs without giving short schrift to the wonderful work on view:
Amateur historians of the medium will gravitate to the early photographs at Hans P. Kraus Jr., which include an excellent-quality William Henry Fox Talbot print, “The Ladder” (1844), and eerie photographs taken during 1880s excavations beneath the Louvre by Louis-Émile Durandelle.
At Richard Moore, Dorothea Lange’s 1937 shot of unemployed men outside a San Francisco library looks timely. So do photographs taken in a grittier 1970s New York by Jill Freedman (at Higher Pictures) and Billy Name (at Steven Kasher).
Contemporary photography can be found right up front, at Robert Mann, Edwynn Houk, Danziger Projects, HackelBury and Bruce Silverstein. Farther into the fair, keep an eye out for the booth of Yancey Richardson, which displays a striking row of small portraits of Russian and Latvian girls by Hellen van Meene, and the booth of Bonni Benrubi, where Abelardo Morell continues to hone his camera-obscura series.
Some of the most interesting works are by unidentified artists. They include the 19th-century family photographs at Keith de Lellis and the shots of Russian stage sets, from 1910 to 1930, at Gary Edwards. Charles Isaacs is showing a series of hand-colored albumen prints from 1864 cataloging the uniforms of Civil War soldiers. (The caption attributes them to “Unknown American.”)
AIPAD Photography Show New York (New York Times)