One of the over a dozen satellite art fairs is Photo Miami. Over forty international galleries present photo-based art including conceptual, video, digital and new media. The interview with the directors Stephen Cohen and Tim Fleming was realized in a cooperation between Artfacts.Net (interview: Sabine Rieck) and VernissageTV. Photo Miami, December 6, 2006. Transcript of the interview at Artfacts.Net.
VTV Beginnings (r2): Photo Miami 2006: Interview with Stephen Cohen and Tim Fleming. Miami, December 6, 2006.
VTV Beginnings (r2): Photo Miami 2006: Interview with Stephen Cohen and Tim Fleming. Miami, December 6, 2006.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 I'm Sabine, I'm from Artfacts and we are making Vernissage TV and Artfacts.
00:06 We are making an interview with Stephen Cohen and with Tim Fleming.
00:12 Stephen Cohen has a gallery here on the fair and Tim Fleming is director of Photo Miami.
00:19 Stephen, I would like to ask you how do you came to art, you have a gallery, how did it all happen?
00:26 I was an art student in college and a film student in graduate school and to earn a living I started to sell collectible books, out of print books and small photographs.
00:38 And that just grew and grew and grew and I wanted to organize a fair in Los Angeles because I was traveling so much around the country selling photographs.
00:46 So I started the fair and then opened a gallery right afterwards and the gallery took off and the fair took off amazingly.
00:53 This January is the 16th year for Photo LA, it's the longest running art fair in Los Angeles.
01:00 So we are very proud of that, it's sold out and we have a long waiting list.
01:04 And we started to add some other fairs too, Photo Santa Fe ran for 7 years, then Photo San Francisco and then Photo New York for 3 years.
01:14 I wanted to do Photo Miami a few years ago but then 9/11 happened and then it just didn't seem timely.
01:22 When I organized it with Tim for this year, I had no idea there were going to be 6 other hotel fairs happening.
01:29 So there is a lot of competition but we wanted to make something that was unique.
01:33 That even though we used the photo with the city as a name, it was going to have a very different identity and the fair does.
01:41 It's very contemporary, very fresh, it's a mixture of new media, video.
01:45 And I'm so pleased and happy with the work that Tim and the committee has done in attracting an excellent group of galleries from 13 countries to participate in the fair.
01:56 And people are going to see things here that they haven't seen anywhere else.
02:00 There's some new work that's being previewed here.
02:03 For the first time Carrie Mae Williams has a series of work called Roaming that's showing here for the first time anywhere in the world.
02:11 And she's going to be talking next week, this Friday at MAM, Miami Art Museum.
02:18 She's doing a lecture and so is Enrique Martinez-Salaia.
02:21 Ok, thank you.
02:23 Tim, that brings me to you. What were the criteria to choose the 40 galleries we have here on the fair?
02:32 The criteria was essentially quality.
02:35 We didn't want to come down and appear like we're leeching off this avant-garde weekend.
02:44 We looked at, the committee essentially did much more of a job than just saying yes and no to galleries.
02:53 They really got on the phone.
02:55 We talked for a long time and we had sort of an understanding of what the fair might be.
03:01 And through their recommendations and their recruitment efforts, it took on sort of a life of its own.
03:09 Do you think there will be some other fairs from Art Fairs Incorporated?
03:19 Actually, Photo New York and Photo San Francisco are on hiatus for a year because we're rethinking them.
03:26 There are so many fairs happening in the world and they're so close together now.
03:30 The Armory Fair in New York has moved up its dates to be with the ADAA.
03:34 And the three other satellite fairs are all three weeks after Art LA,
03:38 which is a fair we organize the end of January a week after Photo LA.
03:43 Well, there's all these fairs around the world and there's ARCO right in between.
03:48 It's hard for dealers to do all these fairs. It's hard for them to have work for the fairs.
03:53 So we're going to rethink San Francisco and New York to put them in different times of the year maybe.
03:58 And even Art LA we're going to probably move to later in the year.
04:01 So we're pulling back a little to concentrate on making the fairs better and stronger.
04:05 Photo Miami now is a huge success and so we have no doubts about it for next December.
04:12 Photo LA is a huge success. It's the largest fair. Maybe it's one of the largest.
04:19 The fair in New York, APAD, it's kind of like sometimes we're bigger, sometimes they're bigger in terms of attendance.
04:26 So we're a very large fair in Los Angeles.
04:31 And then Art LA, which is in its third year and it's building and getting stronger and stronger every year.
04:36 So we're going to concentrate on those three fairs for now.
04:40 And maybe in 2008 bring back another fair.
04:44 And we've been asked about doing some things in Europe as well.
04:47 So we'll just keep that in mind.
04:49 But we really want to maintain the quality of this fair and Photo LA.
04:53 Yeah. Yeah. You want to add something?
04:56 I think the main difference with this fair is when the clients are going around,
05:01 the questions being asked of the dealers are quite different.
05:05 I mean the fair is first and foremost a contemporary art fair.
05:08 It's not strictly a photo fair.
05:11 And which means you're... I think the questions that are being asked aren't what type of paper is the work being printed on,
05:19 which edition is this.
05:21 It's really much more about the ideas and the conceptual process.
05:25 And that's the galleries aren't strictly photo galleries.
05:28 They're galleries from international spectrum that have strong media-based programs.
05:35 Again, video, some sound work, interactive work, a lot of photography.
05:40 I would expect next year there's a lot of photography here.
05:43 Yeah. Yeah.
05:44 More than I expected even.
05:46 I think next year we'll see a lot more media-based.
05:49 Yeah. I have a question to you both.
05:52 Why contemporary photography is so important today?
05:56 Well, photography and video is just another tool for artists.
06:00 Just like in other periods there's paint and there's stone and there's ink and printing.
06:05 That whenever any new technology comes along, there's a period where people are sort of playing with it.
06:09 Maybe it isn't good, but they're just sort of testing out the medium.
06:13 But now video and sound and music is so much a part of our culture.
06:19 I mean, it's--I don't even know how--you can't even separate it from politics, from society, from economics.
06:26 And what's great about artists who are calling attention to it is because it's so pervasive,
06:32 a lot of it just passes over people when they see it on TV.
06:35 So when you have artists who then take something and sort of turn it around on people,
06:41 or they make them look at something a little bit differently, I think it's great.
06:46 Yeah, I think it's quite a challenge in our times who are so flooded with pictures.
06:53 If it's good, it's good. It doesn't matter if it's an inkjet print or a Xerox print or something.
07:02 David Hockney did a whole series of pictures.
07:04 He faxed them across the world to his gallery in London, and they pieced together the mosaic of faxes that came out.
07:12 So he did things in Los Angeles, printing on the cover of LA Weekly.
07:17 He considered every copy of the 150,000 copies was an original work of art.
07:21 He did it just for them. And artist Matisse did that with Verve years ago.
07:25 So it's not anything new, but it's just a matter of if it's good work.
07:28 And here there is good work. It's very innovative, very challenging.
07:31 But a concentration. I think photography spent so long trying to establish itself as a real medium.
07:37 It's done that. We've moved on, and we've been asked a few times,
07:41 "Why then separate it out as this photo, this?"
07:46 We don't see it that way. We see it simply as a concentration of media-based works,
07:52 and there's such variety here in the ideas and the process that there's plenty to see.
07:57 Well, there's photo-based work here in the most tenuous description of photo.
08:03 We represent an artist, an anonymous artist, late 20th century.
08:08 It's contemporary work. It's in the corner there.
08:11 And the artist is working now, but the work is made to look like 19th century work.
08:17 And the artist has chosen to remain anonymous.
08:20 And the photo-mechanical images are used with oil paints and collage
08:25 to make these seamless images that are just surreal.
08:28 But they're unique, and you might call them oil paintings, but they're not.
08:33 There is some photo imagery in it.
08:36 And so you'll find in the Schubert--is it?--booth,
08:39 the artist has these wonderful collages on fabric that are photo-based,
08:46 but a very far stretch from photo.
08:50 So that's what we like, that there are people taking it about as far as you can
08:54 and still have something in there that's photo,
08:57 but you might not think of it as photography.
09:00 So we want to stretch the boundaries of what people think of as photography.
09:05 I mean, my short phrase for what I call the fair is that it's a fair about light and time,
09:13 and Stephen doesn't always agree with that, but that's the point.
09:16 I mean, it's my definition of Steve's, and then, of course, the committee,
09:19 who is just essential in the whole process.
09:21 I mean, they really are the backbone of the fair.
09:24 And what are your criteria to say this is a good artwork, whether it's photography or other art?
09:33 I guess at some point it's subjective,
09:36 but when enough people offer their subjective feelings and 5 out of 6 or 7 out of 6 say up,
09:44 you kind of sense it's good.
09:47 I respond to work emotionally and visually.
09:50 And so if something hits me, it hits me.
09:53 I don't necessarily have to know the idea behind it.
09:56 Sometime work that I don't get or I don't like at first--
10:01 I don't know who said this, someone very well-known and famous,
10:04 that if something in art disturbs you, you really have to look further.
10:10 If you really don't like something, well, you've got to look why you don't like it,
10:14 and you've got to challenge yourself, and I try to do that.
10:17 And sometimes I still don't like it, but at least I try to look beyond the first impression.
10:21 And then there are things that have grown on me, things that I didn't care for at first,
10:25 that over time you see the work, you see more of a body of work, and you come to appreciate it.
10:30 What's great about a fair like this is someone can come and see galleries from 13 countries in one spot
10:36 and hopefully purchase work.
10:39 So the dealers who have taken a lot of time and money to come out here from all over the world,
10:44 make them happy, make their artists happy.
10:47 Artists always like their workplace with people, with people who respond to their work.