Market: Miami is Now a Photo Town, Too
December 2007
Photography collectors, keep your suitcases packed. There are three short weeks from the end of the illustrious Paris Photo fair until the second weekend in December, when photography aficionados will be joining the pilgrimage to Miami. Art Basel Miami Beach has been drawing art collectors, curators and dealers for five years now, and photography dealers have taken notice. For the first time this year, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has added a fair to its annual April show in New York. The AIPAD Photography Show Miami is scheduled for December 5–9, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, not to mention more than 20 other fairs. (See Advisor on page 103 for additional Miami events this month.)"The people who go to Miami have been asking why AIPAD isn’t there," says Robert Klein, the Boston-based photography dealer and president of AIPAD. "And we have a unique group of dealers who have more experience than the art dealers selling photographs."
Some 45 of the organization’s 135 members are showing in Miami, and the work will be, by and large, more contemporary than that shown in New York in the spring, though Klein contends that "with AIPAD dealers, you get a better sense of the history of photography being reflected in the work they choose."
The AIPAD Photography Show joins Photo Miami, which debuted last year, and the two fairs will be side by side on the same lot in the Wynwood Art District. Organized by ArtFairs Inc., which a lso puts together Photo LA, Photo Miami concentrates on cutting-edge art and includes more European galleries. "There’s a craziness, a passion that happens with the Miami fair that’s different from the older fairs," observes Los Angeles dealer Stephen Cohen, who is also head of ArtFairs Inc.
Photography will also be on view at Art Basel Miami Beach and at Art Miami, but the AIPAD show puts the weekend firmly on the calendars of serious photo collectors, while allowing these dealers to reach a new audience. Kate Stevens, director of the London gallery HackelBury Fine Art, which is participating in the AIPAD fair, suggests, "It’s good to have a beacon of something that’s existed for longer than this buzz around Miami. And AIPAD is a single-medium fair, which really helps people focus."