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There is an intriguing visual connection between John Banasiak’s photographs from George Brown’s Bar and the paintings o...
08/24/2026

There is an intriguing visual connection between John Banasiak’s photographs from George Brown’s Bar and the paintings of Caravaggio.

The connection is less one of influence than of visual affinity. As in Caravaggio, light becomes compositional: faces, hands, gestures, and bodies emerge from deep shadow, directing the eye through the picture. Darkness is not simply background; it becomes part of the composition. Figures overlap, are cropped by the frame, or are compressed into shallow space, giving these photographs an intimacy and theatricality that at times feels remarkably Caravaggesque.

Banasiak’s masterful darkroom work is central to this effect. His prints hold remarkably deep blacks while preserving detail within the shadows, giving the light an extraordinary presence—nowhere more strikingly than in the photograph of a match illuminating a face.

There is another parallel as well. Caravaggio found monumentality in ordinary people—in taverns, around tables, among drinkers, musicians, and card players. Banasiak photographed the regulars at George Brown’s much as he found them: factory workers, families, couples, veterans, and friends. Through light, gesture, and composition, everyday encounters take on an unexpected gravity.

Made in the early 1970s while Banasiak was working weekends behind the bar at George Brown’s on Chicago’s South Side, the series has now been published by Nazraeli Press in the new monograph George Brown’s Bar, bringing together 47 photographs from this remarkable body of work.

And a thank you to everyone who follows the gallery here. I’m grateful for your continued interest in the photographs and photographers we share.

Joseph

Jim Dow (American, b. 1942) has spent much of his career looking closely at the vernacular American landscape—the archit...
08/22/2026

Jim Dow (American, b. 1942) has spent much of his career looking closely at the vernacular American landscape—the architecture, signs, storefronts, and roadside structures that reveal something of the people who made and used them. In his early Signs photographs, made largely during cross-country trips between 1967 and 1977, Dow turned his large-format camera toward the handmade and increasingly disappearing visual language of America’s older highways. Influenced by his teacher Harry Callahan and mentor Walker Evans, the photographs are precise and descriptive, but also attentive to the wit and inventiveness of their subjects.

This wonderfully eccentric arrow, with its improbable spiral and field of lightbulbs set against a dramatic sky, is a particularly strong example—the sign becomes almost a piece of sculpture, hovering somewhere between documentation and abstraction.

In 2022, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City organized Signs: Photographs by Jim Dow, curated by April M. Watson, Senior Curator of Photography. The exhibition brought together more than sixty of Dow’s early black-and-white photographs along with a selection of later color work. It was accompanied by the book Signs: Photographs by Jim Dow, with contributions by Dow and Watson, published by the Nelson-Atkins and distributed by Yale University Press. Vintage prints and signed copies of the book are available at the gallery.

image: Curlicue Arrow Sign, US 2 near Wenatchee, WA
1972
vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches

Edward Steichen’s Gloria Swanson, 1924 remains one of the great portraits of the Hollywood era. Photographed through a p...
08/21/2026

Edward Steichen’s Gloria Swanson, 1924 remains one of the great portraits of the Hollywood era. Photographed through a piece of black lace, Swanson’s face becomes almost inseparable from its pattern, while her eyes remain startlingly direct. The photograph was published in Vanity Fair in 1928.

This gelatin silver print was made by George Tice, one of the great master printers of American photography. In the early 1970s, when Steichen’s longtime printer Rolf Petersen retired, Grace Mayer, Steichen’s former MoMA assistant, recommended Tice as his replacement. Steichen appointed Tice to print from his negatives during the last year of his life, making him Steichen’s final printer.

More than two decades later, Steichen’s widow, Joanna, returned to Tice, engaging him to make the photographs for her retrospective memoir, Steichen’s Legacy, published in conjunction with the Whitney Museum’s 2000 Steichen retrospective.

We’ll be sharing more about our upcoming Edward Steichen exhibition soon. We’re honored to be working with the Tice family and to have the opportunity to present these remarkable photographs printed by George Tice from Steichen’s original negatives.

In New York for a few days, and on World Photography Day I was happy to see A Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession at M...
08/19/2026

In New York for a few days, and on World Photography Day I was happy to see A Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession at MoMA.

Founded in 1902, the Photo-Secession challenged the prevailing idea of photography as simply a mechanical process, arguing instead for its place among the fine arts. Alfred Stieglitz championed the movement through his influential gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue and the quarterly Camera Work, bringing photography into conversation with modern painting and sculpture.

There is an interesting bit of history behind this portrait of F. Holland Day by Clarence H. White. Day had been one of the most important advocates of artistic photography in America and, for a time, a significant rival to Stieglitz. The two eventually fell out as Stieglitz increasingly consolidated leadership of the American avant-garde around the Photo-Secession. Day declined to join the group, and his role in the movement was subsequently overshadowed by Stieglitz’s enormous influence.

Clarence H. White (1871-1925)
F. Holland Day, 1902
platinum print

In the mid-1970s, Bevan Davies turned his large-format camera toward the cast-iron architecture of Lower Manhattan, phot...
08/18/2026

In the mid-1970s, Bevan Davies turned his large-format camera toward the cast-iron architecture of Lower Manhattan, photographing its façades with remarkable clarity and restraint. Working early in the morning, when the streets were largely empty, Davies approached these buildings frontally and systematically, allowing their columns, windows, storefronts, signage, and accumulated details to speak for themselves.

Made at a pivotal moment in the history of SoHo and neighboring districts, these photographs have become an important record of a city in transition. The cast-iron buildings were only beginning to be recognized and protected as an essential part of New York’s architectural history; Davies preserved not simply the structures, but their character before the transformation of Lower Manhattan into the neighborhood we know today. His photographs stand comfortably alongside the work associated with the New Topographics while also continuing photography’s much older tradition of architectural documentation.

Bevan Davies (American, b. 1941)
Lower Manhattan, 1975
vintage gelatin silver print
20x16 inches

In New York for a few days, so I thought I’d post George Tice’s striking photograph of the Chrysler Building.George had ...
08/17/2026

In New York for a few days, so I thought I’d post George Tice’s striking photograph of the Chrysler Building.

George had an extraordinary ability to photograph familiar places with precision, restraint, and a remarkable sensitivity to light. His photographs have a quietness and clarity that are unmistakably his own.

I’ve admired George’s work for many years, and being back in New York seemed like a fitting occasion to share this one.

From the Chrysler Building, New York, 1978
vintage gelatin silver print
10x8 inches

Bill Arnold (b. 1941)Amtrak Train, New York, 1977vintage Itek print18x24 inches Bill Arnold has spent much of his career...
08/15/2026

Bill Arnold (b. 1941)
Amtrak Train, New York, 1977
vintage Itek print
18x24 inches

Bill Arnold has spent much of his career photographing the everyday with a quick, idiosyncratic eye. Here, the massive nose of an Amtrak locomotive fills the frame, its industrial surfaces flattened into a wonderfully blunt arrangement of shapes, textures, and lettering. Made in New York in 1977, the photograph feels very much of its moment—the machinery, the Amtrak typography, even the grain of the print carrying the visual character of the 1970s.

The print was made using Arnold’s unusual Itek process. Beginning around 1970, he adapted an Itek microfilm reader-printer to work with 35mm negatives, modifying the machine so that it could produce photographic prints with a full range of gray tones. The process was remarkably fast—a large print could be produced in seconds—and gave the photographs their distinctive, slightly coarse-grained graphic quality. Arnold’s experiments with the Itek anticipated the speed and immediacy that would later become commonplace with digital printing.

Arnold’s work is represented in major collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, SFMOMA, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This is an X-ray of tulips made in 1931.Dr. Dain L. Tasker (1872–1964), a Los Angeles radiologist, began photographing f...
08/12/2026

This is an X-ray of tulips made in 1931.

Dr. Dain L. Tasker (1872–1964), a Los Angeles radiologist, began photographing flowers with X-rays in the early 1930s. Turning a medical instrument toward the natural world, Tasker revealed the hidden architecture of flowers—the stems, petals, and internal structures normally concealed from view. The result is both a record of what lies beneath the surface and a photograph of remarkable beauty.

Tulips: An X-ray, 1931
vintage gelatin silver print
9¼ × 7⅛ inches

Tasker’s photographs are held in major public collections, including The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

In his 1970 essay Photography and the Private Collector, John Szarkowski considers the private collector as an essential...
08/09/2026

In his 1970 essay Photography and the Private Collector, John Szarkowski considers the private collector as an essential participant in shaping the history of photography—not simply acquiring recognized masterpieces, but trusting one’s own eye, curiosity, and judgment.

As Szarkowski writes, “He should combine the qualities of an amateur, a critic, a curator, a magpie, and an adventurer.”

At a time when photography was still finding its place within museums and the art market, Szarkowski encouraged collectors to look beyond established reputations and remain open to the overlooked and unrecognized. Collecting, in this sense, becomes something deeply personal: an expression of taste, independence, discovery, and a willingness to trust what one sees.

image: LeRoy Robbins (American, 1904-1987)
Coast Highway, near Oxnard, 1936
vintage gelatin silver print
6 3/8 x 8 1/2 inches

Paul Caponigro’s Apple, New York, 1964 transforms a familiar subject into something mysterious and almost celestial. Pho...
08/08/2026

Paul Caponigro’s Apple, New York, 1964 transforms a familiar subject into something mysterious and almost celestial. Photographed in close-up, the apple’s star-shaped core seems to contain a small universe—a fitting example of Caponigro’s ability to find wonder and quiet intensity in the natural world. Throughout his career, Caponigro approached photography with a deeply contemplative sensibility, looking closely at stones, trees, fruit, and landscape for forms that suggest something beyond their immediate appearance. “Galaxy” Apple remains one of his most memorable images: modest in subject, but expansive in feeling.

Paul Caponigro (American, 1932-2025)
Apple, New York City, 1964
5 3/4 x 6 3/4 inch silver gelatin print mounted to board
11 x 6 3/4 inch silver gelatin print mounted to board
Signed in pencil on recto. Titled and dated in pencil on verso

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