Kevin Ryan “Leap in Red” 2010 pigment print
Who better than a photographer to start an online gallery featuring photographers? He’s bound to have a good eye…
I met Kevin Ryan several years back, when my late friend Suzanne Fiol asked him to curate a show for Issue Project Room; an adored experimental music & art venue in Brooklyn, which was housed in an old cement silo on the Gowanus, when property wasn’t worth much in that part of Brooklyn. Short of the Guggenheim, its cylindrical stark walls were charmed like no other to hang art on. Climbing the winding iron staircase, I began to peak through to the next level when I saw Kevin Ryan’s glowing duratrans light boxes, digitized versions of Edweard Muybridge like some kind of futuristic Gustave Klimt. His curated show “Sensorium” brought together a selection of visual artists including Assume Vivid Astro Focus and filmmaker Stan Brakhage with experimental music performers such as the Issue Project Room Theremin Society for a month long celebration, in 360 degrees, of the related arts with the theme of the expanded-senses.
Later, I asked him to take a portrait of me for an online business I was starting at the time. I couldn’t imagine a better shot, especially since he didn’t retouch it all. It was flawless from what I could see, while capturing the things that made me feel playful and beautiful. It helps that he has been photographing Warhol’s and Lichtenstein’s for years.
I hadn’t seen Kevin for a long while, so when I bumped into him at a local coffee shop I was delighted. It was the usual happy to see you moment. While we took a bit of time to catch-up, I learned that he was redirecting his career map without changing his essential raison d'etre. This subject very much interests me, since I know so many people in the arts who are setting new career precedence’s in their lives. On average people will change their jobs at least 12 times if not more during their life span, but with artists they usually try to incorporate what they know, in their daily lives.
Art Kane "Bobby Darin" 1960
I look at Kevin Ryan as a symbol of the changing way in which we think of being artists, while doing business to reach collectors and curious art doyens. Many creatives find themselves at this impasse; leaping into technology to rapidly reach a bigger audience while creating a manageable and exciting presence.
To give you some background, he’s been the principal photographer for the Andy Warhol Foundation and their Catalog Raisonne as well as the Roy Lichtenstein Estate and Foundation since 1998. Kevin has worked with a large number of prominent foundations like Joseph Albers and Robert Motherwell, numerous galleries, e.g., Gagosian, Castelli, DC Moore, Lehmann Maupin, Andre Emmerich etc., as well as individual collectors, artists, and other creatives. When I asked him if he found it difficult to open this new door, he described embellishing his career, rather than leaving something behind.
Susanne Washington "Curled Up" , 2016
What made you decide to start your own gallery online?
“First of all, I have a great love for the photographic image. I needed to create a new way forward for my own career and I saw this as an interesting way of using my talents and experience to expand my own reach while assisting other photographers as well.
I think that most creatives are adept at adapting to survive with whatever means necessary. Many photographers are already selling their works in their own online ‘stores’ creating websites with Squarespace or Art Storefronts and there is an increase of art being sold online, so it seemed like an interesting prospect.”
Is there a difference between brick and mortar gallery exhibitions and online presentations?
“The traditional gallery has a function that an online site cannot replace, that of selling physical objects that a collector can see and experience in person as well as the ability to create an environment for contemplation. There is a sense of community that is fostered by galleries that online marketplaces really can't replicate, but every gallery now has some form of web presence and one can say that with social media that the online community is perhaps more lively 24/7 than a traditional gallery can ever be. I mean look at how many people are posting images on Instagram and Facebook. It is overwhelming”
What brought you to this moment?
“For the past 35 years I have been hauling my equipment around New York and the eastern seaboard and while I still have some regular clients, I have had to nonetheless face facts that I can't continue this physically demanding schedule for too many more years. With that in mind I had been working on creating my next step for some time when my infatuation with Instagram gave me an epiphany of sorts. There is a wealth of visual images at one’s fingertips, and a huge market of followers, so when you bring those two together it seemed natural to want to tap into that as a business model for connecting the creators to the collectors, so to speak”
Your new site Shootx9 is very different. What makes it different than the other kids on the block?
“I decided to provide photographers with a web page within shootx9 that would be their own to manage and control. They could upload 9 images for display that they could use for their own self-promotion with a bio or statement and it would have links to their social media and other professional websites, so that interested collectors who came across their work on shootx9 did not have to search far to find more of their work. The 9 images on each artist's page are works that have been selected by the artist, and are produced as X9 edition prints. I have created a relationship with an online framer levelframes.com whose site is integrated into shootx9 so that you can literally see a work that you like, click on a button and the image is uploaded to levelframes.com where you can choose your frame style and it will be shipped to your door ready to hang. This makes viewing and buying seamless.
“Well, for one reason, the best 9 is sort of a standard format for grouping square images. 3 x 3 is a square format of 9 squares, so it has visual coherence. It also has numerological significance, 9 being the last prime number, the number of completion, new beginnings and mathematically the number that is both all and nothing, like reality itself in quantum physics. 9 then seemed to me to be the perfect set number to edit down, both visually and conceptually. It would be a tight orderly set that was the best of the endless stream. I wanted the site to be able to serve the needs of photographers in a way that would be both commercially viable but on a higher end aesthetically than what I was seeing from these online marketers of images, something that a serious photographer would not dismiss, while being open to those image makers who did not have an established career.”
Tell me about your artists.
“There are currently 21 artists who have work on shootx9 and numerous others whom I have been in contact with who will be likely setting up pages in the near future and every one of them I found either from having followed them online or through personal connections.
Included in the first group of artists who wanted to be a part of the initial launch of shootx9 is the estate of Art Kane, the iconic master of editorial portraiture during the 1960's and '70's whose work stands out to this day as a singular visionary expression during a time of great social upheaval. The estate is releasing a set of 9 images that are available in an open edition in 11 x 14” and are reasonably priced for a master photographer. Fred Cray is a Guggenheim Fellow whose explorations in creating unique photographic images pushes the boundaries of the medium in many ways. His works are produced as unique images in an edition of only one, which preserves their uniqueness. Chris Sallquist is a California artist who manipulates found images in the form of collage reliefs that are re-photographed creating dynamic images with a physical as well as psychological depth. Oliver Trager is a writer, the biographer of Lord Buckley, whose collaged images of the greats of jazz history replay those images in freshly original ways like riffs on a standard tune. Car Pelleteri is a NY based photographer whose recent book "Surf + Turf" artfully chronicles a changing social landscape in Montauk, Long Island. Christian Stemper is a German photographer whose’ Lupimaris’ project documents in dramatic overhead arial shots the disappearance of the small Greek fishing boats. Stephen Spera is an experimental musician as well as a photographer whose photographs present a kind of contemporary pictorialism conjuring up a ghostly past. Jessica Hines is well known for her series "My Brother's War", but for shootx9 she presents her "Spirit Stories" series shot in the Georgia swamps, a much more visceral and earthy form of Monet's waterlilies. Robin Bowman is a documentary photographer known for her "American Teenager" project and book "It's Complicated", but for shootx9 she is producing a series of beautiful botanical prints that were toned with natural plant dyes. Jonathan Alcorn is an award winning photojournalist who is based in Venice, CA whose great eye for form and light has captured the California ethos. Sixtina Friedrich is the daughter of Heiner Friedrich the founder of the DIA Art Foundation and she creates visually complex kaleidescopic works of natural forms that have a deeply metaphysical content. Itaysha Jordan is a NY based fashion photographer whose work explores the beauty of blackness in high fashion. Susanne Washington manipulates mobile phone images of natural forms to create beautifully minimal photographs that reference Karl Blossfeld's plant studies. It is a very diverse and accomplished group of photo-based image-makers that will hopefully appeal to collectors and the general public alike.
Each month there will be a changing set of featured images that exude the best of shootx9.
And so I learned, like so many people I know, my amazing photographer friend Kevin Ryan is taking a leap into the virtual frontier, where it seems, the best of 9 images (x many) preside.
Chris Sallquist "Some Roarings" 2016