Visit us at BOOTH #113!

Obscura Gallery is devoting the entire 2023 AIPAD booth to a survey of the late Kurt Markus’s storied photographic career. Kurt Markus was “celebrated as a fine artist and a chronicler of the American West” as Alex Williams wrote in The New York Times when Markus passed away last year. Kurt is perhaps best known for his portraits of cowboys in the American West and also enjoyed a distinguished career as one of the world’s preeminent fashion photographers. Over the course of a decade, Obscura Gallery owner Jennifer Schlesinger curated three solo exhibitions of Kurt Markus’s work including The Fashion Years retrospective, Monument Valley 2002-2017, and Dunes, Namibia 2002-2008, as well as a Cowboys in the West exhibition, all of which will be included in Obscura Gallery’s booth at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD. Kurt’s latest book published posthumously, Christy, chronicles the travels he and model Christy Turlington made over the course of a 25 year-long friendship, and the book and prints will be available for sale in the AIPAD booth as well.

VIEW OUR INVENTORY OF KURT MARKUS'S WORK HERE.

PURCHASE AIPAD TICKETS HERE!

Obscura Gallery is excited to present a select survey of photogravures representing work from over a century, with prints dating from as early as 1897 to contemporary prints made in 2023. The earliest print in this exhibition is an 1897 Alfred Stieglitz photo from his portfolio Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies.   The most recent work will be 2023 abstract landscapes from New Mexico and Chile created from polymer plates by Santa Fean Eddie Soloway.

The photogravure is an intaglio print process that, in the early development of photography, was invented to produce high-quality ink reproductions of photographs, featuring deep shadows and luminous highlights. Early photographic pioneers Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and William Henry Fox Talbot invented the process in the 1840s, and then it was perfected in 1879 by Karl V. Klíč. Traditionally, photogravures were photographs that were etched into a metal plate using light sensitive carbon tissue. The plate was then inked and run through a printing press to produce a positive ink print known for its distinctive, luminous tonal qualities. With most contemporary photogravures, the metal plates have been replaced with polymer plates and other less toxic chemicals are used in the process.

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