One of the world's most important annual photography events to be held at the Park Avenue Armory in March

More than 70 of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work, including contemporary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. The AIPAD Photography Show New York is the longest running and foremost exhibition of fine art photography. The Show will open with a Gala Preview on March 28, 2012, to benefit InMotion, which provides free legal services to low-income women.

AIPAD 2012 will present four new member exhibitors: David Zwirner, New York; Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York; Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA; and 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing.

“Numerous photography collectors have told me that they are marking their calendars for AIPAD 2012 in March,” said Stephen Bulger, president, AIPAD, and president, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. “There is no question that AIPAD is a prerequisite for both new and established collectors.”

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
The AIPAD Photography Show New York will offer museum-quality work from established and emerging contemporary artists to modern and 19th-century masters. Among the highlights will be a selection of extraordinary portraits. Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, will show Linda McCartney’s photographs of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. One of Bert Stern’s famous contact sheet images of Marilyn Monroe from her last sitting in 1962, which she famously crossed off, will be on view at Staley-Wise Gallery, New York.

Flip Schulke’s mural-sized silver gelatin print of Muhammad Ali jumping out of a hotel pool in Miami Beach from 1961 will be exhibited at Keith de Lellis Gallery, New York. The image was first published that year in Life magazine. Portraits of pioneer photographers will be shown at Charles Schwartz Ltd., New York, including a rare self-portrait by Herbert George Ponting from 1912 on the ill-fated expedition of Robert Falcon Scott to Antarctica.

Tam Tran is known for her self-portraits with provocative titles such as My Call to Arms, Retro Bitch, I Forgot Pants, Strip Tease, and When Are We Leaving? Her photographs were seen at the Whitney Biennal last year; at age 23 she was the youngest artist in the exhibition. This fall, her work was included in the recent exhibition Portraiture Now, Asian American Portraits of Encounter at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Her image entitled Youniverse will be shown by Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, DC.

Kelli Connell creates portraits that appear to document a relationship between two women, caught up in everyday moments of pleasure and reflection. Yet upon closer inspection, the viewer will notice that the subjects appear to the twins: in fact, Connell has seamlessly created a photograph with the same model portraying both roles. At the forefront of digital technologies for the past decade, Connell addresses complex issues of identity and visual rhetoric. Her work will be exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Unique portraits of dolls by Fausta Facciponte will be on view at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. In her series Sleepy Eyes, 2011, Facciponte explores the human qualities of reclaimed dolls from garage sales and online auctions.

Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, will show new photo-based work by John Chamberlain. Created in 2010-11, Pictures is Chamberlain’s most candid, autobiographical, and intimate body of work to date. Departing from his sculptures in medium and imagery, these new works on canvas continue the artist’s powerful use of color and composition.

Karen Knorr’s series, India Song, 2008-2010, depicts tigers and other wild animals lounging in exotic palaces, mansions, and mausoleums. The stunning images reinvent the Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of animal fables, for the 21st century, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. Knorr was nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, one of Europe’s most prestigious awards. Prints from India Song will be on view at Danziger Gallery, New York, along with work by Andy Warhol, Evelyn Hofer, and Hendrik Kerstens. Robert Burge/20th Century Photos, Ltd, New York, will show John Woolf’s new color panoramas of classical theater interiors.