Too much art

Finally on the other side of several assignments lined up neatly in a row (thanks scheduling gods) and the long, strange blur of the Art Basel Miami Beach insanely gigantic art fair, I'm back at blogging speed. I'm sitting in another Panera Bread in another city, having just finished a 3-day shoot for ESPN the Magazine that I'll write about soon (probably), and am feeling pretty good. Tonight I'll fly home to start packing with the girlfriend for our move this weekend. And somewhere in the next week I'll scramble to shop and check off the rest of our Xmas list. (For the record: I'm still quite upset that my family decided to do presents this year... I much preferred last year when we 86'd the gift giving and just spent time with each other. After all, we all have way too much shit already!)

A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call that I had been waiting on for most of the year: "Hi, we would like to hire you to cover Art Basel for us." The call came from a new client, Architectural Digest, and I was really excited that they wanted me to photograph not only something very specific to the magazine, a series of talks that their editor-in-chief was moderating, but to also document the fair at large however I saw fit (which I was planning to do for myself anyway). It’s really a beautiful thing when you are assigned to cover something that you are personally excited and passionate about!

A woman poses for a snapshot with a zebra at an art installation by Federico Uribe entitled "Human Nature" at La Comunidad.

For those of you who don't know what Art Basel is... it’s basically the Super Bowl of art fairs held annually in Switzerland (summer) and Miami Beach (winter). The Miami Beach half has been gaining ground and attention in recent years, and 2006's version felt perched on the edge of becoming the big thing. In my little world, the emerging Wynwood Arts District in Miami, the Basel festival has been breathlessly anticipated all year by the artists, galleries, and restaurant owners. For the first time basically ever, my neighborhood had traffic and taxis and impromptu parking lots advertised by guys holding cardboard signs. The experience of having your neighborhood invaded by armies of denim, sneaker, and scarf-clad hipsters was pretty insane and somewhat gratifying.

My 4-day gig began Thursday morning with a long line filled with media from all over the world waiting to be credentialed. Due to somewhat vague media rules on AB's website, no one seemed quite sure what they needed in order to receive a press pass for the event. Some people protectively held letters on stationery, others had only their passports. Neither seemed to be enough, and each person was basically forced to plead their case to a grumpy set of temporary staff members manning the media table. Eventually after 12 or 13 explanations that I was a freelance photographer working for an architecture magazine, (here is my card, here is my letter, here is my ID, please give me a fucking press pass!), I was finally given a form to fill out and put into another line where 15 minutes later we filed into another room and continued the song and dance yet again. Eventually I was photographed, given a 50 lb. bag filled with "media stuff" and a catalog of the fair (sweet!), and I was off... until I found out that media wasn't allowed to enter the fair for another full hour.

My assignment was both extremely easy and entirely impossible to complete. Shooting the daily talks held by my client was cake... mostly because the venue where they were held was so restrictive that there was only so much I could even do. On the other hand... my attempts to capture the art fair at large were laughably short of the bigger picture of the whole fair. There was simply just way, way, way too much art. Way too much. This year's ABMB contained several hundred thousand pieces of art held in dozens of galleries, satellite fairs, and buildings that dotted every part of the city. At the main exhibition hall at the Miami Beach convention center, there was so much art there alone that even though I went through there every day I never saw the same stuff more than twice.

5 connected views of Art Basel from the skywalk between halls D & A at the Miami Beach convention center. Click image for much larger view.

And while it was great to see so much art, and discover new artists whose work was very interesting and inspiring, after 4 days of Basel my eyes needed a big break. Though I'm biased, my favorite part of the whole experience was everything outside of the main Basel exhibition at the convention center, which was mostly filled with work from famous artists and art patrons more interested in price tags than passion. Miami's Design District was somewhat of a disappointment to me as well due to the large percentage of private VIP-only gallery events held there that kept the public at a distance from the art, which seems pretty counter-intuitive to the idea of an art fair itself.

In my own neighborhood it was a much better experience. A couple dozen new galleries suddenly appeared out of thin air and the art displayed amplified the vibe of Wynwood's emerging scene to create an energizing and engaging Saturday night. My main regret was that I was too busy with other assignments in addition to Basel to get to several items that were on my "not to be missed" list, including a couple of the satellite fairs and even Photo Miami, which is pretty shameful. Next year, next year.

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