Plenty of Reasons To Train Your Eye on Soho Photo Gallery

“Best Bathroom Ever” may not be the headline by which a long-standing cultural institution will want to be remembered, but Soho Photo Gallery — located, counterintuitively enough, in Tribeca — has earned it. Yes, the gallery hosts a number of exhibitions throughout the year, reaching out to photographers the world over, so there’s invariably lots to see in its winding, cavernous space. Still, the Whitney, the Met, and the noisome Fotografiska can’t claim something quite as distinctive as “The American Family Gallery Project.”As with anything that advertises itself as “culturally relevant,” “The American Family Gallery Project” should be approached with skepticism. There is only so much heavy lifting the best of intentions can do. “In a broad global sense, the word family speaks to who we are as a people” — yeah, right. Yet the permanent installation at Soho Photo by Jeffrey R. Smith, a teacher and photographer who died in 2016, could manage to convert the most cynical of souls. It’s the rare individual who can effectively conflate generosity of spirit with decorative excess. Smith was one of them.Having culled a range of portrait photos dating from the late 19th century to the early half of the 20th, Smith placed them within frames that, whatever their true vintage, speak of earlier times. The pictures are diminutive in scale and encompassing in scope: American citizens of every conceivable type festoon the walls and are hung edge-to-edge with nary a space between them. (Even the light switch is blessed with Smith’s ministrations.) “The American Family Gallery Project” can’t be pegged as folk art but it bears a similar homespun naivete, a faith that sheer initiative can create its own kind of magic.Soho Photo recently marked its 50th anniversary, a rare feat for any arts organization let alone one that is member-supported. Founded in 1971 by a cadre of photographers, including Jill Freedman, Lee Romero, and Harvey Stein of the New York Times, the gallery is a hub for artists to exhibit, discuss, and sell their work. Soho Photo’s initial incarnation at the intersection of Prince Street and West Broadway was barebones in amenities — no bathroom there, apparently — but offered wallspace. And so an institution was born.The venue was, for a time, peripatetic in its wanderings. Moving from a variety of spaces south of 14th Street, Soho Photo settled, as of January 1980, at 15 White St. As such, the gallery has been a stalwart presence in the Tribeca gallery scene, a nexus that has morphed considerably over the past 40-some years. The recent influx of high-end Chelsea galleries is the result of changes put into motion by the behemoth that is Hudson Yards and the victim-of-its-own-success High Line. Cheaper rents, sure we want them, but the hoi polloi? Thank you, no. Tribeca has, again, become a destination for contemporary art.Soho Photo is something of a throwback to a time when galleries were marked less by stand-offish gallerinas and blue-chip inventories than like minds scrambling for a common good. The romance of the affordable artist’s loft is more a fiction than ever, but that’s not to say its spirit doesn’t linger. The construction for the White Street space was done by member artists and retains a feel that is decidedly haimish. Gambol through Soho Photo and you’ll experience a venue that isn’t a pit stop for product but a home for art. Ambiance matters.Soho Photo has kept up with innovations in technology — its first exhibition devoted to digital photography was mounted in 1998 — but also acknowledges the outmoded, cheap, and hand-crafted: the annual Krappy Kamera juried show is among the venue’s most popular events. On the evening of June 15, the gallery will hold an opening for five photographers — Peter Agron, Laura Dodson, Paul Italiano, Joan Lemler and James M. Peaslee — who are as individual in mien as they are accomplished in metier. There are few more ideal ways to spend a summer evening in Lower Manhattan than taking in their photographs. The hosts at the gallery will be glad to make your acquaintance.

Plenty of Reasons To Train Your Eye on Soho Photo Gallery

Plenty of Reasons To Train Your Eye on Soho Photo Gallery

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