PhotographyWhat's NEW in NYC Photo?By Carl GunhouseWednesday, June 27, 2007Hasted Hunt Martin Parr has curated a group of 70’s and pre-70’s color photographers from Europe to illustrate how Europe’s history of color photography parallels the more renowned movement in the United States. The show has rather nice work: John Hinde’s commercial photographs of 70’s European amusement parks put Andreas Gursky’s pictures about consumerism to shame. Ed Van der Elsken’s pictures of a couple having sex in the backyard of a farm house, a nude woman with a full-leg cast looking out over an Alps-like dreamscape, and white middle-aged tourists armed with cameras in the sun surrounding two African toddlers, all make a very convincing case that he is a very much underrated photographer. Yet, despite the good showing of Hinde and Van der Elsken, the show looks more like primary source material for Martin Parr than an argument for the strength of color photography in 1970’s Europe. The problem is that Americans of the day, like Eggelston, Shore, Sternfeld and to some extent Meyerowitz, were using color to make great pictures, pictures in which color was another tool for talking about things in the world they were interested in, Whereas Colour Before Color feels like artists making work that they have just realized could be made in color. Through Jul. 30th Yancey Richardson Gallery Picture after picture of Warhol in women’s make up and wigs. Possibly daring for 1981 (I somehow doubt it), but rather dull today. Through Jun. 29th Daniel Cooney Fine Art Following up O’Sullivan’s powerful 2005 show of photographs of his family of white South Africans is a collection of pictures of his wife’s family in the wealthy Philadelphia suburbs. It is mildly alarming how similar life is for white South Africans and well-to-do white Americans. O’Sullivan’s unaffected pictures allow for a myopic yet clarifying look at the everyday lives of people who are part of larger world issues, like the reconciliation of South African society, or, as the case may be, the leisurely life of the upper crust of American society. O’Sullivan’s gift for color and domestic space seems to infuse even the wrong side of cultural forces with a visual charm that makes them appear terribly endearing. My only complaint with his current work is that the subjects that he rendered in unassuming still lives in his earlier work, like family photographs and silhouettes, are now detached from their context and presented with the clinical eye of an anthropologist. This move from visual beauty to conceptual clarity might be lamentable if it wasn’t for the overwhelmingly beautiful picture of a woman looking out over a foggy body of water that might as well be the heavens. Through Jul 13th Alan Klotz Gallery Bring on the class war. Only the most loving suburban parent with the rosiest of outlooks could imagine a childhood this sweet. The photographs are technically proficient, even at time successful, but they wallow in such a pleasant suburban existence that incites an overwhelming desire to obliterate everything. Through Jun. 30th  
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