At first blush, we like to just get an overall vibe of a event.
Opening night, we let you know that there were fewer dealers and no breakout stars.
But then we knew we had to go digging for gold.

And we found some.

At the Skotia Gallery out of Santa Fe, we found Kelsy Waggaman, with some striking self portraits that, showed less of her face and more of her mind than you would expect.

© Kelsy Waggaman

With a sublime sense of humor, her work could easily live on our walls.

Then Susan Burnstine who not only makes her own cameras, but lenses as well:

© Susan Burnstine – from the “Absence of Being” portfolio

“For these series, I wanted to find a way to portray my dream-like visions entirely in-camera, rather than with post-processing manipulations. To achieve this, I created twenty-one hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts and random household objects and the single element lenses are molded out of plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive limitations has required me to rely on instinct and intuition – the same tools that are key when attempting to interpret dreams.

Her work is housed at the Susan Spiritus Gallery and a must see.

Also showing some buzz worthy work was the gallery from Amsterdam, the Kahmann Gallery exhibiting Schilte & Portielje front and center to get the crowds in and they didn’t disappoint. Even to the point where one of the featured images in a gold frame (which we’ll admit we considered purchasing) was whisked away buy a collector who had to go home with the photo.

If you were looking amazing photo deals, The MR Gallery from Beijing had sets of images, including a series of Samurai garb worn an shown front and back in 10×10 separate images, 30 in the set, for about $950. USD. There were about 6 sets of prints in different series by different photographers and not just digital, but silver halide prints as well.
So if you broke it down that was about $31.66 per print. And the prints are quite beautiful.

A prospective buyer weighing the options:

We did buy one more book, by John Divola at the Nazarelli Press booth. Couldn’t help oursleves.

By the way, the Monroe Gallery from Santa Fe, had some supreme examples of the best in journalistic photography. Seriously the classics all seemed to be there, from Malcolm X taking a photo of Muhammad Ali in a diner after he beat Sonny Liston, to Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, to John Kennedy, and even George Bush synchronizing his watch with Dick Cheney.

© Life.com
Not cheap, but high quality.

Strangely enough, across town at the Helms Bakery a group of vintage photo dealers also gathered to sell their wares. Not much on the walls, mainly in stacks.

It was kind of a shame, as this group represented most of the vintage work, and for whatever the reason were, decided to not show at PhotoLA.

Well, together, it was a pretty good weekend for photography so far.