W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #alexandertsiaras, #conceptiontobirth, #howardstein, #lennartnillson, #fetus

Twenty years ago, someone, possibly David Friend of LIFE and Vanity Fair, connected me with a charismatic polymath named Alexander Tsiaras.  He had a project “Conception to Birth," and Doubleday was going to print something like 750,000 copies in its first run: a book about fetal development.  Think Lennart Nilsson’s breakthrough photographs plus twenty years of technical breakthroughs.  He was going to be on Oprah! 

It has never been clear to me what these pictures actually are, some sort of “data-graphs," photographic realizations based on image captures made possible by Tsiaras’ breakthrough algorithms.

There is something essential and tribal about the work.  The colors were invented because it is dark in the womb; there is no light and, therefore, no color.  Using the palette of cave paintings was an enlightened choice.  

We did an exhibition at Ricco Maresca Gallery, but it didn’t connect with any sort of audience until I managed to contact with a major collector named Howard Stein whose “The Joy of Giving” holdings have been variously exhibited.  I got his art advisor, the legendary picture editor Alice Rose George, to come see the work, and we set up a visit to the Tsiaras studio which felt like the Enterprise on “Star Trek," all computers and a Greek and Hungarian — non-English speaking — crew.  Mr. Stein was obsessed with genetics, and I thought this might appeal.  

It did.  The meeting went dazzlingly well.  After Howard and Alice left, I took Alexander aside and told him what I thought was going to happen.  I said that Mr. Stein would call him directly and invite him for breakfast the next day at the Four Seasons and that he would have a proposition of some sort.  Mr. Stein had a habit of leaving the dealer out of deals so I asked that the artist protect me and factor me into it somehow.  As I predicted they met and Stein cobbled together an amazing scenario that was worth three quarters of million dollars.  Not for me, of course, but it had the potential to be the biggest deal I had been near as a dealer.

Flash forward a couple of months to early Christmas morning.  My cell phone rang.   “Hello it’s Howard.  Yeah.  Merry Christmas to you too.  I’m walking the dogs on the beach in the Hamptons.  It’s gorgeous.  Look, I’m cancelling the deal.  I’m sure I’ll see you around.  Bye.”

Really?  Really.  Humbug, Mr Stein.

I’ll never know what transpired.  A Contemporary Art World “Christmas Carol”.

The photographs never got any traction in the photo world.  It’s too bad.  They’re striking.  They reflect real innovation.  Science isn’t always beautiful or marketable.  We might have had some success if we had sold these as plush toys.  The seven week old fetus looked uncomfortably like a cement garden figure my mother used to call “Herbie” as if he were a still born brother she kept around on the pool deck.  Now he keeps vigil at my sister’s.

Great photograph, no; good story, yes.

There is a postscript to this.  Alexander invited me to dinner at his apartment in DUMBO and in the den there was a photograph of him in running gear but with his ass out and his mother shaving it.  This would ostensibly help him to run faster.  That struck me as one of the odder family photos to have framed and on view.

The Tsiarias family was evidently filled with overachievers.  Years later I picked up a book of photographs by his brother and was thumbing through it.  Yes, there was a photograph of the mother shaving this son’s ass too.  It was too strange and wonderful to forget.

©2021

These posts are from my new project “Great Photographs …or, at least, Some Really Good Ones”.  Photo, text, and some times, audio or video.

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstormhopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufartlightning, #photographychangedmylifeitgavemeone, #alexandertsiaras, #conceptiontobirth, #howardstein, #lennartnillson, #fetus