While working on a series of cloud photographs in 1925, Alfred Stieglitz coined the title ”Equivalents” for his work, with the idea that the photographs could correspond to both the reality in front of the camera’s lens and the internal being of whoever was looking at them. Photographs could be representational and abstract, so even a photograph of a mundane subject could provoke a strong emotional response.

W. M. Hunt, the juror of the 17th Annual Photo Competition at Photo Center NW, chose this idea as the open theme for this year’s contest. So, the winning images are eclectic, but all meet Hunt’s criterion for what makes great photographs: their ability “to evoke a sensation that resonates through my being,” regardless of subject matter or technical process. See if the work resonates through your being too at Photo Center NW’s Seattle gallery, or check them out online. And for more of Hunt’s curatorial vision, check out The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, 35% off as part of Aperture’s summer sale, which ends this Friday, August 10.

Over the course of twelve years the Affordable Art Fair has transformed the model of the traditional art fair, driving the notion that fine art is within everyone’s reach, showcasing new and emerging artists, galleries, and must-see installations in 11 locations around the world. To date, the roster includes editions in Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, North London, Singapore, and Sydney.

Will Ramsay founded the fair in 1999 as an extension of the ‘accessible’ marketing drive evolved from Will’s Art Warehouse, the UK gallery that he has maintained since 1996, and today specializes in selling a wide range of contemporary art priced between £40 and £4,000. In an interview with Table Talk, Ramsay notes, “My aim, when founding the Affordable Art Fair was to break down the barriers of the sometimes stuffy and intimidating art world — giving ‘the terrified’ the opportunity to enjoy and collect art in a fun and informal atmosphere.” He often relays an experience of entering galleries and being met with “frosty reception”, a fear factor that he sought to eliminate in launching the first Affordable Art Fair in London, 1999. This first fair, an instant hit, attracted 87 galleries, 10,000 visitors, and grossed £1 million in sales. Now, a bit more than a decade since its founding, the Affordable Art Fair is an internationally-recognized and leading showcase for contemporary art, having welcomed more than one million visitors as of 2011, and sold over $270 million worth of art.

NEXT WEEK, the UK-based fair makes a return to the art capital of the US for its third annual spring edition, hosting more than seventy unique exhibitors over five days at 7W in New York City. Browse the full list of exhibitors here.

Wednesday through Sunday, join Aperture at the Affordable Art Fair to browse and buy a selection of just-published books, bestsellers, and new limited-edition prints, plus take advantage of a special offer on Aperture-magazine subscriptions.

Thursday, April 19, Aperture will present a talk and walk-through with W. M. HUNT, curator, collector, consultant, teacher, fundraiser, and author of the new Aperture book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious ($52.50, available here). Join Bill, who is known for his wit and larger-than-life personality, for an entertaining presentation on the art of collecting.

Aperture Booth and The Insider’s Eye:
A Talk and Walk-through with W. M. Hunt
Wednesday, April 18, 2012–Sunday, April 22, 2012

Admission Required

The Affordable Art Fair
7 West 34th Street
New York, New York
(212) 255-2003

Armory Week is almost here. Join us on Saturday, March 10 for our annual all-day Armory Collectors Brunch to mix and mingle with friends and colleagues in the heart of Chelsea’s art district. The event will include a special walk through of the current exhibition Shared Vision, with Marcelle Polednik, Director MOCA Jacksonville and collectors Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla at 11:00 am, followed by book signings with Aperture artists including Bruce Davidson, Richard Mosse, Brian Ulrich, Penelope Umbrico, collector Bill Hunt.

Saturday, March 10, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

During Armory Arts Week, you can also visit Aperture at the eleventh annual SCOPE New York Art Fair. You can see some of our newest limited-edition prints from artists Hank Willis Thomas’ “After Identity, What?, 2011,” Lars Tunbjork’s “42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, from the Times Square portfolio published May 18, 1997” and Richard Mosse’s “Débris, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2011.”

This year, SCOPE’s VIP first view will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at an exciting, high profile location across from The Armory Show. The 35,000 square foot pavilion and its dramatic glass box entrance on 57th Street and 12th Ave will host 50 international galleries and museum-quality programming highlighting groundbreaking, emerging work in contemporary art and beyond.

First View:
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
3:00 pm–9:00 pm

Fair Continues:
Thursday, March 8, 2012-Sunday, March 11, 2012

Admission required.

SCOPE Pavilion
57th St & 12th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
212-268-1522

Image: Erwin Olaf, Roy, from ‘Paradise Portraits’, 2001/2002

During ArtPalmBeach, the Norton Museum of Art and the Palm Beach Photographic Centre present a special event and talk with the wildly entertaining W.M. Hunt, in conjunction with his new book, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious on Saturday, January 21, 11:00 am at Palm Beach Photographic Centre.

Visit Aperture’s booth at the fifteenth annual ArtPalmBeach and browse our latest selection of books, limited-edition photographs, and the new issue of Aperture magazine. Featured artists include Rinko Kawauchi, Jordan Tate, and Penelope Umbrico.
Friday, January 20, 2012–Monday, January 23, 2012

One day pass:
$10 in advance, $15 at the door
Multi-day pass:
$15 in dvance, $20 at the door
Children under 12 accompanied by adult, free

Palm Beach Convention Center
Booth 119
650 Okeechobee Boulevard
West Palm Beach, Florida

Poster photographed and designed by Gerald Slota for W.M. Hunt and Aperture, © Gerald Slota

In conjunction with his new book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, W.M. – Bill – Hunt has created a special performance piece suggested by his text for the book.

This monologue with projections and video will consist of ruminations on his many years of collecting and a life in photographs. Mr. Hunt has been a collector since his early years as an actor. He has been a fundraiser (Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS, The Center for Photography at Woodstock and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund), a dealer (Ricco/Maresca Gallery and his own Hasted Hunt) as well as a writer and teacher.

Hunt is known for his wit and sometimes larger than life personality. This evening is one of information and digression. He hopes to bring into the light many of the names and stories left out of book.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious presents an idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: magical, heart stopping images of people in which the eyes are obscured, veiled, or otherwise hidden. The gaze of the subject is averted. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals.

Amassed over the course of almost forty years by Hunt, the collection includes works by masters such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Robert Frank as well as lesser known artists and vernacular images. Hunt’s instinctive pursuit of striking images has resulted in a collection that manages to evoke a picture of humanity from birth to death, with all the associated nuances of memory, wit, eroticism, fear, grief, and horror.

More than three hundred and fifty intensely evocative and frequently surreal images are brilliantly sequenced in this volume—the cumulative effect is unnerving and riveting. Most critically, the images are drawn together by the narrative of the collector himself—a highly personal monologue that weaves throughout the book, in which Hunt offers his own perceptive responses to the images he has gathered over many years. The end result is a series of surprising epiphanies about how and why one collects. This volume is a must for anyone who collects or has considered putting together a collection of his or her own.

W.M. Hunt is a frequent lecturer on collecting, a well known dealer and an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York. An earlier exhibition of his collection launched to critical acclaim at the Rencontres d’Arles de la Photographie in 2005 before traveling to the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and FOAM, Amsterdam. An exhibition of 550 works, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Collection of W. M. Hunt will be on view at the George Eastman House from Oct.1 2011 to February 19 2012.

Exhibition on view:
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York: October 1, 2011- February 19, 2012

Performance by Bill Hunt:
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore: Friday, October 28, 2011
Doors at 6:30 pm, Performance at 7:00 pm

RSVP@aperture.org

Click here to read an interview of W.M. Hunt in At Length magazine.

Carrie Levy, Untitled from “Domestic Stages,” 2004. Courtesy the artist.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W. M. Hunt Collection is now on view at the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. This is the largest exhibition in the museum’s history with more than 500 “magical images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen” and is the first major U.S. showing of The Unseen Eye. The featured works range from daguerreotype to digital by photographers such as Berenice Abbot, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, among many more. This exhibition coincides with the release of the stunning Aperture publication The Unseen Eye.

Unseen in “The Unseen Eye,” An Evening with Susan Bright and W. M. Hunt
Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 7 pm
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St, New York, New York
Free and open to the public

The Unseen Eye: A Life in Photographs and other digressions …
a multi-media performance piece with W.M. Hunt
Friday, October 28, 2011, 7 pm
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, New York, New York
Free and open to the public but please RSVP at rsvp@aperture.org

W.M. Hunt is a champion of photography— a collector, curator, consultant, writer, teacher, and fundraiser who lives and works in New York City. He was a founding partner of the prominent photography gallery Hasted Hunt in Chelsea, Manhattan and served as director of photography at Ricco/Maresca gallery. His new book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture) focuses on Collection Dancing Bear, currently his largest collection of photographs.

Exhibition on view: Saturday, October 1, 2011–Sunday, February 19, 2012

Museum admission: $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students

George Eastman House
900 East Avenue
Rochester, New York
(585) 271-3361

Click here to find W.M Hunt’s book, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture), now on sale!

Read Elizabeth Avedon’s interview with W.M. Hunt about his collection in La Lettre de la Photographie. Find out more about her visit on her blog.