Metro Photos was identified for independence and curatorial care—deep dedication reasonably than deep pockets. That method labored for 4 a long time. Based in New York by two ladies who went to junior-high faculty collectively in Los Angeles, the gallery was all the time a single house: first in Soho, then in Chelsea, with a short-lived department in East Hampton.
“Everyone is making an attempt to create a number of outposts, and so they simply stayed in New York and made it work,” says Sophie Chahinian, who’s making Photos of Photos: The Metro Years, a characteristic documentary in regards to the gallery that represented many artists related to the Photos Technology group—together with Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo and Walter Robinson. “It’s form of miraculous. There’s some sense to it, and likewise some magic,” Chahinian says.
In 1980, Janelle Reiring left Leo Castelli Gallery to discovered Metro Photos with Helene Winer, who on the time was the director of the Decrease Manhattan nonprofit Artists Area.
“They had been integrity-driven, they had been pushed by their artists, they had been pushed by their programme, and so they didn’t actually pay plenty of consideration to the factor that galleries take note of proper now, which is mainly the underside line,” Chahinian says.
With a mortgage from her household, Winer purchased the gallery’s first house in Soho. “It was about $12,000. These had been the times,” she says. “The story of how the artwork world has modified within the 40-some years that we had been open is extra fascinating than the gallery per se. It was so small. There have been solely possibly 5 galleries exhibiting new younger artists. It’s unbelievable.”
“It was a clubhouse,” says Robert Longo, Chahinian’s husband. Longo had relocated from Buffalo when he and his then-partner Cindy Sherman joined the gallery, which represented a few of his buddies and different artists.
Longo remembers: “I trusted them utterly. I feel ladies artwork sellers are held to a better customary. I by no means had any enterprise issues with them, ever. They had been tremendous sincere, and so they had been extremely supportive.” Longo now exhibits with Tempo Gallery and with Thaddaeus Ropac in Europe. Sherman is represented by Hauser & Wirth.
A time of various expectations
Issues weren’t all the time simple within the early days at Metro Photos, not even for Sherman. “Folks didn’t perceive that she was an artist utilizing images,” Longo says. “You couldn’t fucking give these film stills away to start with. They had been being bought for $50.” In December 1995, Metro Photos bought an entire set of Sherman’s Untitled Movie Stills (1977–80) to the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York for $1m, averaging $14,492 per print; editions from the collection now routinely promote for greater than ten occasions that at public sale.
Metro Photos got here up at a time when artists approached their work and the market with completely different expectations. “Cindy and I, we by no means thought we had been going to make any cash being artists, by no means,” Longo says. “We thought we’d possibly get a stipend. Creating wealth was by no means on the menu.”
Or virtually by no means. “I keep in mind one time once I discovered that Julian Schnabel’s work was promoting for greater than mine and I bought very upset about it,” Longo remembers. “I went to the gallery and mentioned, ‘I’m going to fucking kill myself.’ And Janelle mentioned to me, ‘It received’t work. They’ll simply overlook you.’ And I realised, when she mentioned that, it gave me this motivation to outlive.”
Reiring, recalling that trade, provides: “I simply mentioned, ‘You haven’t accomplished sufficient work but to be well-known.’” Artists, Winer says, “have plenty of needs, and hopes, and ups and downs. They usually watch one another’s careers carefully.” That a lot has not modified within the 45 years since Metro Photos opened its doorways.
The market during which Metro Photos thrived was reworked not by artists however by mega-galleries, which made the mannequin of a curated gallery run by two individuals in a single metropolis a enterprise anachronism going through extinction.
“In fact, everyone cherished us after we introduced that we had been closing,” Reiring says. Each Reiring and Winer moved again to Los Angeles after shutting the gallery in 2021.
“It’s simply in regards to the aggressive surroundings and what it’s a must to do to outlive as a gallery now,” Winer says. “In regards to the early years, I can get nostalgic, however it’s so way back it looks as if studying a e-book about someone’s outdated gallery.”
Or like watching a documentary. Chahinian expects to complete Photos of Photos in early 2026.
