LYNN STERN’s Luminous Abstraction a Standout at AIPAD

 
 Installation view, Obscura Gallery at AIPAD

By KATIE CERCONE April twenty fourth, 2026

Something sudden graces this 12 months’s AIPAD, an artwork honest targeted solely on photo-based work. Ironically, the identical day I visited Park Avenue Armory’s premier, long-running commerce present for high quality artwork pictures, a youthful artist good friend in Queens had a present titled “Requiem for the Camera,” for apparent causes. Must a traditional medium name it quits as a result of new types demand to be heard? At AIPAD [The Association of International Photography Art Dealers], a program seeded by the approaching collectively of a world group of artwork sellers over forty years in the past, now in its forty fifth 12 months, pictures isn’t useless, however merely morphing once more. 

While smartphone know-how can remodel snapshots taken by novices into seemingly skilled photographs, it concurrently amplifies the demand for high-value, experimental area of interest artwork pictures. Even synthetic intelligence falls brief in replicating emotionally uncooked, human-directed moments, which stay a pivotal component in pictures’s ongoing evolution from a primarily utilitarian and goal medium to a extremely specialised, experience-driven craft. The proliferation of latest artists striving to counteract the flood of mediocre slop, coupled with a resurgence of curiosity in analog pictures among the many youth, suggests a choice for a extra tactile and fewer instantly gratifying inventive expertise. Ultimately, what’s fading is the outdated notion that pictures ever served as a dependable type of ‘truth-telling’ or goal proof of life.

 Passage #85-33a, 1985-2011, pigment print 46 x 33 inches, version of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
 

Which is exactly why, when traversing the halls of labor at AIPAD this 12 months, 4 photographs from totally different our bodies of labor by Lynn Stern, reduce the wheat from the chaff. As an artist educated extensively in conventional moist room pictures, Lynn Stern has lengthy been recognized for her work with nonetheless life, translucent fabric, large-format cameras and movie within the 80’s, an exquisitely productive interval after which many would come to know the artist formally as an ‘abstract’ photographer. For the artwork world luminary, now in her 80’s, pictures is her instrument, not her medium. The topic isn’t the thing Stern paints, however moderately, the lilting play of sunshine and shadow.

 Veiled Still Life #46b, 2002, gelatin silver print 24 x 20 inches, version of 5; pigment print 2010, 42 x 34 inches, version of 6 & 2 APs

Raised by the late artwork collector and former president of the Whitney Museum, David M. Solinger, Lynn’s creative schooling commenced at an early age, surrounded by her father’s intensive assortment of Abstract Expressionist work and sculptures. Patriarchy’s heavyweights apart, it was most likely a lot later in life that Stern distilled her singular imaginative and prescient right into a fluid outpouring of quiet, somber revelations, drawn from her long-standing exploration of the visually female, sensual, and refined qualities of sunshine. 

 Apparition #23-59, 2023, archival inkjet pigment print, 39 x 34 inches, version of 4 plus 2 artist’s proofs
 

Traipsing by way of AIPAD with eyes extensive, my encounter with Lynne’s 4 luminous abstractions, displayed in chromatic pairs like a fading checkerboard, introduced me to a halt. Stern’s delicate gradations reduce by way of the cacophony of visible stimuli, serving as a testomony to the enduring impression of her convention-defying and boundary-pushing strategy to creating artwork—one that is still strikingly related even right now.

 Passage #02-30, 2002-2011, pigment print 46 x 28.5 inches, version of 6 plus 2 APS 

In continuation of her ongoing exploration of determine and floor, Stern’s suite of works, displayed on the Obscura Gallery sales space, shall be on view by way of Sunday solely. While these items have primarily been offered inside the framework of distinct thematic collection, the AIPAD curation supplies a uncommon alternative to understand the nuanced interaction between what we’d time period the artist’s research of darkness and lightweight.

To study extra, try the Artist’s sales space discuss this Sunday, 4/26 1pm at THE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW PRESENTED BY AIPAD [The Association of International Photography Art Dealers] April 22 – 26, 2026.

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY
10065

www.aipad.com
[email protected]

About the Artist 

Lynn Stern’s work is represented by Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work might be seen at AIPAD The Photography Show in New York City every spring. Stern has additionally exhibited all through the United States and Europe, and her images are included in quite a few private and non-private collections, together with the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University (Ithaca); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Portland Art Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum (London); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); and the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), amongst others. The Lynn Stern archive is positioned on the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ. Follow the artist on Instagram @lynnsternphotographs