aperture

In 1987, the Jan Kesner Gallery became a home for fine art photography in Los Angeles. It was only the second fine art photography forum in the city, and the first to be founded by a woman, at a time when photography was just beginning to be accepted as a medium of fine art.

From the beginning, the Gallery held the classics and the cutting edge in the same light. Prints from the nineteenth century, Pictorialism, and Group f/64 shared its walls with the experimental work of the 1960s, the avant-garde photographic and conceptual art movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, and contemporary artists working with conceptual, abstract, and concrete themes alike. Placing these side by side is the point, with each era sharpening how the others are and can be seen.

Jan has always understood a photograph by its form and its content, by the originality of the concept behind it, and by the quality of the print itself.

She has naturally come to look at how a single image sits within the larger body of work that the artist has assembled, in the context of the life of the print: whether the piece was made by the hand of the photographer, or by a master printer under their guidance; whether the print carries what the photographer saw in the negative; and whether it holds true to the message the artist intended the work to convey.

That standard shaped the artists that the Gallery championed, from the estates of twentieth century masters, including Max Yavno, Imogen Cunningham, and Ruth Orkin, to contemporary photographers including John Humble, Nancy Burson, Larry Fink, Byung-Hun Min, Richard Misrach, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Arne Svenson, and Frank van der Salm.

Education was part of the work from the beginning. The Gallery welcomed collectors at every stage, from those newly curious about the medium to the deeply seasoned. That versatility was driven by the belief that knowing more about a photograph ultimately makes for a better understanding of the work, and better living with the art.