When Mr. Schad opened Light Gallery, at 1018 Madison Avenue, at 78th Street, in November 1971, photography as a collectible was in its infancy, and the market in contemporary photography almost nonexistent. He began by offering the work of photographers like Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer. There was one other New York commercial gallery devoted solely to photography, the Witkin, which had opened in 1969 offering prints from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Light Gallery set out to do what no commercial gallery had done: represent exclusively the work of contemporary photographers. Mr. Schad bankrolled the enterprise, arranging for books and limited-edition portfolios to be published, said Ms. Schad. Mr. Schad paid regular visits to his gallery but ceded aesthetic control and the daily operation to the gallery director and his staff.
The first director was Harold Jones, whom Mr. Schad wooed away from the George Eastman House of Photography in Rochester. Light offered the first Paul Strand show since Stieglitz's day, said Mr. Jones, and it was also among the first to show Robert Mapplethorpe's work. Mr. Jones went on to become the first director of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Ariz.
Robert Mann, the last official director of Light, who has since opened his own gallery, recalled that he was hired by Mr. Schad in 1983 ''to liquidate the inventory or resurrect'' the gallery. Mr. Schad had overexpanded Light, which had moved in 1976 to spacious quarters at 724 Fifth Avenue. It closed in 1987, with the Schads dealing privately from their home.
But while it lasted, what went on at Light Gallery was a heady experience for its staff and visitors. ''Everybody was there,'' said Peter McGill, who was the gallery's first intern, in the summer of 1973. For the first time, he said, ''artists had a first-rate art gallery to show their work.'' He was director in 1979-80 before opening his own gallery, Pace/McGill, in 1983.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/arts/tennyson-schad-70-lawyer-founded-photography-gallery.html
◇ The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art - Google ブックス
http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=sPGdBxzaWj0C&pg=RA2-PA161&lpg=RA2-PA161&dq=Tennyson+Schad+Light+Gallery&source=bl&ots=qakeFEuLyq&sig=cgi65rKkBIXA1FuL7mske8I1es0&hl=ja&sa=X&ei=XytjUqPkJoTtiAePjYH4Dg&ved=0CE0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Tennyson%20Schad%20Light%20Gallery&f=false
◇ Fern M. Schad @ Rick Wester Fine Art
Rick Wester Fine Art opens the Fall 2009 season with an exhibition of photographs from the Private Collection of Fern M. Schad. Rick Wester, a former employee of LIGHT from 1980-82, is proud to have been chosen to represent the collection. Mrs. Schad, with her late husband Tennyson, co-founded LIGHT, the first art gallery devoted exclusively to the promotion, exhibition and sale of contemporary photographers and their work. Mrs. Schad was engrossed by the excitement generated by the nascent photography market, entering it at a time when there were but a handful of dealers worldwide specializing in the medium. Founded in 1971 in New York, LIGHT was not just a gallery, but also a concept; a vortex for photographers to gather in the burgeoning world of art photography.
This is the first time this group of pictures has been brought together in a public venue. The artists in the exhibition include Harry Callahan, Linda Connor, Joe Deal, Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Lee Friedlander, John Gintoff, Emmet Gowin, Robert Heinecken, Lewis Hine, Eikoh Hosoe, André Kertész, Les Krims, Roger Mertin, Duane Michals, Nicholas Nixon, Nancy Rexroth, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Josef Sudek, JoAnn Verburg and Garry Winogrand.
Also available are prints by a number of other photographers as well as several published portfolios: William Larson's Aprille and The Figure In Motion, Aaron Siskind's 75th Anniversary Portfolio, 1979, Garry Winogrand's Women are Beautiful, 1981 and Les Krims' The Only Photographs in the World Ever to Cause a Kidnapping Portfolio, 1971. LIGHT catalogues and copies of Winogrand's Women are Beautiful (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1975) are also available.
http://www.rickwesterfineart.com/2009-schad/
◇ Luminous-Lint - Online exhibition - Kurt Edward Fishback: Portraits of the American Photographic Community
Kurt Edward Fishback
Tennyson Schad
1980
Gelatin silver print
Provided by the artist - Kurt Edward Fishback
LL/38515
Location: New York, NY, USA.
Tennyson Schad was the founding vision behind Light Gallery (pers. comm. Roger Bruce, George Eastman House, 8 August 2010).
◇ The Village Voice - Google News Archive Search
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1299&dat=19750421&id=6dNHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Q4wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6097,1589500
