The core of Stephen Daiter’s involvement in photography is dealing in photography books, and now for the first time in his gallery he has chosen to display the vintage prints that, as reproductions, made it into some of the most important of those books in the twentieth century, along with the books themselves. The result is a show that takes us into the inner recesses of photography in the last century, reminding us that for all of our digital technology, our daring and brilliance cannot hold a candle to the bold experimentation of our forbears. Look at one of the earliest dada photographers, Ilse Bing, when she turns a bunch of people walking up the spiral staircase of the Eiffel Tower into a grisly scene of sadistic incarceration in a whirling torture machine. (Michael Weinstein)
