By Jessica Gordon

© Ian Witlen

The presence of fine art photography grows each year at Art Basel, as evidenced by the size of this year’s Miami Beach Art Photo Expo (above).

Each December for the past six years, the international art community gathers in Miami Beach to celebrate Art Basel, a mega art festival attracting 2,000 artists from 160 galleries at the main venue alone. With various exhibition offshoots, this visual overload is a maze of photography, not to mention sculpture, painting, music and multimedia.

© Ian Witlen

Two silkscreens on paper from the series ‘Anderes Portraits’ by photographer Thomas Ruff.

While Basel can be daunting for the average person, for the photography student hoping to make a few industry connections, it’s downright overwhelming. But Palm Beach Community College student Ian Witlen took advantage of his student status at the art extravaganza.

As president of the PBCC Art Society “Untitled,” Witlen organized a trip for 12 of his fellow society members to attend Art Basel. “We wanted to do a New York trip, but it was too costly,” says the 24-year-old who lives about an hour’s drive north of Miami in Coral Springs, FL. “We decided to come to Art Basel instead because it was in our own backyard and we could see photography from around the world.”

Witlen’s organization paid off; he not only scored discounted group admission rates to many of Basel’s events, but obtained a press pass to shoot environmental portraits of artists and their works for his school’s student newspaper, Beachcomber. The group’s itinerary included Art Basel’s main show at the convention center, as well as SCOPE, Pulse, Nada, Art Salon and the Vanguard party sponsored by GenArt.

Michelle Johnson, sophomore fine arts major at PBCC said the video installations and oil paintings at Basel broadened her artistic spectrum. “I really enjoyed SCOPE [a fair dedicated to emerging artists and galleries],” she says. “Compared to the [show at the] convention center, it was more raw and real.”

Witlen, who planned the itinerary with faculty advisor Samantha Salzinger, says it cost each student $75 to $100 for the weekend, including admissions to the events, exhibitions and one night in a hotel. “Everyone [in the group] was very enthusiastic,” he says. “I had passes for everything.”

The “everything” Witlen refers to included the following photography hotspots:

© Ian Witlen

Art collector, Courtney Lorde, examining the Ed Templeton photography installation at Art Basel Miami.

Art Basel on the main floor of the Miami Convention Center, which showcased a range of photography styles from classic Robert Mapplethorpe black-and-whites shown by Xavier Hufkens Gallery (Brussels) to an Ed Templeton installation displaying snapshots of a skateboard-inspired, gritty Americana. The Konrad Fischer Galerie from Dusseldorf showed a series of 60 small-scale black-and-white photographs of empty rooms by Gregor Schneider, individually simple, but the grouped presentation was key.

Photo Miami was the only fair at Basel dedicated to contemporary photography and media-based art. The Wynwood Art District tent show featured more than 50 international galleries, many with contemporary, cutting-edge work. Multiple PDN contest winner Julia Fullerton-Batten’s work at the Galerie Caprice Horn (Berlin) was a particular standout. Her images of towering women against miniature backgrounds—including highways or dollhouse neighborhoods—evoked a laugh and a second look.

Across the Café Patio from Photo Miami, The Association of International Art Dealers or AIPAD show featured 40 photography dealers, most U.S.-based (with the exception of four European galleries and one from Canada). PDN Photo Annual 2007 winner Brian Finke’s “Flight Attendent” series was on display at the Stephen Cohen Gallery, while New York’s Keith de Lellis Gallery showed the hauntingly curious skeleton X-Rays of Benedetta Bonichi from the series “To See in the Dark.”

By far the most beautiful setting for a photography show was the Miami Beach Art Photo Expo at the Surfcomber Hotel. Titled “In Fashion 07,” the exhibit of 200 photos from 20 fashion photographers was mounted on more than 18 white installation blocks around the hotel’s sparkling lap pool overlooking the ocean. Among the images (some unframed behind glass and warped by South Florida’s humidity) was Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s portrait of Madonna avec baby-blue cowboy hat and guitar and Ellen Von Unwerth’s dominatrix-inspired lingerie shots.

For Witlen and other PBCC art students, the Art Basel experience was an amazing one. “I was able to view works by Gregory Crewdson, Ed Templeton and even Edward Weston,” Witlen says. “After absorbing everything on display, I have a much stronger urge to create then I ever did before.”

© Ian Witlen

A selection from Kanjo Take’s vibrant ‘Manga’ series on display at the Miami Art Photo Expo.