"Our strength is to show you... what we think is the best..." Catherine Edelman, President AIPAD
This year, in anticipation of the 36th annual Photography Show that will take place at the Park Avenue Armory April 14 - 17, 2016, galleryIntell and AIPAD, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers joined forces to bring you a series of exclusive video interviews with the Association's top photography dealers.  As a curatorial and educational platform, galleryIntell has covered The Photography Show for a number of years, and this year we are thrilled to partner with AIPAD as its Exclusive Video Partner.

Our first interview is with Catherine Edelman, President of AIPAD and founder of the eponymous Chicago gallery. We spoke to Catherine about photography's evolution, its increasing presence in the public's collective perception, addition of photography t many private and corporate collections, and how technology changed the progress and direction of the medium.
Video interview transcript:
Photography has become a much more present medium in many galleries, museums and private and corporate collections. Could you tell us why it is so relevant in today's world?
Catherine Edelman: I think photography is the most relevant tool because it can respond immediately in a way that maybe, by process, painting can’t, or sculpture can’t, because it is so immediate. It’s also an understandable and relatable tool.

It’s invaluable for communication and it’s invaluable for art, and you see it exploding everywhere. The photographic medium, whether it’s the mixed media photo-based collages, videos, or paintings, people are just mixing it all up and using that art form as a good foundation. And there are still regular photographers who just take these straight black and white photographs, but there are more and more people who are using it within other art forms and are mixing it all up, which didn’t use to happen.

Broadway on a Rainy Day, Edward Anthony, Albumen Print, 1859 Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
How has photography changed over time?
Back in the day, when photography was a big hand-held camera and you had to look down, it was very much a profession that the average person didn’t have access to. Then through instant cameras like Polaroid or other cameras where we sent in our film to a drug store, we all started to understand the access to photography. Most people use cameras to document their own histories. Photographers, who are using it as an art form, use it to document other people and other situations. Predominantly, sometimes their own, but to talk about a politic greater than them.

Fred W. McDarrah Robert Kennedy in Slum Apartment, May 8, 1967 Vintage gelatin silver print. Image courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery
Who are the AIPAD dealers and what should collectors be looking for at this year's Photography Show?
AIPAD, which is the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, started more that 35 years ago by a group of dealers who came together to support the medium. Over the years, of course, we’ve grown to be more than 120 dealers world wide, who are considered to be the experts in the medium, and we pride ourselves on great ethical standards, understanding the medium much more so than any other dealer who is not specifically involved in photography, and the exhibition allows us to showcase that. And so, in the exhibition you see everything from the first photographs ever made: from salt prints, to mixed media, photo-based videos that are behind me, which really have expanded the direction that artists are working today with the medium. So our strength is to show you, obviously what we think, is the best, as dealers, but also sort of give you a history of the medium within a setting over the course of a few days at an art fair. And you’ll see some of these real gems: undiscovered pieces,