Dies

James Prigoff, Who Documented Street Art, Dies at 93

Robert G. Mull 3 months ago

James Prigoff, who after beginning his career in business turned his attention to photography, documenting public murals and street art in thousands of pictures taken all over the world and helping to legitimize works once dismissed as vandalism, died on April 21 at his home in Sacramento, Calif. He was 93.

His granddaughter Perri Prigoff confirmed his death.

Mr. Prigoff was the author, with Henry Chalfant, of “Spraycan Art” (1987), a foundational book in the street-art field that featured more than 200 photographs of colorful, intricate artworks in rail tunnels, on buildings and elsewhere — not only in New York, then considered by many to be the epicenter of graffiti art, but also in Chicago, Los Angeles, Barcelona, London, Vienna and other cities. It included interviews with many of the artists and even captured some of them in the act of creating their work.

The book sold hundreds of

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Roderick Sykes, co-founder of St. Elmo Village in L.A., dies

Robert G. Mull 3 months ago

St. Elmo Village co-founder Roderick Sykes, whose Mid-City Black art enclave and community center nurtured generations of creative minds and served as a gathering place for the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, has died. He was 75.

Sykes had complications related to Alzheimer’s disease and died at home in the village, said his wife, Jacqueline Alexander-Sykes.

Sykes and his uncle, Rozzell Sykes, both visual artists, founded St. Elmo Village in 1969. The area originally consisted of a derelict collection of 10 Craftsman bungalows near Venice Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, which the two men cleaned up and used as a hub for like-minded people of all ages interested in exploring creative pursuits.

Occupying land that once served as silent film star Mary Pickford’s horse farm and named for the street it’s on, St. Elmo Village became a nonprofit in 1971. Sykes moved into one of the bungalows

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Daniel Wolf, 65, Dies; Helped Create a Market for Art Photography

Robert G. Mull 4 months ago

“Suddenly, absolutely overnight, 25,000 of the rarest photographs ever taken were off the market,” said Weston Naef, who helped Mr. Wolf plan the acquisition for the Getty and later became its first curator of photography. “It would be like someone removing half the gold from Fort Knox.”

Along with steady work for private clients, he also acted as a matchmaker of sorts, especially for young and under-the-radar artists. In 1997 he introduced the organizers of the Whitney Museum Biennial to Aaron Rose, an immensely talented photographer who was so hermetic that he had never participated in a major show. (He died in February at 84.)

Mr. Wolf lent 10 daguerreotypes by the 19th-century French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in 2019 for a show at the Met Museum, in front of which he had hawked photos out of a suitcase more than 40 years before.

He collected friends

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Art collector Christopher Cardozo dies at 72

Robert G. Mull 4 months ago

Once Christopher Cardozo found his life’s purpose, he never wavered.

The art collector, dealer and publisher devoted his career to promoting the photography of Edward Curtis, who extensively documented Native American life in the early 20th century. As a result, Curtis’ work is much more accessible today.

“I was led to this,” Cardozo told the Star Tribune in 2018. “This is my soul’s purpose. Why I ended up on Earth at this particular time was to make this work available to people.”

Cardozo, who lived in Minneapolis, died Feb. 21 after suffering for several years following a stroke. He was 72.

He grew up in St. Paul and developed an early passion for photography. He stumbled across Curtis’ work in the 1970s after a friend noted its similarities with his own photographs of Indigenous people in Mexico.

“Their work was amazingly similar,” said his sister, Julie Cardozo. “That was the

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