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• Issue #133
• Article

Be-hold's 50th catalogue/internet auction, "The Art of the Photograph," will take place on September 20th, in conjunction with eBay Live, although Be-Hold also takes other types of bids directly. The selection, in keeping with the 50th milestone, is particularly impressive.

There will be a preview of the material in Manhattan at 36 W. 25th St., 10th Floor (next to the Antiques Center, near the weekend Flea Market) on September 13-16th. This is a new venue, so please take note. Times for the New York City preview are Thursday, 9/13 from noon-5 pm with a reception party from 5-7 pm that night; Friday, 9/14 from noon-7 pm; Saturday, 9/15 from 9 am-5 pm; Sunday, 9/16 from 9 am-4 pm; and at the Yonkers location by appointment.

There are some unusual collections being offered. One is a group of 20 rich large prints, ca. 1940, of studies of the South American Bororo Indians of the Amazon, probably by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who worked with and photographed that culture in that period. A group of 19 photographs made shortly after 1906 show scenes in German South-West Africa (now Namibia), sympathetically portrayed even though this was just after the genocide of the Herero and Nama.

There is a large collection of 104 original contact prints of photographs taken from U.S. bombers in Europe during WWII as the bombs were falling. These have a kind of abstract beauty but are also chilling as we see some of the landscapes and great cities of Europe seconds before they were forever altered, including Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest and Verona. Other WWII material includes an archive of official German photographs, including sports activities, and a number of Margaret Bourke-White's WWII press photographs.

An extremely rare group of publicity film stills from Carl Dreyer's great 1932 film "Vampyr" is one of the offerings dealing with early theater and cinema, including a publicity portrait of Leni Riefenstahl by Lotte Jacobi and a vintage publicity photograph for Riefenstahl's first film as director as well as star. A 1932 portrait of Marion Davies is from an album of photographs of Davies commissioned from Clarence Sinclair Bull by William Randolph Hearst.

One of the highlights of the sale is one of the largest albumen photographs made, greater than 3 feet by 5 feet, a framed photograph of a lion that hung in the New Jersey estate of the Circus impresario James Anthony Bailey ("Barnum and Bailey"). This was commissioned to William H. Rau, and is signed by him.

There are fine early and vintage prints by Brassai, Doisneau, Rothstein, Robert Capa, Harold Edgerton, Max Thorek, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, and more recent prints and photographs by Ilse Bing, Andreas Feininger, Flor Garduno, Lourdes Grobet, Duane Michals, Jock Sturges, Arthur Siegel, Barbara Kasten and others.

The sale also offers 34 lots of choice daguerreotypes and other early formats, including important plates by Vance, Whitehurst, Anson and others. There is a strong featured selection from the collection of Gary Bart, including, among other subjects, daguerreotypes that include dogs.

Information about the auction including subscriptions to the catalog can be found at http://www.be-hold.com . Contact Larry Gottheim at behold@be-hold.com or by phone at 1-914-423-5806. Again, there will be a preview of the material at a new venue in Manhattan at 36 W. 25th St., 10th Floor (next to the Antiques Center, near the weekend Flea Market) on September 13-16th.