E-Photo
Issue #72  5/8/2004
 
Highlights For June Bassenge Photography Auction

The Spring photography auction at Bassenge in Berlin, Germany, will offer a wide range of photographs from the earliest days of the medium through to contemporary images. It will be held on Friday, June 11th at 3 pm. A catalogue is available in print and online at http://195.143.237.194/Bassenge/engl/Katalog.asp?SID=07321460&KAT=I .

The Spring photography auction at Bassenge has nearly 300 lots with a wide range of prints from the earliest days of the medium through to contemporary artists of today.

Images from the 19th-century feature: a large panoramic view of Rome looking over the Tiber River by James Anderson, early 1870s and other lots of large-format Anderson's of temples, palaces and the Coliseum in Rome; an albumen print by Thomas Houseworth of "San Francisco, from Sacramento & Mason Sts. looking North" (circa 1868) similar to the print by Houseworth in Bassenge's last auction; a rarity in the field of aviation, a photograph by Alex Krajewski of Otto Lilienthal flying one of his gliders near Berlin in 1893, three years before his death; and an anonymous hand-colored salt print of a cockatoo (1850s) from the collection of Augusta von Sachsen-Weimar (later the wife of the German Emperor Wilhelm I).

Other important 19th-century photographers represented in the auction include Edouard Baldus, Felice Beato, Bissons freres, Samuel Bourne, Adolphe Braun, Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Frith, Andreas Groll, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, Kusakabe Kimbei, Carlo Ponti, and J. Pascal Sebah and Joaillier. There are also several prints from the collection of the American Barbizon painter Charles Henry Miller.

Some of the images from the 20th century include: Ansel Adams "The Great White Throne, Zion National Park, Utah "(1942 / printed 1960s), (est. 20,000 Euro); two large, strong prints by Adolf Fassbender entitled Street scene in Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, and "Spring Brook Trail, New Jersey", 1932; a modernist image "Reflections and Mirroring", 1939, by William Keck, friend and colleague of Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus; two very rare vintage Jazz photos showing Sam Wooding and his 'Chocolate Kiddies Orchestra' performing in Berlin 1928 (Wooding's band was the first all-black band to perform in Europe); two vintage prints by Peter Keetman described as a winter sunset with tracks in snow, 1955 and "Insects in Flight", 1980, an unusual abstract image; a gum-bichromate and platinum print by Heinrich Kühn entitled "Walter and Hanns Kühn (reading)", 1905c.

Also in the auction are works by Eugene Atget, Brassai, Marianne Breslauer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jewegeni Chaldej, Madame D'Ora, Frantisek Drtikol, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Wilhelm von Gloeden, William Klein, Lisette Model, Martin Mukacsi, Nicholas Nixon, Ruth Orkin, Renger-Patzsch Leni Riefenstahl, August Sander, Julius Shulman, Edward Steichen, Bert Stern, Josef Sudek and Andre Villers.

For further information including ordering catalogues and getting condition reports, and to make advance arrangements to bid during the auction, please contact Jennifer Augustyniak at Galerie Bassenge, Photographs, Erdener Str. 5a, D-14193 Berlin, Germany. Her phone number is +4930 893 8029 20; Fax: +4930 891 8025. She can also be reached by email at jennifer@bassenge.com .