As perhaps one of the most unusual examples of photographic ephemera to come up for auction, WestLicht will be offering for sale one of Julia Margaret Cameron's original wooden wet-plate negative boxes (7,000-9,000 euros). Dating from 1865-66, the inside lid is inscribed in Cameron's handwriting with the captions for the 24 negatives of some of her most well-known photographs that were originally stored in the box. Another example of ephemera in the auction is an autographed letter by Louis J.M. Daguerre on Diorama stationary (6,000-8,000 euros).

One of the rarest amusements in the sale is a musical automaton of a photographer, c.1890, (20,000-25,000 euros). No more than three or four of these wondrous mechanical dolls with a photographic theme are known.

Included in the sale is an important and apparently unique early Japanese lacquered Graphoscope, 1860s, (8,000-12,000 euros) containing 100 carte-de-visite albumen prints of Japan. One of the most fascinating pre-cinema devices is an Emile Reynaud Praxinoscope-Théatre, c.1880s, (2,400-3,000 euros), in which early "cartoon" figures miraculously come to life.

Also on offer is an outstanding group of 19th-century optical amusements including what is considered to be one of the most magnificent kaleidoscopes ever to come up for sale, a William Leigh kaleidoscope, c.1822, (80,000-100,000 euros). This kaleidoscope was made by the clockmaker William Leigh probably as a special commission from a wealthy and important client. No other Leigh kaleidoscope is known or is recorded in any scientific reference. It was described in the kaleidoscope collectors' publication of the Brewster Society as the most beautiful example ever made.

From the well-known Spira Collection comes pre-photographic articles include a large Scioptric Ball camera obscura lens, late 18th century (8,000-12,000 euros), as well as three exceptionally large groups of 19th-century optical amusements. The first comprises a collection of over 1,100 magic lantern slides including an early phantasmagoria hand-painted lever-operated slide of a snake, late 18th-century (500-700 euros). This rare and early slide moves on the screen when the levers are operated. Complicated special effects could be produced with magic lanterns that projected two or three overlapping images. A rare and beautiful example of such a projector is offered in the sale, a Tri-Unial magic lantern, c.1890 (20,000-30,000 euros).

The second group comprises over 3,500 stereographs, including several lots of early views from the 1850s-1870s of Paris, New York, Venice and other cities, as well as lots of humorous, comic scenes and "spirit" views which use double exposure to produce ghost effects. Also from the Spira Collection comes a group of 19th-century stereographs which show photographers at work or with their equipment and "tissue" cards in which special effects were produced by printing the images on thin paper and hand-painting the backs so a day/night or other transformation occurred when the stereograph was lit from the front or the back.

The third group is 100 micro-photographic "Stanhopes". These ingenious 19th-century optical novelties were invented by René Dagron in 1860. A microscopic photograph only 1 mm square is mounted at one end of a tiny but powerful magnifying lens. These miniature black & white transparencies were mounted in small objects of all types and sold as souvenirs and amusements.

WestLicht is already known for auctioning rare and collectible cameras and among the 915 lots in the sale are many fine examples, including the 100th Leica camera ever produced and one of the original Lunar Haselblad cameras, which since 1968 was engaged in the Apollo missions. In the 19th-century area there is a fine early 1840s American daguerreotype camera in the sale.

The WestLicht Photographica Auction will be held on Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 11 a.m. (CET). The sale items can be previewed before Tuesday, November 14 by appointment, then between Tuesday, November 14, and Friday, November 17 from 9 a.m.-6 p.m., and finally on the day of the sale, Saturday, November 18 from 8 a.m.-11 a.m.

WestLicht Photographica Auction is located on Westbahnstrasse 40, A-1070 Vienna, Austria; Phone: +43 1 523 56 59; Fax: +43 1 523 13 08; email: auction@westlicht.com .

A four-color catalogue will be published in book form and can be ordered at the auction website http://www.westlicht-auction.com . The complete on-line version of the current catalogue will be available by mid-October on the website and two weeks before the auction on www.ebayliveauctions.com . You will already find a selection of lots to be auctioned there.
 

By Dean Brierly

James Fee, widely celebrated as a photographic road poet and social critic, died at his home in Los Angeles on September 4, 2006.

Fee's work evolved in discrete yet thematically linked series through which he tackled a number of deeply personal themes. "Photographs of America" lamented America's gradual industrial decline. "Four Days in New York" produced unsettling images of familiar icons like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. "The Peleliu Project" explored his father's traumatic wartime experiences. A patriot in the best sense of the word, Fee imbued his images with subtle political criticism and an unwavering belief in America's social and creative potential.

Plagued by ill health towards the end of his life, Fee nevertheless allowed a measure of lightness to infiltrate his dark, brooding aesthetic. His last series, titled "For Edmund" (in honor of Fee's friend Edmund Teske), comprised duotone solarizations of desert imagery that gave expression to the peace and serenity he'd been seeking in recent years. Even while suffering from the cancer that would soon claim his life, Fee stubbornly insisted on
performing his own darkroom work (with an assistant), despite the physical effort required.

Fee's legacy encompassed four books, numerous exhibits and countless photographers influenced through his teaching and lecturing endeavors.
 

By Matt Damsker

AFTERMATH: WORLD TRADE CENTER ARCHIVE.
Photographs and Text by Joel Meyerowitz. Sept. 2006; 350 pages, 400 color plates; $75.00 hardback; ISBN No. 0-7148-4655-4. Published by Phaidon Press, 180 Varick St., New York, N.Y. 10014; and Regent's Wharf, All Saints St., London N1 9PA. Website: http://www.phaidon.com .

Countless photojournalists must have envied Joel Meyerowitz his exclusive access to the ruins of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of 9/11. It may even seem a little unfair that he was granted such license for nearly a year during the cleanup of the site, since his permission came about partly because of his friendship with the father of Manhattan's park commissioner. Besides, Meyerowitz is a fine-art portraitist and not a newsman. But Ground Zero deserved an official photographer, and Meyerowitz was a superb choice. A New York native and one of color photography's early champions, he could be counted on to create a powerful and compassionate archive of post-9/11 imagery.

And that he has done, working diligently and passionately with a large-format wooden camera for about nine months, capturing so much more than the chaos of twisted metal and unimaginable debris across a 16-acre expanse that was pretty much unlike anything else in modern history. For Ground Zero is a kind of American Pompeii--mythic in its resonance, its ruins intermingled with the flesh and spirit of those who died there, a locus of civic tragedy that leaves a literal hole in the world. Meyerowitz's camera thus performs explorations of scale that continually match the vastness of Ground Zero's destruction with the dedicated humanity that is there to repair it. In so many of these shots, the large-format eye scans the gnarled, undone universe of metal and concrete, and it is not until we look closely that we notice the workers--human miniatures in hard hats and safety-orange vests--blended into the wreckage, providing visual grace notes of caring and continuity amidst the apocalypse.

Not surprisingly, such photos are Meyerowitz's best and most powerful visions from this unique archive. They amount to monumental floodings of sheer visual information that also convey the beauty of pure atmosphere: indigo dusk, with tall, undamaged skyscrapers in the background; sleepless night, with workers in the glare of lights that reflect off the rising smoke and dust; and golden morning, with sunlight filtering through like hope. In their richness of color and infinity of detail, these shots may remind us of Andreas Gursky's vast photo-canvases, but in this case Meyerowitz is the anti-Gursky, his images exuding unforced pathos and documentarian zeal, as opposed to Gursky's dry, clinical vision of modernity. More quietly dramatic, of course, are the many single portraits of the volunteers, laborers, and officials who bring life and optimism to Ground Zero. Meyerowitz locates the patriotic personal style of their garb, with their flag-patterned hard hats and bandanas, along with their indefatigable pride in what they are doing, and what anyone must do in any aftermath: Go on.


AMERICA BY THE YARD: CIRKUT CAMERA IMAGES
FROM THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY.
By Robert B. MacKay. December, 2006; published by W.W. Norton & Co., $100 hardback; 216 pages, over 100 black-and-white plates. ISBN No. 0-393-05160-5; phone: 212-354-5500, fax: 212-869-0856. Website: http://www.wwnorton.com .

A cheerful and nostalgic corollary to the large-format 9/11 images of Meyerowitz--as well as the hyper-detailed artistry of Gursky--this charming and handsome volume documents one of photography's great novelties: Eastman Kodak's Cirkut Camera, a rotational device for taking panoramic photos (called "yard-longs" in their day, many of them extending to as much as five feet in width). The Cirkut was a pop phenomenon during the 1910s and 1920s, and was in use through World War II as well. Cirkut collector and antiquarian Robert B. MacKay provides an entertaining history of this invention, along with crisp reproductions that reveal the camera's excellent capacity for delivering rich detail on an unprecedented panoramic scale.

Indeed, despite its wondrously extended eye, the Cirkut was destined to become a dinosaur for much the same reason as did the wraparound cinematic novelty known as Cinerama. Contact-printed from their exceedingly long negatives (few of which survive today), Cirkut panoramas weren't terribly practical or cost-efficient for photographers. More to the point, Cirkut images, like Cinerama, offer breadth of vision but none of the eye-guiding artistry that makes for effective photography. This is probably why so many Cirkut photos are of large groups of people--the 1908 class of Wellesley college, for example, or an international twins' convention, or bomber squadrons, sports teams, bathing beauties, and conventioneers--spread across the remarkable width of the yard-longs. These made sensational souvenirs for the people in the pictures. But when it came to documenting an unpeopled expanse or any other landscape, Cirkut photographers were hard-pressed to compose a coherent image, shaping and shading a precise moment of physical reality, as opposed to capturing an unfettered sweep of visual data, from far left to far right.

That said, there are exceptions to this rule of the Cirkut's aesthetic. J.W. Sandison's shot of a lumberyard in Washington State captures the acres of piled wood with a fascinating feel for the textures and geometries of this industrial expanse. And a Cirkut photo of the 1922 New York Yankees baseball team stops the eye dead in the middle of the photo, as a cocksure Babe Ruth stands out in all his vividness and charismatic heft, and seems to draw in all the energy of the moment with his familiar moon face. Ultimately, it is these flashes of human interest that activate most of the Cirkut photos, as the photographers struggle to compose interesting assemblages of so much detail, and occasionally succeed, as in some of the military photos of naval fleets or mechanized brigades. Thanks to Robert MacKay, Eastman Kodak's exercise in visual (and commercial) ambition and the roaring era during which it flourished are well remembered and lovingly resurrected.


Matt Damsker is an author and critic, who has written about photography and the arts for the Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Philadelphia Bulletin, Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. His book, "Rock Voices", was published in 1981 by St. Martin's Press. His essay in the book, "Marcus Doyle: Night Vision" was published this past November.

(Book publishers, authors and photography galleries/dealers may send review copies to us at: I Photo Central, 258 Inverness Circle, Chalfont, PA 18914. We do not guarantee that we will review all books or catalogues that we receive.)
 

Vintage Works, Ltd. has just put up "Josef Sudek: A View of a Private World", which is a new Special Exhibit on I Photo Central. The exhibit comes with a complete biography of this Czech master and many fine examples of his work.

Many observers see a sense of the mysterious in Sudek's later work, but writer Charles Sawyer notes in one of his articles on Sudek, "I think this is a mistake: the air of mystery vanishes once we see in Sudek's photography a person's private salvation from despair."

As Anna Farova has written, "In photography he had gone from Pictorialism via Impressionism to experimental functional compositions. He had found his dominant themes--the city of Prague and the effects of light." No photographer, except possibly Atget, was as devoted to portraying their city with such intensity and love as Sudek. And Prague was indeed a magical city in his images.

For a look at the Sudek essay, click on http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase_descrp.php/101/1/0/14 , or for the photographs in the exhibit, click here: http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase_view.php/101/1/0/0 .

We have also continued to change images and add to our essays for all our Special Exhibits, so they are worth another peek, especially if you have not looked lately. And, if you see one you like, let a friend know too!

You can see this fine new exhibit and others (now a total of 61 Special Exhibits in all!) at: http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase.php . Don't forget to check out the archived exhibits at the bottom of the page as well.
 

CHARLES SCHWARTZ PUTS ON A SALE
OF NASA'S MOON PHOTOGRAPHS

I Photo Central dealer Charles Schwartz Ltd. is putting its space photographs from NASA on a special 25% sale for the next 30 days. These are some spectacular views of the moon taken in 1966 and 1967 by NASA's Lunar Orbiter II and III. George Keene, head of photography at NASA, was responsible for designing Lunar Orbiter II and III. This series includes images of mountains rising from the flat floor of craters that are 1000 feet high with slopes up to 30 degrees; images of Aristarchus, which is the brightest spot on the front face of the moon; and many others.

You can find all of these images at http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase_view.php/91/3/0/0 . Just click on the thumbnail images to get to the details and the sale price.


LECTURE ON LISA HOLDEN'S WORK
GIVEN TOMORROW IN AMSTERDAM

Liesbeth Grotenhuis, who is curator of the Gas Unie art commission, will give a lecture on the art of Lisa Holden tomorrow on Wednesday, September 27th at 7:30 pm at the Galerie Metis_NL, Lijnbaansgracht 316, Amsterdam, Nederlands. Holden is represented in the U.S. by Vintage Works, Ltd. She is a contemporary artist who works with photo-based paintings, which in some instances are then re-photographed. Examples of her work and information on the artist can be found on the I Photo Central website at: http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase_view.php/81/1/0 .

The catalogue 'Versluierde Spiegels/Elusive Eye', which is composed of 60 color pages with a text in Dutch and English by Liesbeth Grotenhuis, which accompanied Holden's solo show at Gas Unie last winter, will be available at the lecture.


INTERESTING AND RARE TOM THUMB ITEM

A very rare brass locket with 12 accordion images of the Tom Thumb wedding has just been put up on I Photo Central by dealer Charles Schwartz Ltd. Thirty-three-inch tall Tom Thumb was the most popular person in the world during his lifetime, and his 1863 wedding to Lavinia Warren, documented in this locket, was the apogee of Thumb-mania (circus impresario P.T. Barnum sold tickets to the reception at $75 each, a huge amount at that time). This extremely rare locket features six individual brass frames that fold out to reveal 12 tiny albumen prints. As all are related to the wedding, this keepsake may have been intended as a gift to the wedding party or other select participants. The locket is in good condition with loose clasp. The cover of the locket is embellished (along with raised faux buckles and charming filigree) with the words "Somebody's Luggage"--the latter most likely referencing an 1862 Charles Dickens' story of the same name. To see this special item, go to http://www.iphotocentral.com/search/detail.php/32/%22tom+thumb%22/0/9804/3 .