The Fall auctions in New York were considered by some in the field as a test of the strength of the market. If so, they passed with flying colors for the most part. Even Swann, which had the usually unenviable position of first-up, did very well indeed this go-round, including nailing down its first million-dollar-plus lot, the Curtis portfolio.

Swann Galleries' total take for the day was about $2.1 million with 74% of the lots sold initially, plus a few more sold later. That was Swann's best performance to date in photography.

The sale was helped a bit by a major collection of maritime images from C.W. Sahlman, which consisted of the first 34 lots, and, of course, even more so, by the Curtis portfolio.

I will try to keep it to the larger lots. The prices below all include Swann's more reasonable buyer's premium of 20% compared to Christie's and Sotheby's more greedy current 25%. As Swann auctioneer Nick Lowry announced at the beginning of the sale, "We are still in that lower bracket, and a pox on the others who are not!"

The crowd was respectable at Swann at nearly 70 people in the audience at peak with lots of phones on the sidelines. Actually that was a lot more people than even the "bigger" auction houses had at several times during their sales, which keep getting more "virtual" every day.

At Swann's the room was in on a number of the lots, even if a lot eventually went to a phone or an order bid.

The W.H. Talbot of "Hungerford Bridge" (lot 2) sold for just below low estimate to an order bid for $16,800. The print was ok, but a bit light like a lot of the prints of this image. A collector purchased the image, according to Swann.

A Gustave Le Gray of "Brig on the Water" (lot 6) sold to another order bid for $31,200, which was a reasonable price and just over the low estimate, even with all the major conservation work that had been done on this print. A bit too much work on the print though for my own taste, although the print presented ok. A collector bought this as well, and made the lot the sixth highest for the day.

A man in the room snagged the small format Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz (lot 12) from the phones for a reasonable $7200.

After lot 15, an image of the Titanic went unsold, collector Michael Mattis quipped, "This one's sinking--or should I say sinks 'twice'?"

Lot 35 was a wonderful whole-plate daguerreotype of Bond & Mollyneaux Groceries & Provissions (sic) in a damaged but quite rare and exquisite mother-of-pearl case. The estimate was a joke at $6,000-9,000. I helped get it started, but the serious action was between Nelson-Atkins Museum/Hallmark Collection curator Keith Davis and Connecticut dealer William Schaeffer, who had a phone to his ear. On the other end of the line was probably dag collector Bruce Lundberg. In any case, it was Davis that won out by bidding the daguerreotype up to $57,600--nearly ten times the low estimate. That price was a bargain though. I feel that the retail on this image would easily be about $85,000+. The bid made the item the second most expensive in the auction. Davis promptly left the auction after the lot.

A collector on the phone nabbed a bargain on lot 36, Eugene Cuvalier's unique salt print of a Barbizon landscape for a mere $21,600. Compare that to the high six-figure prices at Sotheby's Cuvelier sale. And this print was also exhibited in the same NY Met exhibition and was even rarer than the other images. Several collectors and dealers I talked to later expressed regret about not bidding. The price put the lot into tenth place.

Another good published Cuvelier landscape, but in albumen, went to another phone for a mere $5,750. Bargains can be found when not in an over-hyped situation, such as the Sotheby's sale.

San Francisco dealer Robert Koch scooped another 19th-century bargain, Lewis Carroll's "Fair Rosamond" (lot 40), a large format albumen print, for only $28,800--easily worth more than double the price and good enough for seventh place here.

Another steal, Carleton Watkin's mammoth plate of "The Devil's Canyon Geysers" (lot 46) went just below low estimate at $22,800, which put it in ninth place in the overall sale. The previous lot, another mammoth plate Watkins, but of "Golden Gate Entrance to Harbor of San Francisco", which had bought in, was later sold to a dealer for $12,000. The latter lot looked a bit washed out though.

There was a lot of action on Frederick Gutekunst's large 1877 panorama of a train heading east on the Rockville Bridge, PA. Numerous phones and commission bids battled in out until the high estimate was easily exceeded at $33,600. A collector on the phone bought this piece, which was the third highest in the auction (tied with two other lots) and set a new world auction record for this photographer.

Of course the big lot at Swann's was lot 53, the "North American Indian, Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska", which was estimated at $800,000-$1,200,000. Seattle Curtis dealer Lois Flury and a collector on the phone settled down to some serious bidding. The collector got the piece at $1,048,000. Flury did pick up the next two Curtis lots though as a consolation prize.

Daile Kaplan, Swann Galleries' vice president and director of the photography department, said, "How marvelous that a classic of photographic literature, Edward Curtis' "The North American Indian", is Swann’s first million-dollar lot! The continued growth in the market may be attributed to the fact that buyers from the antiquarian book, contemporary art and design fields are discovering fine art photography. The best is yet to come."

Lot 77, Brassai's 1970s print of "Members of Big Albert's Gang" was estimated at a reasonable $7,000-10,000. I took up the bidding against the phones and collector Michael Mattis. But in the end the phone got both of us at $14,400.

The phone and a commission bidder took the Manuel Alvarez Bravo vintage print of a Window in Wall (lot 82) to nearly its high estimate. In the end it was a dealer on the phone that took the piece for $33,600, which was good enough for a three-way tie for third place.

Alfred Eisenstaedt's Time-Life portfolio print of the "Opening at La Scala, Milan" (editioned 197/250) sold for an astounding $20,400 to a collector. Considering that vintage prints of this image have sold for less here, this kind of buying strategy flabbergasts me.

Roy De Carava's gritty New York scene drew a lot of attention from dealers and collectors alike. Lot 107 was bought directly from the photographer in 1949. It certainly had a lot of condition issues, but it still presented well, and, as I have told numerous collectors, if you wait for a "perfect" print on these early photographs, you will never buy one--at least one that hasn't seen the inside of a conservator's workshop. Dealers Bruce Silverstein and Tom Gitterman, collector Michael Mattis and the phones all bid the piece well above triple its low estimate and more than double its high. At $24,000 a collector on the phone snatched it and put it into eighth place in the auction. It was also a new world auction record for the artist.

Lot 118, Robert Frank's "Miami Beach", failed to go during the auction, but was later bought after the sale for $31,200. I felt it was a pretty good buy, but collector Michael Mattis claimed that it wasn't a "typical" enough Frank to merit attention. That's what makes the market go round. I still think it was a great buy, despite the fact that there was some chemical staining in the margins. It did appear to be a genuine vintage piece from about 1960 and was to me an interesting image.

Lot 162, the Sally Mann of "Jessie at 12 (Parts I and II)", was in nice condition, but in two very strange frames/matts. The pair sold to a collector for $33,600, which placed it into a three-way tie for third place in the sale.

Swann had taken the lead-off spot and hit well.

 

Sotheby's Fall sales of photographs in New York totaled just a shade over $12.7 million, which matched the middle of its estimate range when you added in the higher buyer's premiums, which now start at 25% on the first $25,000. Sotheby's sell-through rate was an impressive 86.3%. No let down here.

The two-day series of sales was highlighted by Edward Weston's seminal "Nautilus", an early state of the image on matte-surface paper, from the collection of Alexandra R. Marshall, which commanded $1,105,000, a record for the artist at auction and was one of the few photographs to break the $1 million mark (est. $600/900,000) and only the second lot to do this in this round of auctions. This was the top lot of the various-owners sale of photographs, comprising the priciest group of photographs from various-owners to be presented at auction in recent years, which brought $10,950,038, a record total at Sotheby's and, for that matter, at any other auction house. An amazing $3.7 million came from just 24 photographs by Edward Weston that were sold here and provided the primary difference in totals between Sotheby's and Christie's this time around. The front-loaded evening session alone resulted in over $6.53 million on just 36 lots sold! That comes out to about $181,500 per lot sold on average! All the top ten prices for the overall multi-owner sale came from this evening session.

The single-owner sale from the collection of Nancy Richardson the next day achieved $1,759,351, which was about low estimate including the high buyer's premiums here. Ironically this collection was about to be closed by Phillips de Pury Auctions the same day that house fired its two top auction experts, who then gave Richardson Sotheby's phone number. More on this collection and consignor in a future newsletter when we cover Part II of the Sotheby's day sales. This time out we will report on the high-powered evening sale results at Sotheby's.

Before I go any further, I want to discuss one of Sotheby's client-oriented innovations that I am sure will be part of the other houses' repertoire shortly--or at least should be. Beginning with this auction, Sotheby's posted up its detailed condition reports right on line. No begging by phone, in person or by email is now necessary. And, at least in Sotheby's case, so far, the condition reports are really worth the paper (or cyberspace) that they are printed on. I found most of the ones that I checked this go-round at Sotheby's to be pretty accurate and detailed, which was not always the case in the past and wasn't the case with competitors this time (at least consistently). There is always still the possibility of an oversight when working with so many hundreds of such reports, so I still recommend that you either preview carefully yourself or get expert help doing so, otherwise you can make a very seriously expensive mistake. But Sotheby's does deserve plaudits for its stronger than average showing here. Now if only we can get Sotheby's to get rid of its ridiculous password protected website, we would be in business. Why you have to register and need a password, which I promptly forget, to get simple information on this auction house is beyond me.

Just because of the sheer volume (and new higher premiums), I am going to have to limit the coverage mostly to lots that broke over $49,000, including Sotheby's (and also Christie's) very steep 25% premium on the first $25,000, 20% premium from there until $500,000, and only from then on its more modest 12%.

This is the first time these extremely high premiums were in place. Most buyers seem to take it in stride with many lowering their bids appropriately, but I wonder how sellers will deal with this issue when they realize that the new, higher "buyer's" premium is really coming off of their part of the deal. Will they, as Richard Morehouse suggested in the Photograph Collector newsletter, consign more work to dealers and galleries and less to these greedier auction houses? Will sellers negotiate harder on their own deal? Will they shift some of the consignments to other auction houses which have not followed suit? Stay tuned. This may be the straw that killed the auction market--or caused the big two's lockstep pricing to falter. As long as the auctions kept getting very high results, most sellers have gone along with the hikes in the past. But now taking over 40% of the proceeds in many cases (buyer's and seller's fees, insurance fee, illustration fee, etc.) does seem more than a bit greedy to most of us, especially in the face of a potentially less dependable market. To add insult to injury, it's doubtful that any of the two auction house's overworked personnel will see much of this increase.

Also expect to start seeing higher buy-in rates as these new hikes make bidders more wary about bidding against reserves with such high buyer's premium markups. Often it is only a 5% difference that determines whether or not someone bids. Believe me when I say that the buyers who forgot the fee hikes this time sure won't forget the next time.

Sotheby's though had lots of treasure this time out to tempt reluctant buyers. The material here was simply a step up from the other houses, and the results showed it.

The evening crowd at Sotheby's was one of the better crowds of the week. And Denise Bethel as auctioneer was in good form--perhaps the best I have seen her. She seems to be getting better and better up on the podium each auction--more comfortable and dramatic. She always had the knowledge of the material, but now she is getting a stronger handle on the auction mechanics themselves.

Robert Frank kicked off the auction and did well, but not at the nose-bleed levels of past Sotheby's auctions. In fact more than a few seemed like genuine bargains. The same phone buyer, which had a paddle of L0067, scooped up the first three lots, all Robert Frank pictures, including lot 3, Frank's "New Orleans" (Trolley) in a 1986c print for $91,000. The buyer had to battle first New York City dealers Bruce Silverstein and then Edwynn Houk for the prize.

I really liked the next lot, the Edward Weston platinum nude study of Miriam Lerner with crossed arms. It was estimated modestly at $100,000-150,000 (if any six-figure price can really be called modest), but even with a couple of small condition issues and a lack of mount, the print had real presence. In fact it was my emotional favorite of the sale--even more so than the rather cool and minimalist Weston Shell that did seven-figure damage later. Collector Michael Mattis had to disarm a phone bidder or two before he could take this beauty home for $313,000--a relative bargain that might be worth double the price in the right circumstances. The price tag qualified this lot for fifth place in the Sotheby's multi-owner auction. As Mattis told me later, "Weston's sensuous nudes of his lover and muse Miriam Lerner are each as rare as they are beautiful."

Lot 5, a Weston dune, while also rare, didn't turn me on as much. I and some other dealers felt that the estimate of $200,000-300,000 was rather reaching, but it still didn't stop the phone bidder--the same one who bought those first three Robert Franks--from paying the low estimate (and maybe the reserve) on this one at $241,000, good enough for a tie for tenth place in this sale.

At this point I started to think that perhaps the phone bidder might be Maggi Weston, who was rumored to be back buying after her own collection netted nearly $8 million last Spring at Sotheby's. She has a habit of using the phone, and many of the lots bought felt like pictures she would buy for inventory. In any case L0067 was sure buying like they had a lot of money and wanted some big trophies, and Sotheby's was not dropping any of its usual hints as to whether or not this was a private collector or dealer in its post-sale press release. The latter makes me more suspicious about the buyer.

Then collector Michael Mattis was back to spoil the party that New York dealers Howard Greenberg and Bruce Silverstein planned. Both were outbid on lot 6, another Weston nude study of Miriam Lerner (torso) that really did seem incredibly low at its mere $20,000-30,000 estimate. Mattis took the two up to $85,000 before first Greenberg and then finally Silverstein bit the dust.

One quick aside: go see Howard Greenberg's wonderful 25th anniversary exhibit at his gallery in New York City if you can. If not, buy his new catalogue/book on the show. The images are fabulous, but Howard's words about them are really not to be missed. They are direct and from the heart and what distinguishes this show from many others like it.

Of the pricey dunes, lot 7 had the greatest sense of photographic drama. There wasn't much of that drama evidenced in the auction room though, as two commission bids had Bethel sounding like Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen (that's Candice Bergen's father for those of you too young to remember this famous ventriloquist duo). Somehow these two commission bids got over the high estimate (a very high one indeed for a Weston dune: I believe a new world record for this type of Weston image--at least one without a nude on the dune) and the final total was $373,000--$63,000 of which was just the buyer's premium, so I hope they remembered that new higher fee when leaving their bids.

At $350,000-500,000, lot 8, another Weston platinum nude (this time of the back of Anita Brenner), looked awfully high to me for this image. The lot passed at $270,000. No real presence and little interest, but it might have sold if the price had not been set quite so high.

Imogen Cunningham's beautiful "Tower of Jewels" became the center of a battle between the room and phone. Estimated at $200,000-300,000, the bid soared ever upward until finally the high estimate was matched and, with premium, Kathryn McCarver Root took the image for a whopping $361,000. That put the lot into fourth place overall in the multi-owner sale and set a new world auction record for the artist. The photograph was the first such early print to come on the auction market in decades and was fully signed and mounted.

I should note that Kathryn has recently opened a new gallery--KMR Arts--in upscale Washington Depot, CT. She often bids for clients at the photographs sales.

Lot 10 was supposed to be a reasonably priced Edward Weston of "Grass and Sea, Big Sur", estimated at $25,000-35,000, which seemed about right to me. But what do I know? Peter MacGill and Jeffrey Fraenkel battled it out next to each other to push the price to a whopping $169,000. I like Weston, but that was a pretty boring picture for that much money. MacGill won in the end. These are surely client bids that they were placing.

On the next lot though, Paul Hertzmann slipped in against a commission bidder to take Weston's "Whale Vertebrae" for the low estimate at $37,000. The photograph's provenance listed Hertzmann as the original dealer on the piece, so it has found its way back home, so to speak. Unlike the last lot, this was a definite steal. I think even Paul was surprised when he got it for that price.

Lot 12 took us back into six-figure territory. Cunningham's "Formen Einer Blume" (Magnolia Blossom) was the fuller version of this flower that was featured in the earlier "Tower of Jewels" image. The phone took the lot away from a commission bid after meeting the low estimate at $301,000. That was just shy of the new record for the artist set just a few lots previous, and put the lot into sixth place overall in the auction.

Phone bidder L0067 came back to take another Weston dune on lucky lot 13 for the low estimate, which was a whopping $241,000 with buyer's fees. That put the lot into the last place in the Top Ten for the sale and for this evening.

Lot 14, Walker Evan's important "Breakfast Room, Belle Grove Plantation, White Chapel, LA", presented an intriguing mystery of sorts. Sotheby's was playing it safe with its "printing date unknown" notation despite a later stamp on the image. The matte surface of the paper and other signs pointed to a much earlier print than the 1963-1971 date range that the stamp would normally indicate. So did Sotheby's estimate range of $80,000-120,000. It was a challenge and more than a few dealers decided it was worth entering the fray. I saw Mack Lee, Peter MacGill and Edwynn Houk all bidding away--some with phones in their ears. But in the end it was San Francisco dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel who outbid the group at double the low estimate at $193,000.

Fraenkel was then also successful on the next lot, Carleton Watkins' "The Garrison, Columbia River" going to just under the low estimate at $229,000 against Connecticut dealer William Schaeffer. It was a beautiful and early print.

I had hoped to raise my paddle on the next lot, the book cover image of "Berthoud, CO" by Robert Adams. But collector Stephen Stein and New York dealer Peter MacGill got into ping-pong battle that MacGill finally won at the high estimate at $37,000. That was still well under the last auction price set at Phillips for this same image.

As consolation prize after losing the earlier Watkins image, William Schaeffer did get to steal lot 17, "California Oak, Santa Clara Valley", which was attributed to Carleton Watkins, and was most probably by him. There was some supposition that this might actually be a copy print of a daguerreotype by Watkins. Whatever it was, it was a wonderful, rich and dramatic image with great presence. It went very inexpensively even at nearly double the high estimate at $32,200.

But finally the BIG lot came up: lot 18. Sotheby's was not shy about estimating Edward Weston's1927 early matte print of the Nautilus at $600,000-900,000. You could feel that they pegged a lot of their auction on this piece, and it came through for them. First a phone bidder pushed up past the high reserve, and then Peter MacGill with a phone in his ear pushed it up further against that phone. Finally it was MacGill at a hammer price just above the high estimate at $950,000 (total price: $1,105,000). The price set a new world record for Edward Weston and was the top lot of this auction season, but only by dearth of Sotheby's higher premiums. Otherwise it was in a virtual tie with Swann's Curtis portfolio for that honor.

Weston was not quite done for the day. On the next lot, San Francisco dealer Paul Hertzmann fought with two phones over Weston's Dunes, Oceano, but in the end it was big phone buyer L0067 who picked up this dune as well as their others. This time the price was mid-point in the range at $169,000.

The same phone bidder also then picked up the next lot, a nice Paul Strand of "The Family, Luzzara, Emilia, Italy" (Lusetti Family) for again mid-point in the range at $253,000, which put the lot into a tie for eighth place overall in the auction.

The next Strand lot, "Café de la Paix, Audierne, Finestere, France", sold to dealer Peter MacGill against the phone and a commission bid for $181,000.

Then MacGill outbid fellow New York dealer Howard Greenberg for the Lewis Hine of the Worker, Empire State Building, at 3-1/2 x the high estimate. At $205,000 I believe this broke the world record at auction for Hine, although Sotheby's didn't claim that.

A phone paid just over the high estimate for lot 24, the Dorothea Lange of "At the Cotton Wagon, Migrant Agricultural Worker, Elroy, AZ" at $103,000 over collector Michael Mattis' underbid.

Then phone bidder L0067 was back to beat out dealer Howard Greenberg for Lange's White Angel Breadline, a print that apparently appeared in U.S. Camera's 1936 Annual. The price at $445,000 didn't come close to setting a new record (the current one for this image is $822,400) but did put the lot into second place in the top ten for the auction.

A man in the room more than doubled the high estimate on Louis Faurer's "Park Avenue Garage" to take it at a world auction record price for the artist of $133,000.

The phone outbid a man in the room for the next lot, a Robert Frank of the popular London (Belsize, Crescent), at $109,000--well over the high estimate.

The male bidder on the earlier Louis Faurer took the next Robert Frank, a later print of lot 28, NYC (34th Street), for just over the high estimate at $121,000.

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy's large but later photogram drew lots of bidders. First Chuck Isaacs and Susan Herzig duked it out, and then Edwynn Houk battled a Client next to Howard Greenberg. It went on Howard's paddle at $91,000.

Lot 30, an Edward Weston Cross-Section of a Nautilus Shell, which was estimated at a too-reasonable $70,000-100,000, got a lot of frantic bidding activity. First Edwynn Houk battled a number of phones, but then it settled back in the room between collectors Stephen Stein and Michael Mattis, with Stein taking it at $253,000. That was good enough for a tie for eighth place.

Michael Mattis became the underbidder to an Asian man at the rear of the room on lot 31, Edward Steichen's "Iris Aurea", when the latter pushed up the price to the mid-range of the estimates at $79,000.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's "North Atlantic Ocean, Cliffs of Moher" (lot 38) sold to San Francisco dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel for $49,000, just above high estimate.

Finally, after a number of other buy-ins and lower end (relatively, of course) items, a phone bidder set a new world auction record for Peter Beard on an excellent print of "Hog Ranch Night Feeder with Maureen Gallagher & Mbuno" (lot 40) at a whopping $277,000, which put the lot into seventh place in the Top Ten.

Sotheby's evening sale was very impressive indeed.

(NEXT NEWSLETTER: The rest of Sotheby's sales and Phillips' auction results)

 

Villa Grisebach has two photography sales and a total of almost 500 lots of classic and contemporary photographs on offer in its fall auction season. The first of these sales will take place on November 29, 2007 at 3 pm in Berlin, with the single-owner sale ("Elective Affinities") following immediately at the conclusion of the regular sale.

The approximately 160 lots of this fall's sale of "Modern and Contemporary Photographs" include masterworks, such as "Gerbera Daisy (Three Flowers), 2006 by Irving Penn; (18,000-22,000€), Jean Painlevé's "Pince de Galithée", 1929 (8,000-9,000€) or Paul Citroen's 1923 avant-garde photo-montage "Johnson Training Again" (7,500-10,000€).

The contemporary photography section has a number of sought-after names, including Andreas Gursky, Peter Beard, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Richard Avedon, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Ruud van Empel, Martin Parr and Michael Wesely. The sale ends with a newly established section called "The cabinet". This special section will introduce a selection of unique prints by Czech shooting star Miroslav Tichy.

Analogies, similarities, elective affinities is the subject of the second sale of a European private collection. Since its beginnings, photography has given both photographers and collectors alike the joy of comparison. This is the focus that Villa Grisebach will showcase for the first time before offering the collection in its "Elective Affinities" sale.

Two of the highlights of this special sale will be William Henry Fox Talbot's 1843 view of "The Boulevards of Paris" (10,000-12,000€) and Edward Weston's "Chinese Cabbage" from 1931 (85,000-100,000€). Among other important works are Jaromir Funke's "Composition with a bottle" from 1925 (20,000-25,000€), seven photographs from Aaron Siskind's 1972 portfolio "Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation" (18,000-22,000€), Manuel Alvarez Bravo's "The big fish eats the little ones", 1932 (15,000-20,000€), a Man Ray rayograph from the "Champs Délicieux" portfolio of 1922 (14,000-16,000€), "Handbag and Fur", 1924 by Paul Outerbridge, Jr. (10,000-15,000€), the delicate "Mademoiselle Pogany II", 1920c, by Constantin Brancusi, as well as works by Heinrich Kühn, Frantisek Drtikol, Albert Renger-Patzsch, the late Bernd and Hilla Becher, William Eggleston and many more. Apart from such masterpieces, "Elective Affinities" includes works of vernacular and anonymous photography that are potentially lucky finds for any young collector.

The collection owes its appeal to the sensitive and curious eyes of a major collector of contemporary art. A catalogue comprising the collection in its entirety of 299 lots and with an essay by Prof. Christoph Stölzl is available. A preview exhibition of selected works from the collection will be held at Villa Grisebach Auktionen GmbH, Fasanenstraße 25, 10719 Berlin from Nov. 3-21. For details, see http://www.villa-grisebach.de . For more information, contact Franziska Schmidt (Head of Photography Department), phone: +49 30 885915-27; fax: +49 30 885915-4627; or email: f.schmidt@villa-grisebach.de .

 

Artcurial will hold a two-part photography sale, its main auction of the Fall season on Saturday, November 17th at 8 pm and on Monday, November 19th at 2:15 pm. The auctions will be held at Artcurial, Hotel Dassault, 7-9 Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées, 75008, Paris, France. A printed catalogue is available for these sales and can be ordered through Artcurial.

Part I is devoted to masters of 19th-century photography. Lot 14 is a spectacular Camp de Chalons album, by Gustave Le Gray. In excellent condition, it is one of eight known complete albums, finishing with the famous Panorama du Camp. The estimate is 200 000-250 000 euros.

A major portion of this part of the sale is 151 plates from the very rare Crystal Palace album by Philipp Henry Delamotte (lots 34 to 138). Only two complete albums from this important early work are known to have survived. Individual prints by Delamotte are extremely rare at auctions.

Included in this part are photographs by Baldus, Le Gray, Cuvelier, Robert, Duchene de Boulogne and others.

Most of Part II is from an American private collection of mostly American masters. The collection of over 300 prints includes beautiful vintage works by Steichen, Brandt, Kertesz, Hine, Abbott, Walker Evans, Callahan, Arbus and William Klein.

There is also 19th and 20th-century work by Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Ansel Adams, Dr. Agha, Laure Albin-Guillot, Jose Alemany, Alvarez Bravo, Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Atget, Baltermants, Lewis Baltz, Beaton, Eduoard Boubat, Bourke-White, Brancusi, Bruehl, Caneva, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Chochola, Larry Clark, Lucien Clergue, Charles Clifford, Coburn, Coster, Cuccioni, Cunningham, Edward Curtis, Eugene Cuvelier, De Dienes, Delano, Robert Doisneau, Frantisek Drtikol, Dr. Edgerton, Eisenstaedt, Erwitt, F.H.Evans, Walker Evans, Famin, Fassbender, Faurer, Talbot, Robert Frank, Freund, Geoffray, Giacomelli, Halsman, Heilmann, Herve, Hine, Otto Hofmann, Izis, Jacobi, Kertesz , Kaldhei, Klein, Krull, Landrock & Lehnert, Lartigue, Lauschmann, Le Blondel, Le Dien-Le Gray, Herbert List, Robert MacPherson, Henri Mailand, Man Ray, Charles Marville, Joel Meyerowitz, Duane Michals, Misonne, Morath, Morgan, Felix Jacques Moulin, Munkacsi, Revesz-Biro, Marc Riboud, Richebourg, Leni Riefenstahl, Riis, Rittase, Rothstein, Salas, Salgado, Auguste Salzmann, Jan Saudek Jeanloup Sieff, Steichen, Strand, Jean-Pierre Sudre, Adolphe Terris, Else Thalemann, Jerry Uelsmann – Vallou de Villeneuve, Pierre Verger, Romain Vishniac, Weegee, Weston, White, Winogrand, and many others.

Again, the first part of the sale will be held on Saturday, November 17th at 8 pm at the Artcurial facility in Paris. The auction can be previewed from Wednesday November 14-Saturday, November 17, from 10 am-7 pm.

The catalogues for both auctions are now online at: http://www.artcurial.com/en/ . Just go to the left section on the calendar and click on the photography auction. For catalogue information or to contact the expert for the sale, email Grégory Leroy at gleroy@artcurial.com or call +33 (0) 6 25 94 29 12, or call the general auction number at +33 (0)1 42 99 20 20. When calling from the U.S. add 011 in front and eliminate the (0).

 

The Photo Review's annual benefit auction will be held on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 7 p.m. in the Dorrance-Hamilton Building at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

The event will feature work by an international slate of historic and contemporary photographers. Beginning and experienced collectors alike will have the opportunity to bid on work by such historic masters as Eugène Atget, Felice Beato, Edouard Boubat, Edward S. Curtis, Robert Doisneau, Maxime Du Camp, Harold Edgerton, Lewis Hine, Gertrude Käsebier, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Herb Ritts, Edward Steichen, Karl Struss, Josef Sudek, Maurice Tabard and Clarence White. Among the contemporary photo stars whose work will go on the block are Marilyn Bridges, Lucien Clergue, Raymond Depardon, Lois Greenfield, Dave Heath, Chip Hooper, Henry Horenstein, Michael Kenna, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Mark Klett, Susan Meiselas, Jeffrey Milstein, Joe Mills, Duane Michals, Frank Rodick, Rosalind Solomon, Jack Spencer, Catherine Steinmann, Joyce Tenneson, George Tice, and Philip Trager, while featured Philadelphia-area luminaries include Susan Fenton, Judy Gelles, David Graham, Larry Fink, and Ray K. Metzker. According to Photo Review editor Stephen Perloff, prices should range from $50 to $6,000.

A silent auction, concurrent with the live auction, will feature photography and computer equipment and software, film and paper, restaurant meals, museum memberships, theater tickets, books, etc.

A preview will be held at the Dorrance-Hamilton Building on Friday, November 9 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday, November 10 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., just prior to the auction.

Proceeds from the auction, a popular event since 1983, fund such activities as an annual juried competition for emerging photographers. Admission is free with purchase of the fully illustrated catalog, available through the Photo Review, 1-215-891-0214. Buyers may preview the auction on-line, and place bids at http://www.photoreview.org .

 

By Matt Damsker

THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY 1839-1885:
FROM DAGUERREOTYPE TO DRY-PLATE
By Keith F. Davis with contributions by Jane L. Aspinwall. Published to accompany the exhibition "Developing Greatness" at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak St., Kansas City, Missouri, through December 30, 2007. Hall Family Foundation/NAMA, distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven, Ct. 360 pages; 606 tritone and color illus.; ISBN No.: 978-0-300-12286-2. Information: http://www.yalebooks.com ; http://www.nelson-atkins.org .

"The world's first commercial daguerreotype studio was opened by Wolcott and Johnson in New York…and was functioning by the first week of February 1840, with Henry Fitz, Jr., as the camera operator," writes Keith F. Davis in this landmark exploration of the first generation of American photography, and that sentence tells you quite a bit about the thoroughness and authority Davis brings to this project. Though densely detailed, footnoted, and exhaustively researched, this is more than just another lacquered exhibition catalogue--indeed, for all its scholarly weight, it brings a remarkable narrative drive to what could be a dry dissertation.

That's because Davis, photography curator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum (abetted by assistant curator Jane Aspinwall), has an obviously passionate grasp of the global wonder and commercial vigor that attended the medium's invention in Europe--and its subsequent flowering in tandem with the American empire. For as much as photography had its roots in the rigorousness of the European academic and scientific traditions, once it crossed the ocean (and it did so relatively quickly, as Davis recounts successful American versions of Daguerre's complicated process within a few months of its official August 19, 1839, release in Paris), photography was quick to make the leap from technological novelty to commercial force.

Nothing could be more emblematic of this than the speed with which the aforementioned Alexander S. Wolcott and John Johnson, a dental supply manufacturer and a watchmaker, respectively, moved to advance the medium. According to Davis, Johnson showed Wolcott a summary of Daguerre's process one morning: "Within minutes, Wolcott conceived of a new camera design based on the principle of the reflecting (or Newtonian) telescope…[and] while other pioneers began by making the easiest views, Wolcott and Johnson's very first plate was a portrait: the Holy Grail of 1839 daguerreotypists."

Clearly, there's a great, juicy, All-American success story--many of them, in fact--at play here, and Davis is more than up to the task of charting photography's meteoric rise from curiosity to art form. By 1841, he notes, Southworth & Hawes would set up shop in Boston, propelling the medium to early heights of quality and innovation, well beyond their European contemporaries, with groundbreaking studio images that stretched the typical photographic plate, along with experiments outside of the studio, where they captured everything from cloud formations to medical procedures.

If anything, America--that vast continental canvas--was photography's competitive crucible, and Southworth & Hawes were hardly alone in bringing the medium to the masses. Davis offers a regional survey of the early leaders--from Boston through Philadelphia, New York (city and state), the South, West, California and the Pacific Coast--which directly reflected the nation's overall economic picture, as photography "radiated outward with the flow of population, commerce, and communication."

Along the way, countless photographers emerged, few of them destined to endure, but at least bringing critical mass, and in some cases potent energy and vision, to the medium. Davis notes, for example, how New York's Gabriel Harrison created ideal images inspired by motifs from art history and theater: "pioneering examples of a purely aesthetic approach--one that aimed to elevate the medium about its merely utilitarian applications. Such images represented a critical early salvo in what would be a long historical battle: the fight for photography's status as art."

Indeed, it was a specific long historical battle--the Civil War--that played the greatest role in advancing the cause of American photography. Davis charts the rise of paper photography as the key table-setter for what was to come. "In 1860, 3,154 Americans were working as photographers," he writes. "The daguerreotype had gone almost entirely out of fashion, replaced largely by the paper-print processes, including the inexpensive stereograph and carte-de-visite formats…A mass audience for photographs had begun to take shape on the eve of the Civil War."

Writing with expansiveness and factual command (note the well-placed preciseness of "3,154 Americans were working as photographers"), Davis brings a measured cadence to his subject that rivals the testamentary power of Ken Burns' great multimedia documentary, "The Civil War." Davis likewise deepens his narrative with verbatim reports from the era, evoking the texture and momentum of great events, as the war's great photographic names--Matthew Brady, George Barnard, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan--emerge as vital witnesses to a conflict that would mark the transition between ancient and modern warfare, thrusting photography to a new height of expressive power. Arguably, these Civil War images are the first visual element in the development of a tragic American realism that would fulfill itself a century later in the films of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and others; and while Davis doesn't make that particular argument, his text invites such interpretive leaps.

And his chapters on nature and culture--as scenic, topographic and promotional views established the grandeur of the American West in new ways—disclose the power and particulars of such scenic pioneers as Carleton E. Watkins, while his appreciation of the new art of portraiture--epitomized by the celebrity images of Napoleon Sarony--connect with today's cultural fixations. Ironically, the visual evidence that is the raison d'etre for Davis's study, while copiously and beautifully delivered in this project, is largely and maybe even tiresomely familiar, while Davis's insights and storytelling instinct bring an unexpected freshness to a subject that is usually hashed over and rehashed.


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.)