Besides a fine selection of 19th and 20th-century photographs, Artcurial | Briest-Poulain-F. Tajan will auction off an exceptional group of 30 autochrome plates on Tuesday, May 27 at 2:15 pm 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. The preview will be held May 23-26 from 11 am to 7 pm.

The featured autochrome group comes from a French private collection. Some of the highlights of this autochrome collection include: three very rare plates by Leon Gimbel, who donated nearly his entire body of work to the Société Française de Photographie. The three plates are: Feathers of Peacock, circa 1910, 15 X 9,80 cm (1,000-1,200 euro), Stained Glass, circa 1920, 9 X 12 cm (2,000-3,000 euro), and Christmas lights of Samaritaine, circa 1925, 9 X 12 cm (2,000-3,000 euro), which shows Gimbel's technical prowess by photographing the city's new neon gas lighting.

Several other important but anonymous autochromes include: Femme à l'éventail (Woman with Fan), circa 1910-1914, 12 x 9 cm; Le repos du guerrier (Repose of a Soldier), circa 1910-1914, 13 x 18 cm; Nature morte au champagne (Still life of Champagne) and Nature morte aux cigares (Still Life with Cigars), circa 1910-1914, 13 x 18 cm ; Orchidées (Orchids), 1914, 18 x 13 cm. All are estimated at 800-1,000 euro each.

Artcurial has had more focus on the autochrome than any other auction house, with previous sales in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that featured major images in this medium. It holds the current world auction record for an autochrome at 31,800 euro for a Portrait of Claude Monet at Giverny by Etienne Clémentel (estimated prior to the sale at 5 000-7 000 euro).

There are also 50 lots of 19th-century photography in this sale. One key 19th-century lot features an important waxed paper negative attributed to Louis Rémy Robert (1811-1882) or Victor Regnault (1810-1878). The negative shows the banks of the Seine as seen from the manufacturing facilities of Sevres, circa 1851 (43.5 X 54.5 cm). This surprisingly large negative is estimated at 17,000-19,000 euro.

Twentieth-century photographs in the auction include humanistic photography by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Willy Ronis and others.

A more complete list of photographers in the sale include: Anderson, Ackerman, Arbus, Almasy, Arnold, Atget, Bissons Freres, Beato, Bischof, Brake, Baldus, Blanc & Demilly, Bischof, Brake, Boubat, Burri, Bovis, Breitenbach, Baltz, Beard, Brehme, Bilordeaux, Briquet, Barta, Blok & Broekmans, Burrows, Brassaî, Blanquart-Evrard, Cuvelier, Cuccioni, Carr, Clifford, Charnay, Cartier-Bresson,Clergue, Capa, Clark, Colomb, Cohen, Clemmer, De Clercq, Deveria, Disderi, Davanne, Doyle, Doisneau, Druet, De Dienes, Davidson, Dederko, Erwitt, Famin, Freire, Figueroa, Fenton, Gimbel, Geoffray, Gastaldi, Groover, Giacomelli, Guerrero, Gutierrez-Korda, Gibson, Gorman, Henschel & Benque, Hajek-Halke, Heidersberger, Hanfstaengl, Harriet-Louise, Hujar, Jacques, Kotzsch, Karelin, Klein, Kertesz, Krull, Kertesz, Karekes, Koppitz, Kessels, Lehnert & Landrock, Lapow, Larrain, Le Boyer, Litran, Lebely, Lemaire, Liberman, Larsonn, Levin, Marville, McPherson, Muzet, Missonne, Makarius, Mannikko, Michel, Maar, Miller, Mulnier, Man Ray, Maxwell-Lyte, Nadar, Nixon, Normand, Perez-Bravo, Pecsi, Phillips, Quinet, Roman, Rousset, Robert, Riefenstahl, Rodger, Ronis, Renger-Patzch, Salzmann, Simelli, Salgado, Sudek, Steiner, Silvester, Szert, Schiller, Stern, Sturges, Steichen, Teynard, Tabard, Unwerth, Von Gloeden, Van-Lintweegee, Woodman and Zickmantel.

The catalogue for the auction is also 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).

 

Bloomsbury Auctions' first sale under its new Photography Department is dedicated entirely to photographs. The auction will be held on Thursday, May 22nd at 2 pm at the London auction house at Bloomsbury House, 24 Maddox Street, London.

On offer will be 230 lots of 19th and 20th-century portraiture, fashion, nudes, Hollywood icons, jazz musicians, street and humanist photography, photojournalism, technical, industrial and color studies, still lifes, and urban and landscape photography.

Highlights include two rare vintage Manuel Alvarez Bravo prints including "Los Leones de Coyoacæn (The Lions of Coyoacæ)", 1929, acquired by the present owner from the sale of the collection of Andre Breton, 2003 (Estimate £30,000-50,000); and Imogen Cunningham's Frida Kahlo Rivera, painter and wife of Diego Rivera (£8,000-12,000) and her "Triangles" (£6,000-8,000).

Portraiture by Julia Margaret Cameron in the sale includes a strong albumen print of Sir John Herschel, 1867, from the collection of Arnold Newman (£30,000-40,000), among other fine examples of 19th-century portraiture and landscapes.

A variety of Brassaï (Gyula Halasz) vintage photographs including prints from the personal collection of Mme. Gilberte Brassaï are showcased, including "L'oiseau de Feu' aux Folies Bergeres", c.1932 (£10,000-15,000).

A selection of rare exhibition prints from the "In Our Time Magnum Portfolio" from the only set ever offered as a collection of prints made available for public purchase will be offered. The selection of individual lots includes a rare 20 x 24 inch print by Henri Cartier-Bresson, "At the Coronation of King George VI, London", 1937 (£10,000-15,000). A number of other Cartier-Bresson prints are included in the auction with work from other photojournalists such as Eve Arnold, Ian Berry, Werner Bischof, Martine Franck, Dennis Stock, Elliot Erwitt, and Bruce Davidson (estimates between £1,000-2,000).

Fashion photographs are featured, including an unusual selection of 1950s vintage prints by Norman Parkinson for British Vogue (estimates £2500-3000). Other pieces include Horst P. Horst's "Mainbocher Corset, Paris", 1939, Richard Avedon's "Dorian Leigh, Schiaparelli Rhinestones, Pre-Catalan, Paris", August, 1949 (£2,000-3,000), William Klein's "Simone and Nina, Piazza di Spagna, Roma", 1960 (£2,000-3,000), and Guy Bourdin's Untitled (Woman and Heart), c.1979, (£5,000-7,000).

A selection of portraits of jazz and rock musicians including Annie Leibovitz's "John and Yoko, New York", December 8, 1980, (£18,000-22,000) and David Bailey's "Jagger", 1964 (£1,000-1,500) are offered, alongside lesser known photographers such as Bob Willoughby. A section of British photographers such as Fay Godwin, Grace Robertson, Thurston Hopkins and Shirley Baker will also be showcased.

Man Ray, Josef Sudek, Dr. Harold Eugene Edgerton, André Kertész, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tomio Seike, Larry Clark and Thomas Ruff are also represented in the sale.

The auction will be held on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 2 pm. You may view beforehand on Monday-Tuesday, May 19-20 from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm; Wednesday, May 21 from 9:30 am to 8 pm; and Thursday, May 22 9:30 am to 1 pm. You can also view by appointment from May 12th. To book an appointment call +44 (0) 20 7495 9494; or email zoe.bingham@bloomsburyauctions.com . To see the online catalogue and for more information, go to: http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/auction/651 .

 

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, a newly formed branch of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the legacy of African-Americans in America has acquired a very important collection of African-American photographs by Henry Clay Anderson.

Henry Clay Anderson was a professional photographer who lived and worked in Greenville, MS. His business, called the Anderson Photo Service, was founded in segregated Greenville in 1948. What makes his output unique is the fact that he documented a virtually ignored chapter in African-American history: a proud, dignified community of middle-class African-Americans that existed in his town, both before, and throughout, the Civil Rights Movement. This community of black Southerners considered themselves first-class citizens, despite living in a deeply hostile America.

Throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s Anderson was called upon to photograph every aspect of his relatively prosperous community: the daily lives of the men and women who built the Greenville schools, churches, and hospitals; weddings; funerals; sports events; proms; itinerant entertainers; a wide range of professionals at work; and, of course, studio portraits of individuals and families. His work had strong political overtones, especially when he shot events related to the Civil Rights movement.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture was signed into authorization by President George Bush in 2003, and Anderson's work comprises the first major collection acquired by the institution.

I Photo Central dealer Charles Schwartz, in conjunction with Shawn Wilson, were instrumental in saving Anderson's work for posterity.

A limited edition of images taken by the late Reverend Henry Clay Anderson are being offered in an edition of ten black and white gelatin silver prints by Charles Schwartz, the only known source of Anderson's oeuvre on the market. All were printed posthumously from Anderson's negatives by Laurent Girard. Prices range from $750¬to $1,200.

As a number of prints in the edition have already sold, please contact the gallery for an updated pricing structure.

To view the prints go to:
http://www.iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase_view.php/131/3/1 .

In 2002 Schwartz and Wilson organized the publication of the book Separate But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson, with essays by Clifton L. Taulbert, Mary Panzer, and Shawn Wilson, published by PublicAffairs, New York.

Each print sold is accompanied by a copy of the above publication.

For further information and prices, please contact the gallery at 1-212-534-4496, or at cms@cs-photo.com .

 

I will be traveling to the Paris and London photography auctions coming up this month. If you would like me to bring specific prints to see while I am in these cities and would like me to preview and/or bid for items at auction there, please call my office now. While I prefer to know now what you may want me to look over at the auction previews and provide bidding advice and assistance, you can still contact me up to about three days before the actual auction itself by either calling my Associate Director Marthe Smith at 1-215-822-5662 or me directly (after May 10) on my French mobile at 011-33-661-033-387. I will take a train to London on May 11.

My company Vintage Works, Ltd.'s auction services are charged at 5% of the successful hammer price against a minimum of $250 in Europe (you are only billed for one or the other, not both). The minimum includes items that you are unsuccessful for or those that we warn you off of. The minimum is the same for one item or five items per auction. In other words, it is only $250 total (not per lot) to check out up to five auction lots (for more than five lots, please call). Additional lots will be at a negotiated minimum. Usually, if you want us to actually bid for you, you will have to fax your details to the auction house with a signed authorization for us to do this. That is one of the reasons why it is best not to wait until the last few days. We never accept competing bids for the same lot and will only accept one client per lot to avoid any conflicts.

 

Photographer CLAUDIA KUNIN will discuss her latest work, "Myth," and address the challenges of creating 3-d photographs at Modernbook Gallery on May 16 from 6 to 9 pm.

Contemporary Works also represents Kunin and you can find her work at: http://www.contemporaryworks.net/artists/artist_imgs.php/1/6782 .

Kunin is also part of a two woman show with Mary Daniel Hobson, which runs till June 3rd at Modernbooks, which is located at 494 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA.


Works by award-winning, fine art landscape photographer, MITCH DOBROWNER, who is represented by Contemporary Works, will be featured during a 12-week exhibition in the Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, San Diego, CA.

An Artists' Reception with live music and refreshments will open the show to the public on Saturday, May 17, 2008 from 11 am to 1 pm, at no charge. The exhibit, a collaborative effort between the Ordover Gallery and San Diego Natural History Museum, will continue through August 3, 2008, showcasing "Enraptured" a 28-piece collection from Dobrowner’s unique and eerily surreal North American black and white photographic landscapes. The gallery will also feature glass sculptor and San Diego native, Dick Ditore, and photographers, Richard Garrod and Robert Walter, who have teamed up to present a collaborative work for this show.

Dobrowner’s photographic works featured in the San Diego show include images of the American Southwest, landscapes of Arizona, Joshua Tree (CA), and Los Angeles cityscapes.

You can see Dobrowner's work at: http://www.contemporaryworks.net/artists/artist_imgs.php/1/6597 .


CAY SOPHIE RABINOWITZ, who was appointed artistic director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach less than a year ago, has resigned from the fair with less than five weeks to go to her inaugural edition in Basel. Moving forward, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach will be led by Annette Schönholzer (formerly Director, Operations and Finance) and Marc Spiegler (formerly Director of Strategy and Development). Both now share the title Co-Director, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach.


According to the LA Times, long-time Los Angeles art dealer G. RAY HAWKINS has been sentenced to federal prison for tax crimes. Hawkins was sentenced late last month by United States District Judge Dean D. Pregerson to spend 12 months and one day in prison for participating in a conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. The art dealer was ordered to serve 36 months on supervised release upon completing his prison sentence and was ordered to pay $35,042 in restitution to the IRS, according the LA Times story.