Van Ham's 235th auction, which will focus on "Photography", will be held Friday, October 29th at 6 pm. The preview will take place from Friday-Thursday, October 22-28, up to 6 pm and on Friday, October 29 until 1 pm.

The auction contains more than 270 works from the 19th- through the 21st- century.

One of the most important lots is a very rare edition by Bernd and Hilla Becher, published in 1968 by the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach in a limited edition of 55 examples.

Besides important examples of photographs of architecture by Hugo Schmölz, the auction will feature prints by August Sander, Ilse Bing, Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as Andrè Kertesz, Herbert List and Weegee.

For more information and to order catalogues, contact: Van Ham Fine Art Auctions, Schönhauser Str. 10-16, D-50968 Cologne, Germany; phone +49 221 92 58 62-0; Fax: +49 (221) 92 58 62-4; email: info@van-ham.com . The expert here is Mrs. Anne Gantefuehrer-Trier.
 

I Photo Central dealers Charles Schwartz, Ltd. and Vintage Works, Ltd. will be among the nearly 40 photography dealers and galleries exhibiting at Photo New York on Thursday through Sunday, October 14-17 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, located at 125 W. 18th St., New York City.

Charles Schwartz, Ltd. will have two major Smith photographs displayed in his booth and will have 25 other key Smith prints available for viewing. These prints come from a private archive, and many are original, vintage prints that Smith sent back from Minamata, Japan while he was working there, including the famous photograph of Tomoko Uemura. Several prints contain notes from Smith to his dealer and other directions meant for his studio. A few prints in this group are oversized (larger than 16 x 20 in.), which was a format that Smith only used for museum exhibition prints. These were backup ("emergency") prints made for Smith's major retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1971, entitled "Let Truth Be the Prejudice," which was organized by Cornell Capa.

Vintage Works, Ltd. will feature the contemporary large-scale color work of Marcus Doyle, as well as top vintage images, including a large group of Julia M. Camerons, an extensive selection of images by Belgium pictorialist Leonard Misonne and French modernist Laure Albin-Guillot. We will also exhibit two important daguerreotypes by Joseph-Philbert Girault de Prangey and a daguerreotype of a Japanese sailor. Other 19th-century masterworks that will be shown include top images from Auguste Salzman, Louis De Clercq, Capt. Linnaeus Tripe, Charles Negre, Dr. John Murray, Gustave Le Gray, Francis Frith (mammoth plates), Adolphe Bertsch, Charles Marville, Col. Langlois, Henri Lesecq and Hill & Adamson--just to mention a few. Twentieth-century vintage prints will be on display by Bill Brandt, Andre Kertesz, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Walker Evans, Ilse Bing, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Marcel Bovis, Willy Ronis, Inge Morath, Brett Weston, Maurice Tabard, Jean Moral, Imogen Cunningham, Brassai, Clarence White and many others. Come see us in booth 29. Please let us know if there is something particular that you would like us bring to the show.

The show will kick off with a reception hosted by actor Matt Dillon and actor/producer Fisher Stevens on Thursday, October 14 from 6 to 9 p.m. to benefit the Jewish Museum in New York City, in honor of its centennial. Tickets to the reception are $75 and are available for purchase at the door or in advance by calling 1-212-423-3267. Proceeds from the opening reception will benefit the Museum's Photography Acquisitions Fund.

Regular exhibition hours are Friday, October 15 and Saturday, October 16, 11 am to 7 pm and Sunday, October 17, 11 am to 6 pm. Tickets are $15 for a one-day pass and $25 for a three-day pass. But if you print out this article and present it at registration you will get these tickets at the reduced rates of $10 and $15 respectively. This special rate is only available on site, but remember to bring your printout.
 

Be-hold's catalog/internet auction No. 44 will end on Friday, October 8th. Most bidding will take place on the website, as part of "On-line-auction week" (see the previous newsletter for details). As usual for this auction, it contains a mixture of historical and artistic material--from daguerreotypes to 20th-century prints.

The striking cover lot, for example, is a rare large (48" x 19") hand-colored lithograph portrait of Andrew Jackson, based on a lost daguerreotype, with photographic-looking features and stylized painting. The offerings of daguerreotypes include a pair of lovely portraits of Catherine Beck van Cortlandt, Mistress of the Van Cortlandt Manor House in New York State and a portrait (by Cook) of the son of the Reverend Paul Trepier of Charleston, who established the first place of worship in the City expressly for black slaves.

Some of the cabinet cards and stereo views, which feature Indians and Western history, are images of striking scenes and portraits by masters such as Timothy O'Sullivan, Grabill, and A. Frank Randall. A large 1877 albumen print by Muybridge of the Palace of the President in Panama is a wonderful formal architectural study with figures. The scarce and important four-volume 1873-74 "Illustrations of China and its People" by John Thompson is not only a significant representation of China to a western audience, based on Thompson's five-year stay, but contains 200 "collotype" illustrations--many of which have a beauty that transcends mere documentation.

The 20th-century offerings include many examples of documentary and press photographs by some of the modern masters. They are both historic and examples of photographic art. There are prints by Lewis Hine (a vintage print of "Hartford Schoolboys,"), Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. There are five self-portraits by Margaret Bourke-White and other prints by Robert Doisneau, Philippe Halsman, Gisele Freund and others. There is a unique 1942 print by Arthur Siegel of a 1942 war effort shipyard scene and a limited, possibly unique 1964 portfolio by Sol Libsohn, founder of the Photo League in the 1930's, dealing with a project in Newark, NJ to rehabilitate out-of-work youth.

There are also many photographs that are more purely aesthetic. A stereoscopic daguerreotype by T. R. Williams is a visual tour de force arrangement of exotic objects. Its title is "Enraged Cockatoo or a Chinese Ball in Danger." There is a small and varied selection of stereoviews of flowers from the great Sam Wagstaff collection (see Be-hold E-mail Newsletter No. 10). In addition, there are Western scenes by Jackson and Hileman (Glacier Park), and an interesting early Ansel Adams' Yosemite scene that was used to advertise horseback riding at the Yosemite lodge.

Typical of the surprising offerings that characterize the Be-hold sales are several uncut sheets of color postcards that--as objects--are far more interesting and "modern" than the postcards themselves.

Some wonderful groups of photographs cover early 20th-century popular dance (Irene Castle, Leonora Hughes) and cinema (Constance and Norma Talmadge). Aspects of later cinema are represented by an Eisenstaedt photograph of Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando on a set, and a 1961 photograph of the great Japanese director Kurasowa. Musical, artistic and literary subjects include Frida Kahlo, Jorge Luis Borges, Stravinsky, Giacometti and Marian Anderson.

In addition to the printed catalog ($20 for a sample issue, regular subscription $50 for three issues in North America and $70 elsewhere) that provides an enduring informative record, everything is presented on the http://www.be-hold.com/ web site. For those who want to bid on line, it is easy to register and to bid, as well as to sign up for the free Be-hold E-mail Newsletter dealing with issues of collecting photographs.

The sale continues with an on-line only sale of a generous collection of minature cases, with a few additions, including a beautiful unpublished mother-of-pearl and painting-under-glass example and some related objects, including a petite hair bracelet with a daguerreotype. That sale closes the on October 9th, the day after the regular sale. These sales are part of On-line Photography Week ( http://photographyweek.com/ ). See http://www.be-hold.com for catalog subscription and bidding registration. Or contact Larry Gottheim at 1-914-423-5806 or by email at behold@be-hold.com .
 

After I wrote about the London auction sales two newsletters ago, some further news drifted my way. It was confirmed that Sheik Al Thani did not bid in the Christie's Girault de Prangey sale, apparently due to "some physical problems" as a source mysteriously told me.

Meanwhile the J. Paul Getty Museum was telephone bidder 904. The museum chose very well, taking the "superb" plate of the Wind Tower (lot 19), the "fabulous" daguerreotype of the Wall near the Pool of Bethesda (lot 28), and the "weird but really neat" dag of checkered detail at the complex of Sultan Qala'un. The quoted descriptives were from my handwritten notes to myself in my catalogue.

The three new purchases brought the Getty's total Girault de Prangeys to 15. But, as I surmised in my newsletter, the Getty too was taken by surprise at this auction: "Institutions have to focus on their highest priorities at auction and plan their spending based on precedent rather than guesswork. This well-established practice limits flexibility when price levels are lower than expected." In other words, the Getty was expecting the Sheik to blow them out of the water again and did not expect prices to be so reasonable. In fact, the department noted, "The sale was a wonderful buying opportunity for individual collectors." I agree, but most collectors were also taken off guard.

The Bonham's London auction also got some clarification as the Australian press reported that the buyers for the large group of Australian aborigines were an anonymous Australian couple from Sydney's eastern suburbs (see below for a further note on another Australian aborigine image that makes news).
 

An important 1847c daguerreotype of two Australian aborigine women (not men as the English seller mistakenly identified the pair) sold for $18,664 earlier this week on eBay. The item was fought over by primarily three parties, including agents for two Australian museums (the underbidder was apparently an Australian collector of Australian material). The National Gallery of Victoria was the ultimate winner in this battle.

The work has been identified as being taken by Douglas Kilburn, Victoria's first commercial photographer. Dr. Isobel Crombie, curator of photography for the National Gallery of Victoria told me by email, "Over the years I have bought two other daguerreotypes from this series, which are in fact the first extant portraits of Indigenous people taken in this country. They are of immense aesthetic and cultural importance to us here in Australia, so I am over the moon that we were successful...Kilburn is my 'holy grail' so I have to say that I would have pulled out all stops to get it."

This is the third related aborigine piece by Kilburn to become a part of the museum's collection.

This piece was clearly related to a pair of Kilburn aborigine's sold at Sotheby's London in May 1999. One sold to the National Gallery of Victoria and the other, which was a trio of women, which included two of the women in this latest daguerreotype, sold to collector Michael Wilson.
 

The Photo Review Charity Benefit auction of vintage and contemporary photography will get a special New York City preview at the Sarah Morthland Gallery from Tuesday, October 12 to Thursday, October 14. The location of the gallery is at 511 W. 25th St, Suite 704, New York City. The hours are from 11 am to 5:30 pm.

A fully illustrated catalogue is available for $12 from the Photo Review, 140 East Richardson Ave., Suite 301, Langhorne, PA 19047-2824. Hundreds of top photographers are represented in the sale. You can order a catalogue from the Photo Review at 1-215-891-0214 or by email at info@photoreview.org . The 2004 catalogue will eventually also be available online at: http://www.photoreview.org/auction.htm , but it will not be up for several weeks.

The regular preview and the auction itself will be held at the Dorrance-Hamilton Building, University of the Arts, Broad and Pine Streets, Philadelphia, PA. The preview will be on November 5th from 11 am to 5 pm and on November 6th from 11 am to 6 pm with the auction following at 7 pm.
 

Bruce Silverstein has moved his gallery to 535 West 24th St, New York, NY and will open his inaugural exhibition "Topographics: Photographs from 1844 to the Present" on October 2 with a reception from 6-8 pm. The exhibition will run until November 13.

Silverstein also announced that he is now representing the estates of Andre Kertesz and Robert Doisneau.

The phone number for the gallery is 1-212-627-3930. Hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm, and on Tuesdays by appointment.
 

I am still looking for a new assistant director. The person should be located in or be willing to locate to the Bucks County area north of Philadelphia, PA. The ideal background should include knowledge of photography and photo history; and good people, computer and business skills. Job can be three to five days per week, but assistance at several shows during the year is required. Please send your resume and salary history by email to me at anovak@comcat.com .