CHRISTIE'S PHOTOGRAPHY AUCTION : Previews March 31 – April 2, 2019

Patti Smith, 1978

Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe

from a Portfolio of Twelve Photogravures

by Roy DeCarava, 1956

 Lungile Cleo Dladla, 2011

Photograph by Zanele Muholi

 

 Siqourney Weaver, 1983

Photograph by Helmut Newton

Reflecting, 2006

Photograph by Mona Kuhn

Time Out and Before the Storm from Domestic Vacations, 2005

Photographs by Julie Blackmon

DPRK 001, Li Min Gyong, 

Pyongyang Schoolchildren's Palace, North Korea, 2006

Photograph by Hiroshi Watanabe

Identity #1, 2014

Photograph by Ruud Van Empel

My School of Visual Arts Photography students in front of 

Photographs from a Private Collection

Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs at Christie’s 

working with clients at the Auction Preview, March 29, 2019

Photographer Rania Matar with Darius Himes, 

Christie’s International Head of Photographs

Shells 6S, 1927

Photograph by Edward Weston

Kiki Silhouette, Positive, 1922-1938

Rayograph by Man Ray

If you love photography, do not miss Christie’s Photography Auction Preview! It is absolutely magical … over 300 photographs span the history of photography from salt prints to the most contemporary images and glorious prints from 3 Collections!

Daydreaming: 

Photographs from the Goldstein Collection

The Face of the Century: 

Photographs from a Private Collection

Photographs

Christie’s International Photography

20 Rockefeller Center (49th St), NY, NY

On View:

30 Mar, 10am - 5pm

31 Mar, 1pm - 5pm

1 Apr, 10am - 5pm

Auction: Tuesday, April 2, 2019

MODERN VISIONS | Exceptional Photographs: Christie's Auction

Edward Steichen, In Memoriam, 1901
Estimate $400,000-600,000

Edward Weston, Knees, 1927
Estimate $100,000-150,000

Roger Fenton, Images from the Crimean War, 1856

Salt prints mounted on original paper

(estimate $2,500-3,500)

Tom Gitterman checking out the photographs for his GittermanGallery clients at Christie’s "Modern Visions: Exceptional Photographs" Auction Viewing.

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1927

(estimate $5,000-7,000)

Christie’s Darius Himes, International Head of Photography (left); Christies Deputy Chairman, Philippe Garner (center); with Gitterman Gallery owner Tom Gitterman at Christie’s "Modern Visions: Exceptional Photographs" Auction Viewing. 

If you love Photography, don’t miss Christie’s "Modern Visions: Exceptional Photographs" auction viewing. The early history of photography is represented as well as contemporary work. Almost 300 photographs, each one extraordinary. CHRISTIE'S, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, NY, NY

CHRISTIE’S 

Modern Visions: Exceptional Photographs

20 Rockefeller Plaza, NY NY

 

Viewing Times
Feb 16, 10:00am - 5:00pm
Feb 17, 10:00am - 5:00pm

Auction Times
Feb 17, 6:00pm, Lots 1-69
Feb 18, 10:00am, Lots 100-201
Feb 18, 2:00pm, Lots 202-309

Buy or download the auction catalog!

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: THROUGH THE LENS. Scheinbaum + Russek, Santa Fe

Eliot Porter (1901 - 1990)
Georgia O'Keeffe with Bust by Mary Callery,
Ghost Ranch, 1945
Gelatin silver print

Todd Webb (1905 - 2000)
On the Portal of O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch House, 1962
Gelatin silver print 

Eliot Porter (1901 - 1990)
White Boulder, Black Place, New Mexico, 1945
Gelatin silver print 

Todd Webb (1905 - 2000)

Georgia O'Keeffe's Studio at the Abiquiu House, New Mexico, 1962

Dye-transfer print

 Myron Wood (1921 - 1991)

Miss O'Keeffe, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1980

Gelatin silver print

Long recognized as one of the world’s leading artists, in her personal life she protected her privacy and maintained an air of inaccessibility and an almost reverential approach to her immediate surroundings. Scheinbaum + Russek’s Georgia O’Keeffe: Through the Lens exhibition focuses on the work of three photographers: Eliot Porter, Todd Webb and Myron Wood – all friends of Georgia O’Keeffe and all who were invited by her to photograph. Each photographer chose a different approach and in total this exhibition offers the viewer a glimpse into her private life and immediate surroundings in her home, studio and landscape.

Eliot Porter shared with O’Keeffe a love for New Mexico, it’s culture and landscape, and he, like O’Keeffe, incorporated this environment into their own art. Their deep respect for each other and life-long friendship enabled Porter to make intimate and striking portraits of O’Keeffe.  They shared an aesthetic, a life-style and a passion for living and working in New Mexico.  O’Keeffe introduced Eliot Porter to many unique sights in New Mexico that had been inspirational to her, among them the Black Place and the White Place.  Porter, in turn, shared many of his loves of the southwest with O’Keeffe by including her on several of his journeys through the Glen Canyon area. Porter had met O’Keeffe in New York while exhibiting at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery An American Place in 1939.

Todd Webb and his wife Lucille lived in Santa Fe in the l960′s and ran a wonderful bookshop and photography gallery on Canyon Road.  Having met Stieglitz and O’Keeffe in New York, the Webb’s first came to explore New Mexico by O’Keeffe’s invitation.  Over the years of their close friendship Todd Webb was able to record O’Keeffe’s life-style and surroundings with the intimacy that only a most welcomed friend could have made.  His work explores her home, her studio and the surroundings that inspired many of her paintings.  His photographs span their thirty-year friendship, dating from 1955 to 1981.

In 1979, Georgia O’Keeffe permitted Myron Wood to photograph her home in Abiquiu and in Ghost Ranch.  New Mexico, its fierce light and big, open skies, it’s directness and toughness were qualities that O’Keeffe herself possessed.  Myron Wood has captured those qualities in his beautiful photographs that are a tribute to O’Keeffe. Wood made hundreds of pictures, of the artist herself, the people closest to her, and most especially of the house, gardens, and surrounding landscape that was so elemental to O’Keeffe’s vision.  These photographs do more than merely document the look of the house; they evoke the spirit of the place, as O’Keeffe inhabited it. (text courtesy Scheinbaum + Russek)

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: THROUGH THE LENS
January 23rd – March 5th, 2016
Scheinbaum + Russek

369 Montezuma, #345
Santa Fe, New Mexico

HOW I LOOK AT PHOTOGRAPHS: A Conversation With Elizabeth Avedon + Sean Perry

Skyping into Austin, Texas

 © Kim Felsher. All Rights Reserved

Photography Students, Austin, Texas

© Kim Felsher. All Rights Reserved

Many thanks to Sean Perry and his group of Austin Photography students, The Picture Review team, for hosting “How I look at Photographs, a Conversation with Elizabeth Avedon and Sean Perry” via Skype.

We first discussed our favorite photographs and their respective series, beginning with Perry’s choices including: Brassai’s “Paris at Night”, Irving Penn’s “Cigarettes” and “Mouth (for L’Oréal)”, Saul Leiter’s “Paris” as well as work by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Matt Mahurin, Doug and Mike Starn, Ken Schles and Joel Peter-Witkin.

I spoke about some of my favorite photographers and projects, including Mike Brodie's "A Period of Juvenile Prosperity", Emily Shur's "Untitled Japan", Deborah Luster's "One Big Self", Debbie Fleming Caffery's "The Spirit + The Flesh", Vivian Maier and many others. Also about my work and background on designing and editing for both the wall and the page “In The American West”, by Richard Avedon and the grande fashion images in, “Avedon: Photographs, 1947-1977”.

I shared my thoughts on design, editing, sequencing – how we connect with certain images and working with large groups of photographs, including an ongoing project I am designing and developing with Mr. Perry, Fotopolis.

Edition One - The Picture Review 

The Picture Review is a unique, interactive call for entry crafted by Sean Perry and Kathryn Watts-Martinez. It was awarded an Innovation Grant for it’s content, debuting during the 2013 Fall Semester in the photography program at Austin Community College.

Perry goes on to say, “It simply connects aspiring high school photographers with my students serving as mentors – focusing on the intersection of skills where contemporary practice is flourishing – language, visual literacy, technology, craft and community. It provides the opportunity for students to gain experience curating and editing previously unseen pictures – deeply challenging their visual language and skills. This type of exposure and cross-discipline learning offers a unique experience for my students and also speaks to the photography communities tradition of portfolio review.”

"The college students administer and run a call for entry, curate submissions into the department print show and produce exhibition prints from the images they select – including all of the details and considerations that demands. The team provides critiques and mentorship for all of the high school submissions, recording interactive screencast videos for each participant. These are uploaded for the high school students to receive privately, which they can then review and choose to share. In turn this process enhances the skill-set and language of my students, improving their own class critiques and photographic practice."

"Ms. Watts-Martinez and I are running this project as a journal and building additional course curriculum around it’s implementation. Edition One completes this Fall and Edition Two will launch in the new year. We have been thrilled with the creativity and quality of work we are receiving from the high schools and so proud of the work my students are doing! They have invested themselves fully and I see growth everywhere – it is inspiring and a joy to watch."

Sean Perry Website

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM: A Handmade Book from 21st Editions

 

 Imogen Cunningham - Veiled Woman, 1910

Imogen Cunningham -  

The Wood Beyond the World, 1910

Imogen Cunningham - The Dream, 1910

In 2012, 21st Editions and the Imogen Cunningham Trust announced, Imogen Cunningham: Platinum / Palladium, the first in a trilogy of books on the work of Imogen Cunningham, one of the most important women in the history of photography.   

And now in 2013, Imogen Cunningham: Symbolist with Poetry and Prose by William Morris, is the second book in this trilogy. The components of this completely handmade book will include:

* 3 loose Imogen Cunningham Estate prints (shown above): Veiled Woman, 1910; The Dream, 1910;  and The Wood Beyond the World, 1910 each printed at approximately 9 1/2 x 12 inches with the Imogen Cunningham chop and Estate stamp.

* 10 bound Imogen Cunningham Estate Prints printed in gum arabic and platinum of Cunningham's early Symbolist work (1905-1915), as shown below. These prints will also include the chop and Estate stamp.

* 1 frontispiece nude self-portrait of Imogen Cunningham.

* Poetry and Prose by William Morris, with an introductory note by John Wood, printed letterpress on handmade Twinrocker paper.

* Hand-bound by master binder Sarah Creighton

Should you want a copy of this title for your collection, the price is $8500. A deposit is required: contact Pam or Steve  #508-398-3000

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Imogen Cunningham Retrospective

Kulturhuset, Stockholm 

May 24 - September 8

A retrospective of Imogen Cunningham's work will open on May 24th in Stockholm at Kulturhuset. This exhibition, in collaboration with the Fundación Mapfre and La Fábrica, brings together approximately two hundred photographs, some unpublished and rarely seen, from the Imogen Cunningham Trust as well as several museums. Works from Imogen Cunningham: Symbolist are part of this exhibition including The Wood Beyond the World, 1910; Self Portrait, 1906; and Marsh at Dawn, 1905-1906.  
 

ELISABETH BIONDI | Beyond Words: Photography In The New Yorker

The Embrace, 1952
Photograph by Milton H. Greene

Costume Party, New York, 2002

Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at home on the Rue de Fleurus, 1921
Photograph by Man Ray

CURATED BY ELISABETH BIONDI

"Beyond Words: Photography in The New Yorker"

HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY

"The New Yorker Magazine began to publish photographs in 1992, under the editorial direction of Tina Brown. At that time, the only photographer the magazine employed was Richard Avedon. The first Avedon photograph that the magazine ran was his iconic 1963 portrait of Malcolm X. The exhibition opens with this photograph and from that, an enlightening, visual history of photography in the magazine ensues.

In 1996, Elisabeth Biondi arrived at The New Yorker with a mandate to expand the presence of photography in the magazine. She contracted a small group of photographers to shoot on a regular basis, employed numerous others on an occasional basis and drew from a multitude of esoteric, often historical sources to locate images that richly illustrate the magazine’s multi-faceted content. For fifteen years, Biondi presented photographs that heightened the experience of reading the articles for which the magazine has been respected, treasured and enjoyed.

The work of staff photographers Ruven Afanador, Mary Ellen Mark, Gilles Peress, Platon, Robert Polidori, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Max Vadukul, are all represented in the exhibition. From Afanador’s whimsical portrait of Mario Batali, published in the popular “Food Issue” to Polidori’s hauntingly beautiful Havana, Cuba interior and Gilles Peress’ wrenching coverage of Kosovo, these photographers produced pictures that, through publication in the magazine, became permanently etched in our collective, visual consciousness.

Also present in the exhibition are portraits by Irving Penn, William Klein, Duane Michals, Harry Benson, Brigitte Lacombe, Ethan Levitas, and others. The exhibition includes powerful images by some of the boldest photo-journalists of our time: Thomas Dworzak’s work from Afghanistan, Benjamin Lowy’s from Iraq, Marcus Bleasdale’s from Darfur, Samantha Appleton’s from Lagos, Joao Pina’s from Brazil and Ami Vitale’s from Kashmir. The historical section of the exhibition includes rarely seen photographs from the former Soviet Union, the Time Life Archive, Martin Munkacsi, Robert Doisneau, Lord Snowdon, Alexander Liberman, and Horst P. Horst, among others.

The third section of the exhibition includes images from the page at the front of the magazine’s opening section, “Goings on About Town,” which, each week, features a color photograph that in a delightful and quirky manner, illustrates an event occurring in New York City that week. Photographers in this section include Sylvia Plachy, Lisa Kereszi, Brian Finke, Landon Nordeman, Gus Powell, Yola Manakhov, Martine Fougeron and Martynka Wawrzyniak." –Howard Greenberg Gallery, thru October 22

About Elisabeth Biondi on La Lettre de la Photographie

ANNE WILKES TUCKER: Curator of Photography The Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Portrait of Anne Tucker. Todd France/ Photo: © MFAH
La Lettre de la Photographie: Interview With Anne Wilkes Tucker

Anne Wilkes Tucker by Elizabeth Avedon
Coup de Coeur La Lettre de la Photographie

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Anne Wilkes Tucker was named “America’s Best Curator,” by Time Magazine a decade ago. Tucker, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, may now be one of the foremost Curator’s of Photography in the world. Thanks to her curatorial wisdom, curiosity and scholarly research, she has built the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Photography Collection from virtually no photographs when she started in 1976, to one of the finest collections in the world. With over 26,000 images, including masters Andre Kertesz, Josef Sudek, Edward Steichen, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, Tucker has also had the foresight to collect many lesser known international and emerging artists on the cusp of success whose careers have since taken off in the public eye.

This week, the first large-scale U.S. exhibition of Helmut Newton’s photographs will premiere at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston on July 3rd. The exhibition features the entire contents from Helmut Newton´s first three groundbreaking books: White Women (1976), Sleepless Nights (1978), and Big Nudes (1981). I spoke with Ms. Tucker just before she began hanging the upcoming Newton show.

Elizabeth Avedon: How did the Helmut Newton show originate?

Anne Wilkes Tucker: The Museum has a very close working relationship with Manfred Heiting. We purchased his Collection of photographs in 2002 and have continued to work with him since then. Heiting and Helmut Newton were close friends. In discussion with Helmut’s wife, June Newton, June came up with the idea of showing all the photographs in Newton’s first three books, which were really the beginning of his fame in the photo world. He had certainly been a fashion photographer before that, but White Women, Sleepless Nights and Big Nudes really cemented his influence and status, so that’s what we are showing. Manfred had organized a big show of Newton’s work in Berlin before that traveled all over Europe, but Newton had never really had a large show of his work in the U.S. ICP had had a smaller show, but this will be the first major exhibition of his work. Of the two hundred and six photographs in this show, some of them are very large at 6.5’ x 4.75’ feet. It will be a very full exhibition.

EA: What Newton images stand out for you in this exhibition?

Anne Wilkes Tucker: One of the things I thought was interesting that I enjoyed learning when I did the research for my essay in the show, was how Newton, not always, but frequently took the setting and models from a fashion shoot, and then after he’d done the work for the magazine, either disrobed the model or altered the dress, like slit it all the way up to the hip or something, how the boundary between those two lines kept shifting for him. Less in Big Nudes, as Big Nudes was a specific project that he did not for the fashion magazines, but something he conceived and carried out. But for Sleepless Nights and White Women they would sometimes start as fashion and he would take photographs for himself out of the same material, and how he redirected one in one direction, and one in the other, but knowing it’s market. (read more)

Beaumont Newhall, Hollis Frampton, Estelle Jussim, John Szarkowski, Anne Wilkes Tucker and Peter Bunnell: panelists for Ruth K. Shartle Memorial Symposium, October 26–28, 1979. Courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

EA: What was your professional history before the Museum of Fine Arts Houston?

Anne Wilkes Tucker: I majored in art history in college. I got interested in photography, so I was the photographer for the yearbook and the newspaper in college, and then got a second undergraduate degree as a photographer at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I didn’t think I was a very good photographer when I got around other photographers, so I moved across town where Nathan Lyons was beginning what became the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. I got an MFA in photo history studying with Nathan and Beaumont Newhall at the George Eastman House (Newhall founded the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1935; and was Curator and Director of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester), and then I had an internship at the Modern (MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art) working with John Szarkowski and Peter Bunnell, so I was really lucky. And in the summers I was in graduate school, I worked in the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas. So in a very short period of time, I had access to the Collections at the Eastman House, at the Museum of Modern Art, and at the Gernsheim Collection. I really had an extraordinary exposure to the history of photography in those three Collections.

EA: In creating the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Photography Collection, were you influenced by your work with Newhall, who built the early MoMA Photography Collection?

Anne Wilkes Tucker: You just can’t separate the influence of Beaumont, Nathan and John. I learned such different approaches from all three. Beaumont was the historian. There’s so much more written about photography now than there was then. Back then it was a matter of spending hours and hours and hours going through original documents just to track down people. I learned from Beaumont how to do that and to organize it coherently and think about it and place it in context.

John, who was certainly one of the great writers, was not a researcher, he was not an historian the way Beaumont was, but John was such a disciplined thinker and he had such clear ideas about what was and what was not a photographer, or good photography.

Nathan was much more willing to look at a broad range of expressions in photography and embrace them. The kinds of shows that Nathan did were much more varied and much more universal than the kind of photographers that John embraced, so in a way working for the three of them so early forced me to find my own path. (read more)

Two of Tucker's over 40 books and essays

(left) Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia. (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and New York Graphic Society books/Little, Brown and Co, 1986). Editor: Anne Tucker. Associate Editor: Phillip Brookman. (right) Louis Faurer. (Merrell Publishers in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002). Authors: Anne Wilkes Tucker with Lisa Hostetler and Kathleen V. Jameson

EA: How did your Robert Frank Exhibition in 1986 come about?

Anne Wilkes Tucker: In 1983-84 we were able to make some rather extraordinary acquisitions. We purchased Bill Larson’s Collection of Maholy-Nagy, and we purchased a private Collection of work around the Bauhaus, and we purchased the Collection of John Heartfield AIZ Magazines, and we purchased the complete set of Robert Frank’s The Americans. Part of the agreement with Robert Frank was in purchasing The Americans we’d be able to do a show. Robert asked I do the show with Philip Brookman, which I was happy to do, that began a friendship that continues today. He’s the Chief Curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. now. That show, and the film we did on Robert too, all came out of being able to purchase the set of The Americans. (read more)

Dr. Peter Marzio, Director of MFAH 1982-2010
Courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Audrey Jones Beck Building, North & West Facades. Architect: José Rafael Moneo. Photo: © MFAH

Anne Wilkes Tucker: Two things I would add. If I’m going to talk about mentors, and I’ve mentioned John and Nathan, I really have to mention Peter Marzio, who was my Director from 1982 to last Fall 2010 when he died suddenly.

When he came in 1982, the endowment was one million dollars, and when he died, the endowment was one billion. And that doesn’t include building two new buildings, finishing the Cullen Sculpture Garden (designed by Isamu Noguchi), all the art we bought, or all the exhibitions that we did. So if I’m going to mention mentors, I’m going to mention Peter, because he was major. He understood the importance of Photography to the 20th century. He was just so supportive, there is no way I could have done research on Brassai for four years and research on Japanese Photography for five years without the generous support of the Museum. I got the credit, but he’s the one who stood behind us all and made it possible. He understood and he got it.

I had plenty of invitations to leave the Museum, but I always told Peter, “You stay, I’ll stay,” because he was such an extraordinary man and visionary Director, incredibly supportive of his staff and of all of us in terms of staying with us. Some of these projects had really up and down rides, not all of them came easily, and Peter stayed with us. If we were in it for the haul, then he was in it for the haul. He was such a brilliant man that he was really great to go to when you were struggling conceptually with something, to bounce ideas off of him.

The other was Director here, William Agee. Bill was the one who hired me. The delightful part is he was so supportive of photography. He grew up next door to Barbara Morgan (American photographer and co-founder of Aperture Magazine) and had seen photographs on the wall, and knew people who regarded themselves as artists who were photographers, from his early age. Before he came here, Bill was at the Pasadena Museum of Art where he also acquired photography.

Both men were wonderful; it’s just that Peter was here so much longer. –La Lettre de la Photographie

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The Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Helmut Newton: White Women • Sleepless Nights • Big Nudes
July 3, 2011 – Sep 25, 2011

GUSTAVE LE GRAY 1820-1884: Paris Auction Results

Sold: 300 000 Euros
Grande Vague. Cette n°17. (Sète), Spring 1857

Sold: 210 000 Euros
Ciel chargé. Mediterranean Sea No. 16, Spring 1857

Sold: 25 000 Euros
Pont du Carrousel, seen from the Pont Royal, Paris, circa 1859

ART 75 - YVES DI MARIA - PARIS
Results of Dec 18 Photography Auction

Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray (August 30, 1820 – July 30, 1884) has been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century because of his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, his role as the teacher of other noted photographers, and the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture making." He made his first daguerreotypes in 1847. Opening a lavish studio in 1855, Le Gray became the official photographer of Napoleon III. His most famous work dates from 1856 to 1858, especially his seascapes. Complete bio Wikipedia