Swann’s diverse sale of Photographs and Photographic Literature is scheduled two weeks after the rest of the New York auction season, perhaps to entice those buyers who stayed on the sidelines or kept their powder dry during the frenzy this week. The generally lower end sale features a deep selection of Lewis Hine images, a series of unusual artist portraits by Diane Arbus, and a group of crime images of famous gangsters and murderers. Overall, there are 327 photographs on offer, with a total High estimate of $2012650. (Catalog cover at right, via Swann.)
Here’s the breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 297
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $1352650
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 30
Total Mid Estimate: $660000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA
The top lot by High estimate is lot 28 Eadward Muybridge, 125 plates from Animal Locomotion, 1887, at $35000-45000.
Below is the list of photographers represented by at least 5 lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Lewis Hine (15)
Camera Work (10)
Diane Arbus (8)
Edward Curtis (8)
Walker Evans (8)
Andre Kertesz (8)
Horst P. Horst (7)
Berenice Abbott (6)
Civil War (6)
Edward Weston (6)
O. Winston Link (5)
While there aren’t too many images in this sale that fit particularly well into our collecting genres, here are a few that caught our eye:
Lot 1, William Henry Fox Talbot, Untitled (lace), 1845 (at right, bottom)
Lot 64 Wilson A. Bentley, Group of 7 snow crystals, 1903 (at right, middle)
Lot 122 Walker Evans, Untitled (John Dais Co. Wholesale Fish), 1934/1950s
Lot 161 Walker Evans, Chicago South Side, 1946
Lot 169 Germaine Krull, Untitled (Parisian street scene), 1930s
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The 3D version is located here.
Photographs & Photographic Literature
October 22nd
Swann Galleries
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010
