Auction Preview: Robert Frank: The Americans, The Ruth and Jake Bloom Collection, December 17, 2015 @Sotheby’s

Heading directly into the distracting hustle of the holiday season, Sotheby’s has scheduled a powerful single artist photography sale during the last week before Christmas. Drawn from the collection of Ruth and Jake Bloom, it gathers 77 of the 83 images found in Robert Frank’s seminal photobook The Americans.

Taking on the task of collecting all the images from an entire photobook, particularly one as famous and influential as The Americans, is no small effort. In this case, it’s a collecting project that has spanned several decades, and one that was likely executed with a passion for checklist completeness. Given the time, energy, capital, and care required to assemble such a collection, I’m a little surprised to see it being broken up; I would have thought there would have been plenty of private buyers and museums that would have been overjoyed to have a ready-made, almost finished set of a landmark like The Americans.

While there will certainly be demand for these prints by collectors and dealers alike, the rubber will hit the road when the image (iconic versus lesser known), the print date (mostly 1970s prints, some from the 1960s, others marked just “later”), the physical size (standard versus oversized), and the condition come together in optimal ways. From the website, it is difficult to discern these nuances, and so it is hard to judge whether the estimates are all in the right place; if they are too high in specific cases, we could see some unexpected passes on seemingly enticing lots. As always, the better the prints, the better the likely outcomes, and seeing them in person will clarify the situation.

Overall, there are a total of 77 lots available, with a Total High Estimate of $3761000. It should be an exciting sale to follow, as it will give us a crisp picture of the current market for Frank’s work, both in terms of the key images as well as the overall depth of the demand.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:

Preview Statistics
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000) 7
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of low lots) $55000
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000) 52
Total Mid Estimate $1556000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000) 18
Total High Estimate $2150000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 10, Robert Frank, New Orleans (Trolley), 1955/late 1960s or early 1970s, estimated at $200000-300000. (image above, via Sotheby’s)

Other lots of interest include (images above, via Sotheby’s):

Lot 4, Robert Frank, Jay, N.Y. (Fourth of July), 1954/c1970, estimated at $100000-150000

Lot 6, Robert Frank, US90. En Route to Del Rio, Texas, 1955/1970s, estimated at $150000-250000

Lot 8, Robert Frank, Hoboken (Parade), 1955/later, estimated at $120000-180000

Lot 12, Robert Frank, Miami Beach Hotel (Elevator), 1955/c1970, estimated at $150000-250000

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

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One comment

  1. Pete /

    The Tate Modern, London, had a Frank retrospective in 2004. I’ve just re-read my notes from the time about it and they had gone to a lot of trouble to round up early prints from The Americans and they had not not aged well at all. I put it down to the fact that a lot of photographers followed ‘good practice’ in their darkroom which was not necessarily ‘best practice’ for archival purposes. That is, prints would be developed, stopped, fixed and washed in a way that was a compromise between speed and reasonable permanence. The majority of prints from the key years of Frank’s life appeared to have lost much of their tonal subtlety. Whites were faded into a soft brown veil of fix and dark tones had degraged to form areas of soft, dull mass. They might have been vintage prints of the oh so famous photographs but they looked disappointingly jaded and oh so tired out. The vitality and spontaneity of Frank’s work was entirely missing.

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