Auction Preview: MUSIC, December 10, 2010 @Phillips London

Phillips continues its 2010 series of themed sales later this week in London with a selection of works entitled “MUSIC”. The sale is generally grouped by artist/performer (from Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix to Patti Smith and the Sex Pistols), with a smattering of album covers, music themed artworks, and other ephemera mixed in amongst the photography. Overall, there are a total of 75 lots of photography available here, with a Total High Estimate for photography of £351450.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 64
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £155450
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 9
Total Mid Estimate: £126000
Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 2
Total High Estimate: £70000
The top lot by High estimate is lot 1, Idris Khan, Rachmaninoff…Preludes, 2007, at £35000-40000. (Image at right, middle via Phillips.)
Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by three or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Annie Leibovitz (4)
David Redfern (4)
Claude Gassian (3)
William Gottlieb (3)
Herman Leonard (3)
Mick Rock (3)
Lawrence Watson (3)
Alfred Wertheimer (3)
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(Lot 215, Joel Brodsky, Jim Morrison, the Doors, the American poet, New York City, 1967/Later, at £20000-30000, at right, top, and lot 124, Art Kane, The Rolling Stones, Circle Portrait, 1966/Later, at £10000-15000, at right, bottom, via Phillips.)
Phillips has recently introduced a fancier, more catalogue-like online viewing system. Unfortunately, it is not as quickly navigable as the old more straightforward layout. In any case, the complete lot by lot catalog for both sessions (Day and Evening) can be found here.
December 10th
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Michael Wolf: iseeyou @Silverstein

JTF (just the facts): A total of 31 color photographs, each framed in black with no mat, and hung in the reception area, front room, and main gallery spaces. The show is a mini-retrospective of sorts, with images culled from a variety of projects. The following projects are represented, with the number of prints on view and their details in parentheses:

  • Architecture of Density (1, 48×58, edition of 9+2, 2006)
  • Night (1, 48×60, edition of 9+2, 2008)
  • Transparent City (5, 48×60 or 48×64 or reverse, in editions of 9+2, 2008)
  • Transparent City Detail (2, 50×40 and 34×27, in editions of 9+2, 2008)
  • Paris Street View (4, various sizes from 27×34 to 60×48 or reverse, in editions of 3+1, 5+2 or 9+2, 2009)
  • Manhattan Street View (2, 40×50 or 48×60, in editions of 5+2 or 9+2 respectively, 2009/2010)
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events (5, various sizes from 27×35 to 48×60 or reverse, in editions of 3+1, 5+2, or 9+2, 2010)
  • Tokyo Compression (11, 42×34 or 10×8, in editions of 5+2, 2010)

All of the works are digital c-prints, except for those from the Tokyo Compression series which are archival inkjet prints. A selection of 13 black and white city views by André Kertész from 1954-1978 (curated by Wolf) is on view in the back room.

Comments/Context: Over the past five years or so, the work of German photographer Michael Wolf seems to be on a trajectory toward finer grained detail, moving inward from wide abstracted city scenes of anonymous hives of geometric apartment blocks to specific personal moments found on city streets around the world. Along the way, his images have opened up prickly questions about the pervasive nature of video surveillance and its impact on our evolving definition of privacy, encouraging and exposing our own implicit voyeurism.
In his newest body of work, Wolf has given up the use of his own camera and instead mined the endless stream of digital images being captured by Google’s automated car-mounted cameras for its Street View product. While these pictures were taken to document buildings in a relentless block by block manner, given the number of people in these big cities, they consistently, if inadvertently, capture pedestrians and passersby. Wolf has appropriated these robotic photographs and then interpreted them via cropping and enlargement, discovering stolen glimpses of urban life. I found the resulting images random and disconnected: a couple kissing, layered reflections in a bus window and mirror, a man giving the camera the finger, a woman collapsed in the gutter; their durable individual significance was generally lost on me. What I liked best was the fabric of pixelization that covers each blown-up image like a thin screen; the repeated red, green, and blue shards resolve into tiny veiled grids of blocked color, creating an almost Pictorialist textured feel.
My favorite images in this exhibit were from the new Tokyo Compression series, where Wolf has photographed commuters pressed up against subway windows. Faces are smashed against doors, creating fogs of condensation; fingers claw as though trying to break free; people close their eyes or adopt masks of indifference and weary disgust to compensate for the crush of humanity. These images make the breakdown of personal space and the invasion of privacy much more explicit than in the context-free Street View scenes. Here the voyeurism is harsh and physical, and the people protect themselves from the onslaught by closing up.

Taken together, the show sees our world from a variety of distances, forcing the viewer to move back and forth, from close-up to broad scale and back again, always voraciously looking and being watched. I think Wolf’s work asks us to consider more fully whether we have entered a 21st century version of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, where the knowledge of being under surveillance has started to influence our behavior. In many ways, these new images are evidence of exactly this outcome, and it is this unnerving line of thinking that makes this show worth seeing.

Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The larger prints from Architecture of Density, Night, and Transparent City range between $11750 and $15750. The images from Transparent City Details are either $5900 or $9000 based on size. The prints from Paris Street View, Manhattan Street View, and A Series of Unfortunate Events range between $5900 to $15750, also based on size. The large print from Tokyo Compression is $9000, while the 10 smaller prints from the same series are being sold as part of a set of 30 prints, together $20000. Wolf’s prints have only recently entered the secondary markets, with a few large prints from Architecture of Density finding buyers between between $20000 and $26000.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), New York (here)
  • Interview: The Morning News (here)
  • Aperture show, 2009/2010 (DLK COLLECTION review here)
Through December 24th
535 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Important Photographs & Photobooks, December 9, 2010 @Swann

Swann has a late season various owner sale in New York later this week, with a broad mix of lower end photographs and photobooks on offer. Overall, there are 364 lots available, with a total High estimate of $1744700.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 336
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $1193700
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 28
Total Mid Estimate: $551000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA
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The top lot by High estimate is lot 145, Brett Weston, Twenty Photographs 1970-1977, 1978, at $30000-45000.
Below is the list of photographers with 5 or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Berenice Abbott (10)
Ansel Adams (10)
Edward Curtis (8)
Weegee (8)
Walker Evans (6)
Brett Weston (6)
Lee Friedlander (5)
Andre Kertesz (5)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (5)
Danny Lyon (5)
Stephen Shore (5)
(Lot 21, Edward Curtis, Self portrait, 1899, at $6000-9000, at right, bottom, lot 81, Irving Penn, Nude #17, New York, 1949-1950/1980, at $25000-35000, at right, middle, and lot 191, David Goldblatt, Prostitute, Fordsburgh, Johannesburg, 1975, at $12000-18000, at right, top, all via Swann.)
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The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The 3D version is located here.
December 9th
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010

Auction Previews: Photographie and Selection from an American Collection, December 8, 2010 @Van Ham

Van Ham has has both a various owner Photographs sale and a single owner collection sale in Cologne later this week. The two sessions have a generous selection of lower end material, with plenty of work by Becher students (Gursky, Struth, Ruff, Höfer, Nieweg, Sasse, Ronkholz et al) and from the 1950s subjective photography movement (Schneiders, Keetman, Lauterwasser et al), and as usual, there are large groups of prints from Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander. Overall, there are a total of 443 lots on offer in this sale (across both sessions), with a Total High Estimate of 1120800€.

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 424
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 804800€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 17
Total Mid Estimate: 231000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 2
Total High Estimate: 85000€

The top lot by High estimate is lot 1046A, Andreas Gursky, Cairo (General View), 1992, at 35000-45000€.

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by five or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Albert Renger–Patzsch (20)
Karl Hugo Schmölz (11)
Robert Doisneau (10)
August Sander (10)
Harold Edgerton (9)
Elliott Erwitt (7)
Andreas Gursky (7)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (6)
Peter Keetman (6)
George Platt Lynes (6)
Paul Wolff & Alfred Tritschler (5)
Candida Höfer (5)
Inge Morath (5)

(Lot 1415, Edward Steichen, An Apple, a Boulder, a Mountain, 1921, at 30000-40000€ , at right, top, lot 1400, Albert Renger–Patzsch, Ruhrchemie, 1933-1934, at 2000-3000€, at right, middle, and lot 1224, Siegfried Lauterwasser, Eisen, 1950s, at 800€, at right, bottom, all via Van Ham.)

The complete lot by lot catalog for both sessions can be found here.

Photographie
December 8th

Selection from an American Collection
December 8th

Van Ham Kunstauktionen
Schönhauser Straße 10 – 16
D – 50968 Köln

Auction Results: Photographs, December 2, 2010 @Bloomsbury London

Bloomsbury’s various owner photographs sale in London last week struggled to find its bearings. With a Buy-In rate over 50% and Total Sale Proceeds meaningfully less than the Total Low Estimate, the auction house continues to search for the secrets of success in the lower end of the market. The vintage Erwin Blumenfeld prints on offer were generally a positive surprise, with 5 out 6 lots selling above their estimate ranges.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):
Total Lots: 236
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £236680
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £335620
Total Lots Sold: 109
Total Lots Bought In: 127
Buy In %: 53.81%
Total Sale Proceeds: £174899
Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):
Low Total Lots: 227
Low Sold: 105
Low Bought In: 122
Buy In %: 53.74%
Total Low Estimate: £271120
Total Low Sold: £148059
Mid Total Lots: 9
Mid Sold: 4
Mid Bought In: 5
Buy In %: 55.56%
Total Mid Estimate: £64500
Total Mid Sold: £26840
High Total Lots: 0
High Sold: NA
High Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total High Estimate: £0
Total High Sold: NA
The top lot by High estimate was tied between two lots: lot 176, Horst P. Horst, Corset, Paris, 1939/Later, and lot 177, Horst P. Horst, Round the Clock I, 1987/Later, both at £8000-10000; neither print sold. The top outcome of the sale was lot 91, Erwin Blumenfeld, Veiled Beauty, c1931, at £9510.

88.99% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were a total of 8 surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):
Lot 38, Melcher Berretty, The Lido Nightclub in Paris, c1950s, at £317
Lot 87, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Untitled, c1970, at £6710
Lot 90, Pierre Boucher, Untitled (Paris), c1940, at £671
Lot 94, Erwin Blumenfeld, Untitled, c1940, at £6710 (image at right, middle, via Bloomsbury)
Lot 95, Erwin Blumenfeld, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, c1938, at £3416
Lot 96, Erwin Blumenfeld, Eyes Like the Sea, c1938, at £4636
Lot 97, Erwin Blumenfeld, Eyes of Youth, c1938, at £4880 (image at right, top, via Bloomsbury)
Lot 116, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin at the Lunar Module, 1969, at £1403 (image at right, bottom, via Bloomsbury)
Complete lot by lot results can be found here.
24 Maddox Street
Mayfair
London WS1 1PP

Auction Results: Photographie, November 25, 2010 @Villa Grisebach

The results of the recent Photography sale at Villa Grisebach in Berlin solidly met expectations; the Buy-In rate came in under 30% and the Total Sale Proceeds fell right in the heart of the estimate range. In general, the Walter Gropius prints performed well, and a smattering of other positive surprises helped keep the sale on track.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):
Total Lots: 196
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: 451700€
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: 634100€
Total Lots Sold: 141
Total Lots Bought In: 55
Buy In %: 28.06%
Total Sale Proceeds: 524722€
Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):
Low Total Lots: 182
Low Sold: 129
Low Bought In: 53
Buy In %: 29.12%
Total Low Estimate: 442100€
Total Low Sold: 347700€
Mid Total Lots: 14
Mid Sold: 12
Mid Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 14.29%
Total Mid Estimate: 192000€
Total Mid Sold: 177022€
High Total Lots: 0
High Sold: NA
High Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total High Estimate: 0€
Total High Sold: NA

The top lot by High estimate was lot 1388, Hiroshi Sugimoto, U.A. Rivoli, New York, 1978/Later, at 20000-25000€; it was also the top outcome of the sale at 39040€.

95.04% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate. There were a total of 16 surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):
Lot 1218, Marianne Breslauer, Mannequins, Berlin, 1932, at 7930€ (image at right, top, via Villa Grisebach)
Lot 1247, Walter Gropius, Modell des Bauhausmeister–Einzelhauses, Dessau, 1925-1926, at 2074€
Lot 1248, Walter Gropius, Haus Prof. Auerbach, Jena, Modell–Strassen–seite, 1924, at 4148€ (image at right, middle, via Villa Grisebach)
Lot 1249, Walter Gropius/Lucia Moholy, Kuche im Einzelhaus Gropius mit Schrank von Marcel Breuer, 1925-1926, at 1952€
Lot 1251, Walter Gropius, Theaterumbau Jena, Ansicht Innentur, 1922-1923, at 1342€
Lot 1252, Walter Gropius, Adler-Automobil, Standard 8, Modell Gropius, 1930, at 3660€
Lot 1253, Walter Gropius, Sitzecke mit Beistelltisch von Marcel Breuer, 1925-1926, at 1220€
Lot 1254, Walter Gropius, Fagus–Werke Alfeld/Leine und Werkbunduasstellung, Koln, 1910-1914, at 2440€
Lot 1271, Lotte Jacobi, Spaziergang, Berlin, 1930, at 1220€
Lot 1277, Alberto Diaz Gutierrez Korda, Guerillero heroico, 1960/1985, at 9760€
Lot 1292, Will McBride, Romy, Paris, 1964/2001, at 3172€
Lot 1304, Edward Quigley, Building, New York, 1932, at 5368€
Lot 1310, Rudolf Schwartzkogler, 3. Aktion, Wien, Sommer, 1965/1975, at 7442€
Lot 1325, Walter Vogel, Joseph Beuys, 1965/2010, at 7564€
Lot 1366, Tony Mendoza, Aus der Serie Ernie, 1980-1983/1986, at 1952€
Lot 1377, Michael Schmidt, “o.T.” aus der Serie “Frauen”, 1999/2000, at 1769€ (image at right, bottom, via Villa Grisebach)
Complete lot by lot results can be found here.
Fasanenstraße 25
D-10719 Berlin

Rachel Perry Welty: Lost in My Life @Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 7 large scale color photographs, framed in white with no mat, and hung in the main gallery space. The pigment prints are displayed in two different sizes: 56×35, in editions of 6, and 90×60, in editions of 3. There are 6 medium sized works and 1 large work on view. All of the images were made in 2010. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: Critiques and satires of our pervasive consumer culture, with its brand obsessions, its throw-away mind set, and its more recent economic dark side have become increasingly common subject matter for contemporary photographers. Rachel Perry Welty’s new work fits snugly into this ever-expanding genre, using a playful, light touch to expose the sheer expanse of our growing mountains of disposable stuff.
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Welty’s images are meticulously constructed in her studio, where reams of cereal boxes, plastic bread tags, self-adhesive price stickers, and brightly colored twist ties have been transformed into clever sculptural environments where the artist hides in plain view. In one picture, she stands in a dress holding a shopping bag, disappearing as if camouflaged by a patterned ocean of yellow, white, and orange stickers. In another, her clothes are striped in a horizontal rainbow of lines, echoing the all-over thicket of twist ties (many marked “organically grown”) pulled taut nearby. In a third, the round blue bubbles on her dress connect to others on the wall behind her and to an encroaching tower of Styrofoam take-out boxes that covers the floor. I was particularly impressed by her cylindrical basket of tiny bread ties, where hundreds of green, red, white, and orange plastic tabs have been woven into an elaborate, textured volume. In each and every image, her face is hidden; they are self-portraits or performances, where the detritus of her life obscures and overwhelms her self.

These works reminded me of JeongMee Yoon’s pink and blue project, as well as of some of Vik Muniz‘ elaborate constructions of unexpected materials. They have a friendly, decorative feel, her message delivered without sober pronouncements or harsh hectoring; they’re the kind of images that can successfully poke fun at the insanity of our consumer culture, without leaving the viewer depressed and disgusted.
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Collector’s POV: Very few of the prints on display in this show were still available for purchase, so these works seem to be selling well. The ones that were left were priced as follows: the 56×35 prints were either $6000 or $7500, apparently depending on their place in the edition (the last two in the edition respectively I believe); the larger 90×60 print was POR, and when I requested the price, I was eventually told it was no longer available, so I’m not clear on what the price actually was. Welty’s work has little or no secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Northeastern faculty page (here)
  • Interview: Art 21 (here)
  • Review: New York Photo Review (here)

Rachel Perry Welty: Lost in My Life
Through December 23rd

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Hiroshi Sugimoto: The Day After @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 21 black and white photographs, 2 fossils in glass cases, and 1 sculpture, displayed against grey and black walls in a winding series of four connected spaces. The first small room contains 3 gelatin silver prints (from the diorama series), framed in black, and two fossils (one meteorite fragment and one slab of Mississippi sea bottom), displayed in low light against grey walls. 2 of the prints are 20×24 from 1992, in editions of 25, the other is 47×73, in an edition of 5. The larger front and back rooms have black walls and are completely dark, with bright spot lights on the works. In each room, a pair of monumental gelatin silver panoramas are hung side by side, covering an entire long wall. Each unframed panorama is made up of 6 panels, each entire work measuring 59×23 and 1/2 feet, printed in editions of 5. There are a total of 7 single image gelatin silver lightning field prints spread across the two rooms, framed in silver with no mat, each 59×47, also printed in editions of 5. The sculpture is set apart in the front room, a Tesla coil in birdcage on a stand. A narrow room is situated between the front and back rooms, with grey walls and bright natural light from the overhead skylight. This room contains 7 gelatin silver seascapes from 1987-1993, framed in silver with no mat, each 47×59, printed in editions of 5. A catalogue of the exhibition is available from the gallery for $50. (Installation shots at right, via Pace.)

Comments/Context: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s first show at Pace (having recently joined the stable from Gagosian) is a potent reminder of the power of presentation. Rather than offer a predictable sampler of new and old work in this cavernous space, the artist has used architecture (dividing walls and rooms) and lighting (both dark and light) to transform the viewer’s experience, controlling the narrative flow and recontextualizing the prior work in new and unexpected ways. The gallery has evolved from a formless white space into a rich storytelling environment to be experienced, where the production values of the entertainment have become almost as important as the work itself.
The two largest rooms in the show are broad open spaces, subdued by the blackness that envelops them. The only light in these two rooms is provided by the spot lights on the artworks, highlighting the bright flashes of white energy that emerge from the darkness. These Lightning Fields are Sugimoto’s newest works, made by using a spark generator to deliver blasts of energy to the film’s surface. The artist has likened these images to the crashing of meteorites into the Earth’s original primordial soup, introducing energy and foreign chemical compounds into our environment and sparking the creation of life. His monumental panoramas stretch across two long walls (nearly 50 feet), mixing flashes of brightness with textured glimmers and black spots, like growths emerging from the nothingness. Some of the single images are mostly dark, with just a small cluster of delicate incandescent white, while others have evolved into long, thick tendrils of light, like arteries or serpents or ropes, often with tiny fingers branching out and extending from the sides. A few even look like aerial landscapes of dry river beds, with washes of sizzling whiteness cut into the blackness of the land. While many of these works have an organic, natural violence to them, the less successful ones look more like scientific figures from a scholarly paper in Science or Nature, showing some arcane but beautiful properties of electromagnetism. Sugimoto is walking the fine line between art and science here, with varying degrees of memorable aesthetic success. And just when I thought I had absorbed it all, the gallery experience was punctuated by the buzzing crackle of the Tesla coil sculpture, which explodes into a flash of blue light every few minutes, jolting and attacking the viewer with its raw, dangerous power. All I needed was a shard of meteor to crack me on the head in the dark and the visceral experience would have been complete.
The show also contains a selection of seascapes and dioramas, work we have seen many times before, but which has been reimagined here in the context of Sugimoto’s “beginning of the world” narrative. The seascapes have been hung a narrow room with heavenly pure light, all of them day views, including the one at the end of the space which is bathed in glare. What I found fascinating is that they no longer seemed to me to be sublime exercises in timeless meditative contemplation. Instead, these images were transformed by the installation into documents of a specific ancient place and time, when the world was covered by seas in every direction, a kind of alien water planet. The tight installation creates the feeling of being in the middle of it all, surrounded by the flat expanse as far as the eye can see. Similarly, the small room at the entry of the show gathers a few of Sugimoto’s natural history dioramas. But there are no familiar polar bears and jackals here, only puzzling biological forms attached to sandy sea bottoms. Juxtaposed with a few fossils (not unlike his spectacular show at the Japan Society a few years ago), and once again, the images have been reimagined. Now instead of a witty inversion of fake and real, the dioramas are documenting yet another period of specific time, as the first organisms started to form and develop. The show thus becomes a continuous historical timeline, from the first sparks of unruly energy to the evolution of life in many forms. While there is still a bit of the “old wine in a new bottle” feel here, I was amazed at how thoroughly the old work could be successfully reconsidered in relation to the new images.
Overall, this show gets high marks for its careful construction, and for creating a whole that ingeniously integrates several disparate bodies of work that were previously unconnected. Given the chance element associated with the creation of the lightning field images, it is not at all surprising that some bolts of light are much more interesting than others. That said, I once again came away genuinely impressed with Sugimoto, both as a risk taking scientifically-minded artist and as a surprisingly talented and original showman.
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Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The large panoramas are $750000 each, the seascapes are $400000, the single image lightning fields are $80000, and the dioramas are either $120000 or between $20000 and $25000 based on size. Sugimoto’s work is readily available at auction, at a variety of price points. His Time Exposed portfolio can generally be had at auction for between $3000 and $11000. Small individual prints (in the range of 20×24) typically range between $10000 and $90000. The largest prints (seascapes, wax portraits and architecture) have recently started at $100000 and continued all the way up to over $1 million.
Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews/Features: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here)
Through December 24th
The Pace Gallery
545 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Signature Vintage & Contemporary Photography Auction, December 3, 2010 @Heritage New York

Heritage’s photography sale in New York later this week (online bidding is already open) is a selection of mostly lower priced material, all with starting bids at half the Low estimate. The most surprising find here is an instance of Lee Friedlander’s 15 Photographs Portfolio from the early 1970s, which is being broken up and sold as individual images. All in, there are a total of 196 photography lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of $916800.

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 187
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $714300

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 9
Total Mid Estimate: $202500

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA
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The top lot by High estimate is lot 74040, Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941/1978, at $30000-50000.

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by five or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Lee Friedlander (15)
Harold Edgerton (10)
Ansel Adams (9)
Eliot Porter (9)
Michael Kenna (7)
Sid Avery (6)
Hank O’Neal (6)
Dennis Hopper (5)
O. Winston Link (5)
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(Lot 74022, Gyorgy Kepes, Untitled (Abstraction), 1953/1970s, at $2500-3500, at right, middle, lot 74038, William Garnett, Plowed Field, Arvin, California, 1951, 1993, at $6000-8000, at right, bottom, and lot 74095, Harold Edgerton, Bullet Through Candle Flame, 1973/1980, at $1000-2000, at right, top, all via Heritage.)
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The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Signature Vintage & Contemporary Photography Auction
December 3rd

Heritage Auctions
The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion
2 East 79th Street
New York, NY 10075

Auction Preview: Photographs, December 2, 2010 @Bloomsbury London

As usual, Bloomsbury’s upcoming London Photographs sale is a lower end mix of mostly lesser known vintage material. With the vast majority of lots having a high estimate of £2000 or lower, it will certainly possible to pick up some prints at reasonable prices. Keep your eyes open for Brassaï’s city cats. Overall, there are a total of 236 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of £335620.

Here’s the breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 227
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £271120
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 9
Total Mid Estimate: £64500
Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA
The top lot by High estimate is tied between two lots: lot 176, Horst P. Horst, Corset, Paris, 1939/Later, and lot 177, Horst P. Horst, Round the Clock I, 1987/Later, both at £8000-10000.
Here is a short list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Brassaï (14)
Erwin Blumenfeld (6)
Edouard Boubat (4)
Julia Margaret Cameron (4)
Robert Doisneau (4)
De Lancey Gill (4)
Weegee (4)
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. While we won’t have the opportunity to do a statistical analysis on Bloomsbury’s Rome Photographs sale coming up on December 3rd, the lot by lot catalogue can be found here.
(Lot 21, Julia Margaret Cameron, Cecilia Tennyson, 1871-1872, at £3000-5000, at right, bottom, lot 77, Walker Evans, Fulton Market Area, New York, c1934, at £3000-4000, at right, middle, and lot 195, Ed van der Elsken, Vali a St-Germain-des-Pres (Reve), 1952, at £600-800, at right, top, all via Bloomsbury.)
December 2nd
24 Maddox Street
Mayfair
London WS1 1PP

Snapshots from Paris Photo, Part 3

Another exhibition on view during the fair was Primitifs de la photographie. Le calotype en France (1843 – 1860) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (here). A selection of snapshots can be found below, with artist information underneath. Apparently, the Adalbert Cuvelier prints were particularly outstanding.

Adalbert Cuvelier

Adalbert Cuvelier

Adalbert Cuvelier
Adalbert Cuvelier
Édouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus

Henri Courmont

Eugene Cuvelier

JB Greene

Gustave Le Gray
FE Le Dien
Henri Le Secq

Henri Victor Regnault
Henri Victor Regnault
Louis Vignes

As an aside, while our dedicated correspondent was also eager to take pictures at the Kertész show at the Jeu de Paume (here), the “No Photography” police unfortunately cramped his style.

Snapshots from Paris Photo, Part 2

According to one of my Paris Photo correspondents, the Heinrich Kühn show at the Musée de l’Orangerie (here) was one of the best exhibits on view during the fair. Apparently the gum prints were large and masterful (almost Impressionistic) and the overall installation was terrific. The selection of low light snapshots below gives a flavor of what was on view.

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