Auction Preview: Photography and Photography Books, December 2, 2009 @Bassenge

Galerie Bassenge continues the German photographs season with its big sale in Berlin later this week. A 1930s vintage Munkacsi image of ice skaters and a 1924 vintage Outerbridge Christmas scene will likely appeal to top end collectors. Overall, there are a total of 448 lots on offer in this sale, with a Total High Estimate of 456130€. (Catalog cover at right, via Galerie Bassenge.)

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 443
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 403130€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 5
Total Mid Estimate: 53000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 4095, Carl Ferdinand Stelzner, Portrait of Harro Harring, 1848, at 15000€.

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

Floris Neususs (9)
August Sander (7)
Leopoldo Alinari (6)
Andreas Groll (6)
Leni Riefenstahl (5)
James Robertson (5)
Woodbury & Page (5)

Images of interest for our collection include:

Lot 4120 Max Baur, Flower images, 1930s
Lot 4173 Imogen Cunningham, Water Hyacinth II, 1910/1060s (the first date is incorrect)
Lot 4212 Miroslav Hak, Female nude, 1950s
Lot 4242 Peter Keetman, Volkswagen factory, 1953/1990s
Lot 4359 Peter Stackpole, Construction of the Bay Bridge, 1936/1980s
Lot 4377 Sasha Stone, Female nude, 1933

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photography and Photography Books
December 2nd

Galerie Bassenge
Erdener Straße 5a
14193 Berlin

Robert Bergman, A Kind of Rapture @Yossi Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 color images, 12 hung in the main gallery space and 2 in the back alcove. The digital c-prints are framed in white and matted, each 37×25 or reverse. All of the works are untitled, and were taken between 1987 and 1995. (While photography is usually allowed at Yossi Milo, unfortunately no installation shots were permitted for this show. The image at right, Untitled, 1989, is via the Yossi Milo website.)

Comments/Context: In the past month or so, the photography press has been full of the underdog makes good story of the photographer Robert Bergman. After toiling in self-imposed obscurity for decades and intermittently digesting more than his fill of rejection and discouragement, Bergman now has three shows on simultaneously: museum exhibits at the National Gallery and PS1, and this show at Yossi Milo. The works on view at all three locations were published in a monograph in 1998, so it’s taken a more than a decade for these exhibitions to come to fruition.

Part of the reason I think Bergman’s work was backburnered for so long is that it almost perfectly contrarian: it rejects virtually all of the major trends that have dominated contemporary photography in recent years – it is not cool or detached, it is not staged, it makes no appropriations, it isn’t interested in process, it is not manipulated or altered, it has no biting commentary, conceptual framework or ironic viewpoint. That said, I don’t think Bergman made his pictures to buck the trends or thumb his nose at the establishment; my guess is that he just wasn’t very interested by all of what has been going on and instead closed himself off and looked back to the traditions of painting for his education.

When we apply the word painterly to photography, it is often used to describe color used in different ways (Impressionistic, Expressionistic etc.) or to explain surface texture reminiscent of hand applied paint (Pictorialism, Pointilism etc.). Bergman’s lush, saturated portraits are unabashedly painterly, but in an entirely different manner. They are structurally painterly, formally composed in such a way as to draw on the lessons of the Old Masters, where attention is focused on the face of the sitter, and the rest of the elements of composition (hair, clothing, background, even color itself) are used as carefully controlled supporting features to enhance the overall feeling of the work.

All of the images in the show are head or torso shots, blown up to larger than life size. The best of the works are penetrating, evocative and viscerally human: the visage of the man in the tan fur-lined coat clutching a book with his long fingers (reproduced above) stares powerfully out from the frame. Bergman’s portrait of this man could easily hold the wall with an Old Master portrait of a priest or nobleman; they draw on the same aesthetic conventions, albeit with different subject matter. To my eye, a handful of the works in this show rise to this searing level of success, the rest falling back into well-crafted if less than entirely moving street portraits of people from all walks of life. I also think that many of close-up heads are printed too big; they would work better and capture a more intimate mood if scaled to match normal human proportions.

Overall, I think it is no accident that Bergman’s portraits have resurfaced during these uncertain economic times. Perhaps we are searching for a much needed dose of authenticity, of real people with less than perfect lives with whom we can empathize. We need somewhere to project our own anxieties and see reflected back some unexpected strength of spirit, and Bergman’s portraits fill this niche in a way that few others have bothered to consider.

Collector’s POV: The prints in the show are priced at $12500 each. Bergman’s work is not available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the only option for interested collectors at this point.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Exhibits: NGA (here), PS1 (here)
Book: A Kind of Rapture, 1998, Pantheon (here)
Features: WSJ (here), Washington Post (here), New York (here)
Interview: Brooklyn Rail (here)

Robert Bergman, A Kind of Rapture
Through January 9th

Yossi Milo Gallery
525 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Touhami Ennadre, Under New York @Priska Juschka

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 black and white images, framed in black, and hung in a dimly lit side gallery with black walls. All of the works are gelatin silver prints on baryta paper mounted on canvas, sized 60×48 or reverse. Each image is unique; there are no editions. The show consists of works from two different projects: Under New York and Bodies of Night; both are dated 2001-2007. (Installation shots at right.)
.
Comments/Context: Entering Touhami Ennadre’s current show is like walking into the mouth of a cave; the dark space is indistinct and amorphous, until you stand for a moment and let your eyes adjust, and then the objects on the walls come into somewhat clearer view. Even then, each piece requires an intimate viewing, as it’s often impossible to identify the shadowy subjects without a close, face near the frame inspection.
.
There are two separate sets of work intermingled in this exhibit, both playing off the enshrouding effects of darkness. In Bodies of Night, Ennadre has captured the nocturnal activities of people in clubs: dancing, embracing, and even tied up in ropes. In these pictures, the inky darkness is a form a freedom, an enabler to get sweaty and close, to be who they really are, to let loose or to act out their fantasies, protected by the anonymity of the night. In Under New York, the blackness of the pictures plays a different role: here it envelops homeless people, huddled on the subway or on the streets, isolating their struggles and hiding them from view; the darkness has an erasing effect, turning these people into rumpled bundles of rags.
.
Of the two, I think the Under New York series is slightly more successful. In these works, since there are no faces, the subjects have been transformed into sculptural layers of texture: hoods, coats, blankets, and newspaper intermingle, the flash creating shine and glare on slick surfaces. The viewer is forced to work hard to discover what these pictures are, to see that they are indeed human; they therefore force us to confront the reality of homelessness much more directly than an embarrassed diverted glance on the subway platform normally allows.

One surprisingly thing about all of the works in this show is, given their subject matter, they are remarkably non-voyeuristic. Ennadre has found a way to document extremely personal and vulnerable moments with a purity of purpose that has stripped away a layer of implied shame. Overall, this show has a heavy dose of both literal and figurative darkness, but also finds a way to see some light in the depths of black.
.
Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced at $35000 each. Ennadre has no auction history to speak of, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail. While these works don’t fit into our collecting genres, I particularly enjoyed 53 St-5th Ave, with its cacophony of fabrics and surfaces.
.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Documenta 11 (here)
Interviews: Nka (here), Examiner (here)

Touhami Ennadre, Under New York
Through January 2nd

Priska Juschka Fine Art
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
.
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: This will be the last post prior to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. We will be back to normal posting next Monday, November 30.

Auction Results: Photographs, November 14, 2009 @Phillips

Like the Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales back in October, the results of the recent Phillips various owner photographs sale in New York fell right into the “Normal” range we have described this season: a Buy-In rate about 25%, Total Sale Proceeds that just cover the Total Low Estimate, and quite a few surprises. Even though Phillips was out of phase by a month, the results were surprisingly consistent.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 294
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2424900
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $3461100
Total Lots Sold: 214
Total Lots Bought In: 80
Buy In %: 27.21%
Total Sale Proceeds: $2756314

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 203
Low Sold: 149
Low Bought In: 54
Buy In %: 26.60%
Total Low Estimate: $1121100
Total Low Sold: $904564

Mid Total Lots: 81
Mid Sold: 57
Mid Bought In: 24
Buy In %: 29.63%
Total Mid Estimate: $1655000
Total Mid Sold: $1277250

High Total Lots: 10
High Sold: 8
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 20.00%
Total High Estimate: $685000
Total High Sold: $574500

An amazing 41.59% of the lots that sold had proceeds above their estimate. There were a total of fifteen surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 1 Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon, 1981, at $31250
Lot 20 Peter Beard, Antelopes, 1984/Later, $16250
Lot 41 Patrick Demarchelier, Christy, New York, 1986, at $11250
Lot 45 Patrick Demarchelier, Christy Turlington, New York, 1990/1996, at $37500
Lot 60 Simen Johan, Untitled #133 (Moose), 2006, at $40000
Lot 96 Ahmet Ertug, The Library of Trinity College, “The Long Room”, Dublin, 2008, at $40000
Lot 99 Gavin Bond, Redemption, 2008, at $31250
Lot 108 Edward Burtynsky, Shipbreaking #28, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2001, at $33750
Lot 136 Nan Goldin, French Chris at Drive-in, New Jersey, 1979, at $16250
Lot 141 Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul, Nude, Golfball, 1994, at $7500
Lot 145 Albert Watson, Kate Moss, Marrakech, Morocco, 1993/Later, at $32500
Lot 189 William Eggleston, Untitled, 1973/2004, at $11250
Lot 195 Flip Schulke, Muhammed Ali boxing underwater, 1961/Later, at $13750
Lot 258 Hans Bellmer, Les Jeux de la Poupee IV, 1939/1949, at $37500
Lot 287 Shikanosuke Yagaki, Bamboo curtain, 1930, at $11250

The top lot by High estimate was lot 105, Thomas Ruff, Nude ox03, 2006, at $60000-80000; it did not sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 144, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Salvador Dali, 1999, at $92500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Phillips De Pury & Company
450 West 15 Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Results: Contemporary Art, Parts I and II, November 12 and 13, 2009 @Phillips

The contemporary photography available at the recent Contemporary Art auctions at Phillips performed measurably worse than the works on sale at Christie’s or Sotheby’s in the previous days. The Total Sale Proceeds for photography across Parts I and II were meaningfully below the Total Low Estimate, with a Buy-In Rate that was much higher (35%). When the big ticket top lot fails to sell (in this case, a Richard Prince), it certainly puts a drag on the overall statistical results.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 60
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1685000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $2436000
Total Lots Sold: 39
Total Lots Bought In: 21
Buy In %: 35.00%
Total Sale Proceeds: $1459250

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 18
Low Sold: 15
Low Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 16.67%
Total Low Estimate: $129000
Total Low Sold: $103250

Mid Total Lots: 36
Mid Sold: 20
Mid Bought In: 16
Buy In %: 44.44%
Total Mid Estimate: $927000
Total Mid Sold: $488500

High Total Lots: 6
High Sold: 4
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 33.33%
Total High Estimate: $1380000
Total High Sold: $867500

87.18% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were only two surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 222 Kim-Joon, Duet-dog, 2006, at $16250
Lot 242 Frank Thiel, Stadt 10/06/A (Berlin), 2001, at $32500

The top lot by High estimate is lot 8, Richard Prince, Untitled (four women with their backs to the camera), 1980, at $400000-600000; it did not sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 6, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1994, at $542500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Part I) and here (Part II).

Phillips De Pury & Company
450 West 15 Street
New York, NY 10011

Bruce Davidson, Five Decades @Wolkowitz

JTF (just the facts): A total of 44 photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung in the front room, the hallway, and the larger back gallery. (Marginal installation shots at right.) The show is divided into six separate bodies of work. Except for the images from Subway, all of the prints are modern prints, many significantly enlarged from the original size:

Circus: gelatin silver prints, 1958/modern
2 images, each 16×20
3 images, each 30×40, in editions of 15

Brooklyn Gang: gelatin silver prints, 1959/modern
3 images, each 16×20
1 image, 20×24
3 images, each 30×40, in editions of 15

Time of Change: gelatin silver prints, 1961/modern
5 images, each 11×14
2 images, each 16×20
1 image, 20×24
1 image, 30×40, in an edition of 15

LA: gelatin silver prints, 1964/modern
2 images, each 16×20
6 images, each 30×40, in editions of 15

East 100th Street: gelatin silver prints, 1966-68/modern
3 images, each 11×14
2 images, each 16×20
1 image, 20×24
1 image, 30×40, in an edition of 15

Subway: 1980s dye transfers
8 images, hung in a grid, each 20×24, in editions of 10

Comments/Context: In addition to the East 100th Street MoMA show recreation at Greenberg and the massive, three-volume catalog from Steidl (both linked below), Bruce Davidson also has a mini-retrospective show on view at Bryce Wolkowitz. For those, like ourselves, who aren’t as deeply familiar with all of Davidson’s projects over the years, this exhibit is an effective way to see the whole span of his artistic career. It gathers a group of images from each of his major series, selecting both iconic images and lesser known works, providing a sampler of his overall output across the decades.

Prior to this show, I have to admit that my shorthand summary for Davidson has always been “East 100th Street and other documentary work”. What I think this exhibit did for me was to connect the dots a bit better on his other projects. While I certainly recognized the circus dwarfs, Freedom Riders (especially the boy with VOTE painted on his forehead), Brooklyn gang members (particularly the stick ball game in the street), and the fragmented color shots from the subway, this show helped to put them into a larger and broader context, seeing connections between the disparate threads. In contrast, Davidson’s images from 1960’s Los Angeles were completely new to me, and in many ways, I found them the most striking and exciting; I liked their dry, ironic humor – posing at muscle beach, the view out an airplane window, a man at a drive-through, parked cars densely packed at the beach, the back of the Hollywood sign. Coming out of the show, I’d like to think that my understanding of Davidson’s work is much more comprehensive, and East 100th Street stands out a bit less in my personal rating of his various projects.

As an aside, in my opinion, the large 30×40 prints of the older negatives aren’t hugely successful and are a bit distracting as result. In many cases, the prints are extremely grainy (several of the Circus images in particular); they just can’t support the enlargement being asked of them. In other cases, I think the intimacy and subtlety of the works are somewhat compromised when the pictures are so big. Only the Los Angeles images seemed to be effective at the larger size, as they depict more outsized craziness.

That said, this is an impressive show of Davidson’s long career, with many standout images that deserve to be remembered.

Collector’s POV: All of the modern gelatin silver prints are priced on the same scale: 11×14 at $4000, 16×20 at $5000, 20×24 at $8000, and 30×40 at $15000, regardless of which project the negative came from. The dye transfers range between $6500 and 9500. As I mentioned in our Greenberg review, Davidson’s work has been thinly traded in the secondary markets in the past few years, with very few of his best vintage images coming up for sale; with that caveat, the recent price range of $2000 to $8000 at auction may or may not be particularly relevant when considering the appropriate prices for his work.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

DLK COLLECTION review of Greenberg show (here)
Journey of Consciousness, three volume set (here)
Interview: Kojo Nnamdi Show, 2006 (here)

Bruce Davidson, Five Decades
Through December 19th

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
505 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Photographie, November 26, 2009 @Villa Grisebach

Villa Grisebach opens the German photographs season with its sale in Berlin later this week. I’m always interested to see what will be available in this part of the auction season – in general, the German houses do a consistently good job of delivering an unusual mix of quality material at very reasonable prices. Those collectors who are entirely focused on the US and London markets certainly miss out. Overall, there are a total of 188 lots on offer in this sale, with a Total High Estimate of 662400€. (Catalog cover at right, via Villa Grisebach.)

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 172
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 456400€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 16
Total Mid Estimate: 206000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 1382, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Galilee, Golan, 1992, at 24000-26000€.

In general, this is a well balanced sale, with many photographers represented by more than one lot. That said, here’s the list of the photographers who are represented by three or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Wolfgang Tillmans (5)
Dieter Appelt (3)
Abe Frajndlich (3)
Edmund Kesting (3)
William Klein (3)
Joel Meyerowitz (3)
Arnold Newman (3)
Dorothy Norman (3)
Antanas Sutkus (3)
Herbert Tobias (3)

Images of interest for our collection include:

Lot 1208 Bernd and Hilla Becher, Forderturm bei Merthyr Tydfill, Sudwales, 1966
Lot 1304 Edward Steichen, The Maypole-Empire State Building, New York, 1932/Later (at right)
Lot 1324 Ludwig Windstosser, Pintsch Bamag, Gas Mitte, 1950s

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographie
November 26th

Villa Grisebach Auktionen
Fasanenstraße 25
D-10719 Berlin

Richard Mosse, The Fall @Jack Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 photographs and 1 video, hung in the entry area, large back gallery, and two smaller side rooms. The 10 color images are all digital c-prints face mounted to plexi, framed in thin silver with no mat. The prints come in two general sizes; a large print approximately 72×90 or reverse (with some variation in dimensions from image to image) and a smaller print approximately 40×50 or reverse (again with some small variations); these prints come in editions of 2+1 and 5+1 respectively. The two black and white images are digital silver prints with selenium toning, framed in thicker white frames with no mats. Again, these prints come in large and small sizes, although the specific dimensions are different (one is 50×62 or 29×36, the other 50×85 or 40×50); these are also made in editions of 2+1 and 5+1 based on size. All of the images were taken in 2009. The video is approximately 4 minutes long and is shown in its own darkened room. It has been produced in an edition of 5+1. (Installation shots at right.)
.
Comments/Context: Richard Mosse’s new body of work is aptly called The Fall, as it centers on the quiet aftermath of conflict and the abandoned remnants of battle, specifically in Iraq. In these pictures, memories and symbols mix in unusual ways to commemorate the war-torn past.
.
The best of the images in this show depict anonymous bullet ridden and pock marked cars, stripped of their tires and anything else of value, the sheet metal shredded and twisted in sharp angles. Sitting alone in the thick smoky dust, they are slowly being eaten away by the sand, shadowy sculptural monuments to roadside bombs, gun battles, or innocents caught in the crossfire. The video on view in a side gallery continues this theme: large scraps of unidentifiable metal are circled by the camera, with the endless names of the cities and towns of Iraq recited in alphabetical order in a deadpan voice over; strewn in the desert, they become deformed shrines and markers for events now forgotten.
.
A second group of pictures depicts grounded fighter planes and passenger jets, shot down, partially destroyed, or just left to rot, their tails and empty cockpits jutting up like obelisks, rusting amid weeds, forests, and blankets of snow.
.
And while much has been made of the grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s many palaces in Iraq, Mosse’s images of Uday’s palace show the ironic reality of these over-the-top royal mansions: the turquoise-tiled swimming pool is dry and full of rubble, the ornate columns are smashed and falling down, and soldiers in full battle dress are lounging on the terrace with their machine guns, the vast empty desertscape in the background.

Mosse’s images are a reminder that the most poignant relics of war may not be the heroic statues or elegant tombstones; they may be the discarded fragments of the destruction, neglected and left behind, but evidence just the same.
.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced based on size. Regardless of the printing process or the exact dimensions of the works, the “large” images are $18000 each and the “small” ones are $9500 each; the video is $6000. Mosse’s work is not readily available in the secondary markets, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail.
.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Interview: BLDGBLOG (here)
Feature: Lens (here)

Richard Mosse, The Fall
Through December 23rd

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Ruven Afanador, Mil Besos @Throckmorton

JTF (just the facts): A total of 34 black and white images, framed in black with black borders and white mats, and hung throughout the main gallery space and elevator lobby. All of the prints are selenium toned gelatin silver prints. Most of the negatives were made between 2007 and 2009, although a few reach back to as early as 1990. The images come in three sizes: 20×16, 32×28, and 38×34, and are printed in editions of 25, 10, and 10 respectively. A monograph of this work has recently been published by Rizzoli (here) and is available from the gallery for $75. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The fiery, over-the-top passions of Spanish flamenco dancing are legendary: the stamping feet, the clapping, and the flowy dresses swirled and flared with flashes of emotion. Colombian fashion photographer Ruven Afanador has immersed himself in the depths of this stylized world and successfully captured the essence of its intertwined ecstasy and tragedy.

At first glance, it is impossible to miss the extreme contrasts of these images: dancers with long black hair, outfitted in dark black couture dresses, with black eye liner and lipstick, arrayed against blinding white backgrounds of stone and sand; this is a polarized, unreal world we are entering. Some of the most striking images in the show are the up-close images of faces: fleshy older women shout and laugh with fierce exaggerated expressions of agony, anger and joy, their flamboyant features made even more extravagant by their glossy black makeup. Others focus more on the gestures of the dance, with multiple dancers (of all shapes and sizes) moving together, or single dancers caught in an artful pose; in one image, two women strain against one another with their braided hair tied together. The rest of the works on view dig deeper into related themes: more elaborate dresses, unbelievably long hair, wrinkled and flabby nudes, gritty smoking, and plenty of crazed and contorted looks.

Overall, Afanador has done a memorable job of documenting the magical out sized personalities and bodies of flamenco, extending a “fashion” aesthetic beyond obvious shock value and finding outrageous moments of elegance and artistry.

Collector’s POV: The prints in the show are priced based on size. The smaller 20×16 prints are $3500 each. The larger 32×28 and 38×34 prints are both priced at $6000 each. Afanador’s work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is really the only option for interested collectors at this point. While these works don’t fit into any of our collecting genres, I particularly enjoyed Ursula Lopez Lopez, 2009, a dancer with a staggeringly long black dress, and Estudio de Baile Alicia Marquez, Outside Sevilla, Spain, 2007, an intertwined cluster of expressive black hands and forearms.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Features: Cyana Trend Land (here), Hint (here)

Ruven Afanador, Mil Besos
Through December 12th

Throckmorton Fine Art
145 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Auction Preview: Photographie Ancienne, Moderne et Contemporaine, November 21, 2009 @Yann Le Mouel

Yann Le Mouel has scheduled its big various owner photographs sale for this Saturday, smack in the middle of Paris Photo for maximum attention. The material is French/European heavy (as usual), with a definite tilt toward the lower end of the market. Overall, there are a total of 290 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of 550550€. (Catalog cover at right, via Yann Le Mouel.)

Here’s the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 282
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 450550€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 8
Total Mid Estimate: 100000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 29, Eugene Cuvelier, Chêne et sous-bois, 1862, at 15000-18000€.

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):

Robert Doisneau (12)
Andre Kertesz (10)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (8)
Willy Ronis (6)
Nicolas Yantchevsky (6)
Gisele Freund (5)
Francois Kollar (5)
John Batho (4)
Edouard Boubat (4)
Bill Brandt (4)
Lucien Clergue (4)
Kusakabe Kimbei (4)
Karl Lagerfeld (4)
Rene-Jacques (4)

While there aren’t too many great fits for our collection in this sale, we were interested by:

Lot 158 Aaron Siskind, New York, South Street, 1947
Lot 159 Aaron Siskind, Chicago, 1952

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographie Ancienne, Moderne et Contemporaine
November 21st

Yann Le Mouel
22, Rue Chauchat
75009 Paris

Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street: The MoMA Show as Curated by John Szarkowsi in 1970 @Howard Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 43 black and white images, framed and matted in extremely thin white frames with very little depth, and hung in groups against light brown walls in the main gallery space. All of the images were taken in 1967 and 1968 and are vintage 8×10 (or reverse) gelatin silver prints. The works have been installed as a historically accurate recreation of the 1970 show at the MoMA; installation photographs from the original exhibit (found in the price list booklet) show that the prints have been hung in the same manner (subject to the constraints of this particular space). (Installation shots at right.)

In addition to the prints in the main gallery, there are a variety of other ancillary mini-exhibits also on view. In the book alcove, there are 16 images from the expanded version of East 100th Street; these are works that did not appear in the MoMA exhibit. They are 11×14 modern prints, framed and matted in thicker white frames, and hung against cream colored walls. A glass case also holds a sample of vintage books.

The first viewing room holds a total of 11 platinum prints of Central Park, made by Davidson in the 1990s and printed in 2008. The works are either 5×12 or 6×10 and are framed and matted in black.

The second viewing room has a total of 6 vintage images from Davidson’s series on Brooklyn gangs from the 1950s. Most of the images are approximately 13×9 (or reverse) and are framed and matted in black.

And finally, in the back room near Greenberg’s office, there is a small selection of 6 vintage images by Man Ray: 2 rayographs, 2 nudes and 2 portraits (Picasso and Cocteau). The works are from the 1920s and 1930s and are variously framed and matted.

Comments/Context: Since its publication in 1970, Bruce Davidson’s East 100th Street has been a controversial body of work. Many have hailed it as a classic of social documentary photography, while others have criticized it as particularly exploitative. This exhibit is a kind of time machine, taking us back to the show of these images at the MoMA, as curated by John Szarkowski; the sequencing and grouping, even the frames are for the most part exactly the same. Of course, it is impossible to also transport our minds back nearly 40 years and react to the images in the same polarized way visitors did back then. All we can do is see them through the lens of the present, a kind of revisionist history of the resonance of the pictures and how well they have aged.
.

Almost all of the images in this show are “environmental” portraits; images of individuals, pairs or groups of people/extended families in their bedrooms and kitchens, on their front stoops and fire escapes, sitting on couches or standing on the street. What is striking about these pictures is the consistency of the knowing looks on the sitters’ faces: every single subject knows exactly what is going on, and is posing in one way or another. When allowed to create their own personas in collaboration with the photographer, a mix of hiding and showing goes on; some are vulnerable and exhausted by their poverty and daily struggles, others are more defiant and proud amid the challenging circumstances, still others are simply in love. And while there is plenty of quiet tenderness in these images, I found it hard not to see the awkward tension in each room. While Davidson was clearly successful in developing bonds of trust with his sitters, an undercurrent of subtle reluctance seems to percolate up in many of these “private moments”.
.

In many ways, I think the electricity of these images has been muted a bit over the years; as viewers, we have unfortunately become accustomed (some might say numbed) to images of urban poverty and persistent decay, and their effects on the lives of otherwise good people. Looking back, even with the anxiety of the unlikely artistic collaboration as a foundation, the images seem less taut now then they likely did in 1970. Perhaps this is good, as the mellowing with age has allowed the sympathy and authentic humanity in the pictures to come through more fully. Even if they are a bit posed, these images still offer plenty of touching moments found among the hard realities of urban life.

Seeing how Szarkowski edited and displayed Davidson’s work is an interesting sidelight to this exhibit. The images in the book alcove didn’t make Szarkowski’s show, so there is a contrast set up, an “in” and “out” dynamic that is intriguing. Szarkowski clearly gravitated toward Davidson’s interior relatively up-close portraits; his show is nearly all examples of this genre, while many of the additional images are pictures Davidson took in the street, of buildings, and of people from a distance, setting the scene. Szarkowski also avoided a simple “all in a line” hanging for the prints; there are groups, grids, pairs, and uneven out of line images that break the monotony, all carefully selected to work together or in juxtaposition. Seeing his unconventional hanging of this work was a good reminder of just how much difference attention to these details can make in telling the story of a body of work.
.

Collector’s POV: All 43 vintage images in the main exhibit are being sold as a single unit/installation; the price was “on request” and I didn’t ask. The modern prints in the book alcove are priced at $4000 each, the platinum prints of Central Park are $5500 each, and the vintage Brooklyn gang works are either $20000 or $25000 each. All of the Man Ray images are “price on request”.

Given Davidson’s long career, his work is surprisingly absent from the secondary markets. While there are a handful of prints available in any given year, they have not been particularly representative of his best work; often they are later prints or secondary images (or even first edition books). Prices have ranged between $2000 and $8000 in the past few years, but I’m not sure this range is a great guide to what his most notable images would/should sell for.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Features: NY Times (here), Daily Beast (here)

Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street: The MoMA Show as Curated by John Szarkowski in 1970

Through January 2nd

Howard Greenberg Gallery

41 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022

Auction Results: Photographs, November 10, 2009 @Bloomsbury London

Bloomsbury’s various owner photographs sale in London continued the auction house’s struggles to find a successful formula. Total Sale Proceeds were meaningfully less than half the Total Low Estimate and the Buy-In Rate topped 65%. My guess is that these woes stem from a combination of the wrong material matched to the wrong client base; and of course, there are no easy answers or solutions to these problems. It seems that Swann is the only one to have figured out the trick to consistently surviving (and often thriving) on the lower half of this market.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 239
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £320600
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £470500
Total Lots Sold: 82
Total Lots Bought In: 157
Buy In %: 65.69%
Total Sale Proceeds: £126124

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 225
Low Sold: 80
Low Bought In: 145
Buy In %: 64.44%
Total Low Estimate: £324500
Total Low Sold: £105628

Mid Total Lots: 13
Mid Sold: 2
Mid Bought In: 11
Buy In %: 84.62%
Total Mid Estimate: £118000
Total Mid Sold: £20496

High Total Lots: 1
High Sold: 0
High Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 100.00%
Total High Estimate: £28000
Total High Sold: £0

Only 62.20% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were six surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 15 Kusakabe Kimbei, GR Lambert, World Album, 1860-1880, at £4392
Lot 40, Anonymous, Dundee, 1926, at £6344
Lot 42 Underwood & Underwood, Titanic – A group of 5 glass positive slides, 1911/1912, at £1830
Lot 58 Helmut Newton, Sumo, 1999, at £8540
Lot 65 Vladimir Fyman, Chrysanthemum, 1941, at £2074
Lot 126 Elliot Erwitt, New York City, Coney Island, 1974/Later, at £3660

The top lot by High estimate was lot 230, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mediterranean Sea, Crete, 1990, at £22000-28000; it did not sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 222, Irving Penn, Lily Melridge, 1971/2007, at £15860.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Bloomsbury Auctions
24 Maddox Street
Mayfair
London WS1 1PP

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter