Photography Collection

Villa Grisebach: Auction of Modern and Contemporary Photographs

2009-11-10T12:22:00.002-05:00

This year�s fall auctions at Villa Grisebach Auktionen in Berlin starts off on 26 November 2009 with over 180 lots for sale in Modern and Contemporary photography. After the spring sale of photographs of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe�s architecture, Grisebach now presents an additional vintage print of the architect�s famous model for a glass skyscraper. The print is dedicated to Peter Behrens and estimated at 18,000-24,000 Euro. Further highlights in the Modern photography section are an early print of a portrait of composer Paul Hindemith (estimate of 10,000-12,000 EUR) by August Sander as well as works by Diane Arbus, Andreas Feininger, Horst P. Horst, Helen Levitt, Arnold Newman, Edward Steichen, Francesca Woodman among others. The top lot in the contemporary photography section is Hiroshi Sugimotos�s Sea of Galilee, Golan (estimate of 24,000-26,000 EUR) followed by a multi-part photo work by the Austrian artist Friederike Pezold entitled Mundwerk (estimate of 12,000-15,000 EUR) and Bettina Rheims�s Elizabeth Berkley (estimate of 10,000-15,000 EUR). Moreover, works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Peter Beard, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Thomas Ruff, J�rg Sasse, Wolfgang Tillmans as well as an unusual portrait of Michael Jackson by Gottfried Helnwein (estimate of 5,000-7,000 EUR) will be put up for auction. Finally, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Villa Grisebach offers a selection of fourteen photographs for sale in the section The Cabinet. The proceeds of this sale will benefit the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. Among the works for auction is an image by the currently much discussed photographer Erwin Olaf (estimate of 5,000-7,000 EUR).

Swann Galleries: Sale results of fall auction

2009-11-10T01:23:00.003-05:00

Preliminary results of sale 2191, October 22, 2009: Photographs and photographic literature
Sale total: $1,303,148 with Buyer's Premium
Hammer total: $1,085,100
Estimates for sale as a whole: $1,386,300 - $2,011,650
Swann Galleries offered 326 lots; 245 sold (25% buy-in rate by lot)

Top lots, Prices with buyer's premium:
28 Eadweard Muybridge, diverse group of 125 plates from Animal Locomotion, collotypes, 1887, $81,000 D

255 Eddie Adams, Saigon (General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van L�m), silver print, a gift to Adams�s son, with letter of provenance, 1968, printed 1980s, $43,200 C

284 Richard Avedon, Rudolf Nureyev, Paris, France, silver print, 1961, printed 1999, $26,400 C

27 Alexander Gardner and Chas Bell, suite of 29 cabinet cards published by the U.S. Geological Survey of the territories, albumen prints, late 1860s-early 1870s, $26,400 D

211 Bert Stern, Marilyn (Crucifix II), chromogenic print, 1962, printed 1990, $24,000 D

152 Horst P. Horst, Mainbocher Corset, Paris, silver print, 1939, printed 1990s, $21,600 C

227 Harry Callahan, Chicago, silver print, 1950, printed early 1970s, $18,000 C

64 Wilson A. Bentley, elegant group of 7 snowcrystals, gold-chloride toned photomicrographs from a glass plate negative, circa 1903-1910, $18,000 C

297 Diane Arbus, Agnes Martin, silver print, 1966, $18,000 C

292 Horst, Round the Clock I, silver print, 1987, printed 1980s,$16,800 C

282 David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton, silver print, 1963-1964, $16,800 C

99 Man Ray, Untitled (rayograph with a screen), silver print after the original rayograph, circa 1922, $15,600 C

42 A spectacular album containing 62 photographs of China, albumen prints, 1880s, $15,600 D

117 Lewis W. Hine, Powerhouse Mechanic (variant), silver print, circa 1926, $15,600 D

21 American portrait collection with more than 115 tintypes, 1860s-1880s, $15,600 C

189 Archive documenting Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin's early experiments with television transmission, including more than 125 photographs, 1930s-1940s, $15,600 C

34 Julia Margaret Cameron, Lord Alfred Tennyson, albumen print, with Tennyson�s signature, 1869, $13,200 D
196 Yousuf Karsh, Ernest Hemingway, silver print, 1957, printed 1970s, $13,200 C

242 Avedon, Charles Chaplin, Actor, Beverly Hills, California, silver print, 1972, printed 1975, $12,000 C

31 Rare, early mug shot album with more than 230 pictures of criminals, albumen prints, California, 1885-1892, $12,000 D

136 Group of 10 F.S.A. photographs printed by Arthur Rothstein, with images by Lange, Shahn, Rothstein and Evans, silver prints, 1935-1939, printed 1970s, $12,000 C

C= Collector; D=Dealer

The Benefits and Disadvantages of digital Printing

2009-11-08T02:23:00.001-05:00

By Blake Gopnik

Over the coming days, as art lovers take in the hundreds of images mounted around town at FotoWeek D.C., most of them will probably look a fair amount like photos always have. The technology used to produce them, however, will almost certainly be new. They will have been shot and printed digitally.

David Adamson, a 58-year-old Englishman, played a part in that change. Twenty-five years ago, as a budding computer geek, he got his hands on what he thinks was the first Macintosh computer in the District -- bought, Adamson says, in the vacuum-cleaner section of Hecht's department store, with money he made working as a skilled lithographer. He never imagined the future it would bring.

Even a decade later, when Adamson became one of the first people in the country to make digital art prints, he didn't think the technology would ever be within the means of amateurs. His first digital printer, built around the complex Iris technology, cost him $150,000, and he paid for it by making prints for some of the biggest names in contemporary art and photography: Chuck Close (his first star client), Robert Rauschenberg, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Annie Leibovitz. "We were the only game in town -- in the country! . . . In the pantheon of artists, I guess I've worked with most of them." (Such art-stars still travel to Adamson Editions in downtown Washington for his services.)

Now that printers can cost a thousand times less than they used to, and any hobbyist can turn out an impressive image, I asked Adamson about the ubiquity of digital photography, its virtues and pitfalls.

Here is some of what he said:

What do you see as the biggest benefit of digital photography?

You used to go out with a camera with 35 shots in it, so you had to consider each shot -- a lot of people think that was a very good thing. Yet the other side is also true: If you had thousands of shots, you could shoot limitlessly, then go back and edit and cull out the best, whereas considering each shot might stop you from making the perfect shot -- that's my belief. The best thing about digital is that you can just shoot hundreds and hundreds of images and then at your leisure go back and pick out what you felt were the best shots, or the best accidents.

What are the biggest benefits of digital printing, specifically?

In digital, you can go down to the pixel level, and control the density and contrast and brightness and sharpness throughout the film plane. So you have absolute control over an image.

What is the most common flaw you see in digital printing?

Over-processing -- you have the facility to control all the minutiae, and some people run wild with it. And gradually the image gets eroded by the constant processing, by the backwards and forwards of playing with light and contrast, sharpness and blurring. And finally the image becomes quite obviously digitally manipulated.

Is there too much digital retouching?

We did definitely go through a period where, "Wow, I can put this person here" or "I don't like her head there, but I like her body in this shot. Let's swap." I think people are pulling back to a more honest way of shooting, and only using [retouching] in extreme situations, where something has to be fixed, or something has to be taken out. I'm seeing less and less of what was overtly collaged together, and a return to a more honest look.

Now that everyone can make a decent print at home, why do you still have work?

I remember being invited to Vienna, Austria, to see the first Epson [inkjet] printers. It must have been around 2002. At that time I have five Iris printers, maybe $700,000 in equipment -- no one else does, because who's crazy enough to do this? And then I go out, and see these printers that are producing images that are demonstrably better than the Iris prints -- larger, flawless. It used to be that we'd keep two out of every three prints off an Iris; these things were repeatable ad infinitum. And the machines cost $7,000 each. I thought: "That's it. End of my studio. No one's going to be even remotely interested in using the studio once they see these -- they're going to go out and buy one, and that's it."

And for a little while, something like that did happen. But people started to realize that the economies of having the printer themselves were not really that great, unless you were a professional photographer using it full time. It was much more sensible to come to someone and have a perfect print done. And the other thing is that the artists that I really targeted -- like Chuck Close and Jenny Holzer and Roni Horn -- are so busy doing what they do, that never in a million years are they going to want to set up a print studio in their workshop. And they're very used to working with another person to get their work done. They trust my eye and ability.

Edward Steichen: The Pond - Moonlight

2009-11-05T01:48:00.002-05:00

The financial market crisis has deeply influenced the photography art market. Bonhams has only sold less than 18 % of its lots at the fall auction and experts await a further decline of prices. So we are going to remember better times. The sale of Edward Steichen, The pond - moonlight, was a record for Sotheby's at February 14th, 2006. The estimate was $700,000 - 1,000,000 and the hammer price with buyer's premium: $2,928,00. It was the most expensive photograph ever been sold at an auction at that time.The measures are 16 1/16 by 19 11/16 in. (41 by 50.8 cm.) and it is a multiple gum bichromate print over platinum, signed and dated by the photographer in crayon on the image, mounted, matted, framed, 1904.

This is the provenance:

The photographer to Alfred Stieglitz as agent

Acquired by John Aspinwall from the above, 1906

By descent to Mrs. John Aspinwall Wagner, Newburgh, New York

By descent to Justine Wagner Blodgett, Shoreham, Vermont

Paul Katz, New York

Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above, 1983

Sotheby's describes the photograph in the following paragraphs: Like the series of Steichen�s �Flatiron Building� now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, only three examples of �The Pond�Moonlight� are known, and as in the �Flatiron� series, each in this trio is different in tone, in atmosphere, and in subtle detail. In addition to the present photograph, there is the print of �The Pond� that Stieglitz gave the Metropolitan in 1933; and the print that Steichen himself gave to The Museum of Modern Art in 1967. Although created from the same negative, the three prints are the results of different photographic processes and are a testament to Steichen�s artistic goals and to his finely honed abilities as a printer. Multiple-process printing, on this large scale, was practiced by no one as it was practiced by Steichen.

The negative for �The Pond�Moonlight� was made in the wetlands around Marmaroneck, New York, on Long Island Sound, near the home of Charles H. Caffin (1854 � 1918), the English-born art critic who had championed Steichen�s work in his volume Photography as a Fine Art (see Lot 5). After the birth of their first daughter in July of 1904, the Steichens sought refuge from the stifling heat of their top-floor Manhattan apartment, gratefully accepting an invitation to spend August with Caffin and his wife Caroline. The August visit stretched into September when Steichen suffered a bout of typhoid and was hospitalized for three weeks. A gelatin silver print of a closely-related image, entitled �Autumn,� now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, is inscribed �Autumn, Marmaroneck, N. Y., 1904,� by Alfred Stieglitz on the reverse, a likely indication that the present photograph was made in September, during the latter part of the Steichens� stay (The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, Volume 16, 1988, fig. 93).

The woods at dusk, or in moonlight, was one of Steichen�s favorite subjects, one to which he returned time and again in the years before the first World War, in paintings as well as photographs. Although few of his paintings survive�he destroyed most of them in his notorious bonfire in Voulangis after the war�their titles echo his obsession with the effects of glimmering light in nocturnal settings: �The Road to the Lake�Moonlight,� �The Moonlight Promenade�The Sea,� �Balcony, Nocturne, Lake George,� and �Moonlit Landscape,� among others. A rare surviving painting from that period, now in the Whitney Museum of Art, shows parallel rows of trees in an unidentified glen, the moon rising to the top of the composition, its light reflected in the water in the foreground (reproduced in Dennis Longwell, Steichen: The Master Prints, New York, 1978, p. 17). �The romantic and mysterious quality of moonlight, the lyric aspect of nature made the strongest appeal to me� Steichen wrote in his autobiography. �Most of the paintings�watercolors�that I did in my early years were of moonlight subjects. . . the real magician was light itself�mysterious and ever-changing light with its accompanying shadows rich and full of mystery� (A Life in Photography, unpaginated, Chapter 1).

Tunick nudity jewel in 2010 Mardis Gras crown

2009-11-05T01:36:00.001-05:00

Sydney's Mardi Gras parades are renowned for wild flesh-flashing costumes but next year's festival goers will have even greater cause to strip off. New York based photographer Spencer Tunick, who has made his name capturing careful arrangements of dozens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of naked people against industrial or urban backdrops, will recreate a mass shoot for the March 2010 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.He is calling on Sydney's heterosexual and gay communities to come together for the communal artwork, named The Base, which will be the artist's first large-scale installation in the harbour city.Tunick says his work is not about exhibitionism or eroticism. Rather, it's to highlight the vulnerability of life exposed by the stark contrast between the nude human form and the coarse city landscape. That argument has not impressed authorities in the US, where he has been arrested seven times. "The base, the core, the heart of any truly free society depend on its acceptance of its diverse community as equal citizens," he said. "At the heart of The Base will be an exploration of what it takes to form the basis of an open and harmonious society.The project is somewhat of a coup for festival organisers. "Spencer's work will be a jewel in the crown of Mardi Gras 2010," Mardi Gras CEO Anna McInerney said. "It has taken over two years to make the project happen and I'm absolutely thrilled that we have Spencer coming to Sydney for Mardi Gras." The installation will take place on Monday, March 1.

Elinor Carucci: My Children

2009-11-04T12:29:00.002-05:00

Actually the gallery Le Bleu du Ciel presents the series My Children by Elinor Carucci in Paris. The US photographer offers an intimate insight in family life and the relationship between her and her children. This is an interview of artisrael with Elinor Carucci.

Bonhams sells photographs from 19th and 20th century by Edward Weston, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus and others

2009-11-04T05:13:00.003-05:00

Bonhams New York offers 151 lots by artists including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Richard Avedon, and Diane Arbus. A work by Edward Weston leads the sale. The 1936 nude featuring Charis (pictured, above), his former assistant and wife at the time, includes all of the elements for which Weston is known. Measuring 9 1/2 x 7 1/2in, the work displays the photographer's precise and sharp presentation. Signed, dated, and numbered '227N' by the photographer in pencil the lot carries an estimate of $70/90,000. Another lot is a photograph by Richard Avedon. Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris (1955) is a prime example of the photographer's signature style. Featuring the famous 50's model, Dovima, glamorously posing in front of circus elephants, the photo captures the spirit of 50's sophistication and is expected to fetch $25/35,000. A fanciful work by Joel Peter Witkin will be offered as well. Witkin's Harvest, Philadelphia (1984) makes use of his favorite of subjects- corpses. Using death, the photographer creates a surreal work which actually emphasizes rebirth and the cycle of the life. Carrying an estimate of $15/25,000, the lot is sure to draw serious collector interest.

Certain to attract bidding is Dunes, Oceano, California (1936) by Brett Weston. The photographer's use of high contrast, abstract imagery clearly conveys the dramatic expansiveness of this natural setting. The lot is estimated at $10/15,000. A work by Diane Arbus is also attracting much pre-sale attention. Titled Patriotic Young Man with a Flag, N.Y.C. (1967), the photograph carries all of the hallmarks of her work and is estimated at $10/15,000.
Additionally, sixteen Ansel Adams works, from various owners, will be offered. Ranging in estimate from $2/3,000 to $8/12,000 this group includes the photographer's lauded Yosemite photos as well as his Sierra Foothills and Yellowstone photos, amongst others. Other lots to note are Edward S. Curtis' M�sa-Mohave, from The North American Indian (est. $10/15,000); two works by Walker Evans acquired from the famed Light Gallery, both estimated at $8/10,000; and Lee Friedlander's 1969 Mt. Rushmore (est. $7/10,000).

Viewings will begin at the Madison Avenue galleries on November 1st until the morning of the sale which takes place on November 10th at 2PM EST. The illustrated auction catalog for the sale will be online at www.bonhams.com/us in the weeks preceding the preview and auction. For more information about the department, please visit www.bonhams.com/newyork.

Brett Weston, Underwater nude, 1981, Gelatin silver print, signed and edition numbered 21/100 in pencil on the mount. 13 3/4 x 9 5/8in.Estimate: $3,000 - 4,000.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, La buena fama durmiendo (Good reputation sleeping), 1939, Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1980, signed and annotated 'Mexico' in pencil on verso, framed.7 1/8 x 9 1/2in. Estimate: $6,000 - 8,000.

Ansel Adams, Half Dome, Merced River, Winter, 1938, Gelatin silver print, printed 1960s, signed in ink on the mount, the 'Special Edition of Fine Prints, Photographs of Yosemite' stamp on mount verso with 'This print 1247 of S.E.Y. No. 5' in ink., 7 1/4 x 9 1/8in. Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000

Thomas Struth photographs artist-designed Chapels

2009-11-03T06:46:00.001-05:00

In 2007, the New York Times invited the artist Thomas Struth to photograph a series of artist-designed chapels for the Sunday Magazine. Along with it, they commissioned a film to be made about Struth and his process.

Thomas Struth: The Chapels Project from jacob krupnick on Vimeo.

Roy DeCarava dies at 89 in New York

2009-11-03T04:39:00.003-05:00

Roy DeCarava, Sun and Shade, 1952, gelatin silver print, 12-7/8 x 9-5/8 in.

By Alex Novak

Roy DeCarava, a powerful and independent voice for African-American photography, passed away on October 27th in Manhattan. He had been living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and was just two months shy of his 90th birthday. DeCarava was born in Harlem on December 9, 1919 to Elfreda Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant, who separated from his father Andrew DeCarava shortly after his birth. An only child, he attended New York City's Textile High School both at the school's Harlem annex and at the main school on 18th Street in Manhattan. After high school in 1938 he worked as a sign painter with the Works Project Administration to help pay the bills. With the help of a scholarship, he studied architecture and sculpture at the Cooper Union from1938-40, and then painting and printmaking at the Harlem Art Center from 1940-42 and drawing and painting at George Washington Carver Art School from 1944-45. He considered himself first and foremost an artist, and this emphasis carried over later into his photography.
After a stint in WWII as an army topographical draftsman and getting a medical leave, DeCarava came back to Harlem, earning a living by working as a commercial artist and illustrator, but also exhibiting his first silkscreen prints at a New York gallery in 1947. DeCarava began to photograph Harlem's environs in 1946 at first to reproduce street imagery that he wanted to paint. But he quickly became so involved in the photography and Harlem's street life that he soon abandoned painting, sculpture and printmaking altogether. His first photography exhibit was held at the Forty-Fourth Street Gallery in 1950. The gallery's owner, a fellow photographer, taught DeCarava about darkroom technique. DeCarava later met with Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was Steichen who suggested that DeCarava apply for a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 1952, he became the first African-American photographer ever to win one and the $3,200 grant that was to give him the freedom of photographing Harlem. In his application, he wrote that he hoped "to show the strength, the wisdom, the dignity of the Negro people. Not the famous and the well known, but the unknown and the unnamed, thus revealing the roots from which spring the greatness of all human beings." The images that resulted from this work were published in the 1955 book "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" with text by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Steichen would later include several of DeCarava's Harlem images in the landmark exhibition and book, "The Family of Man".
Besides his images of everyday life in Harlem, DeCarava perhaps became even better known for his photographs of many Jazz greats, such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins and Miles Davis. DeCarava was not without his controversies though. Subject to racial discrimination most of his life, DeCarava worked actively for the civil rights movement, not only photographing such events, but also as an active participant. He chaired the American Society of Magazine Photographers' Committee to End
Discrimination Against Black Photographers. In that position, he became a leader in many rights efforts, such as the protest against Life magazine which demanded that the publication add black photographers to its staff. Gordon Parks, the only black photographer at Life during that time in the 1960s, refused to join the protest, and apparently DeCarava never forgave him. DeCarava's first important solo museum exhibition did not come until 1969 when the Studio Museum in Harlem showed his photography. In 1996 New York's Museum of Modern Art honored him with a major retrospective and the nearly 200-image show toured several U.S. cities. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2006 for his work.

Alexander Novak is a collector and art dealer and the principal of I Photo Central.

Auction Results: Christie's Fall Auctions

2009-11-03T04:30:00.002-05:00

By Alex Novak
While the remainder of the Berman collection didn't have the drama of a million dollar-plus lot, it still did surprisingly well for what could only be considered largely average color landscapes (although some images were a stretch to call "landscapes"). Christie's managed a solid 88% sold by lot and the totals were over $1.5 million with the steep buyers' premiums. All prices below include these premiums. I will only hit those lots that broke over $20,000 with the premium. Alec Soth's No. 48, Cadillac Motel, 2005, from his series Niagara, (lot 4) did very well, eclipsing its high estimate by a substantial amount. A phone bidder got the lot, which was featured on the front cover, at $21,250. Lot 9, Erwin Olaf's The Hallway, sold to an order bidder after multiple order bids and phones bid the lot up to double its midpoint estimate. It sold for a whopping $25,000. Eggleston, who was the focus of one of the Berman sales previously, did well here too. Lot 30 sold to a man in the room (bidder 177), who was fairly active during the sales here at Christie's. The lot, a dye transfer of Eggleston's Varner Grocery, sold for $21,250. Don't ask me why but lot 34, a disjointed Stephen Shore (one of the most over-rated of the American colorists) of U.S. Rt. 10, Post Falls, ID, sold to a phone bidder for well over its high estimate at $20,000. It was a chromogenic photograph printed later and so, mercifully, unlike most of his
earlier badly color-shifted and faded photographs from this period of the 1970s, you could actually see what was going on (although you might be bored to tears with the actuality of it). Lot 37, Richard Misrach's large "The Santa Fe", another chromogenic print from 1995, also was bid up well over its high estimate by a man in the room, who left immediately after snagging it for $47,500. Christie's indicated that the buyer was "private", whatever that means. Christie's used to indicate whether a bidder was a collector or trade and where they were located. It was certainly a strong image, although Fraenkel Gallery has shown several more interesting than this one recently, in my opinion, and probably a bit more permanent as well. Chris Jordan's Container Yard #1, Seattle in color pigment ink jet print (lot 40) sold for double its high estimate to a phone bidder at $20,000. L.A. dealer Paul Kopeikin (whose name was misspelled in Christie's catalogue) must have been overjoyed at the price, which was a new world auction record for Jordan's work. Another Richard Misrach, lot 107, Untitled #13-02, from On the Beach, sold to a persistent phone bidder over a woman in the room. The price, $68,500, established a new world auction record for the artist. Again, Christie's notes that the buyer was "private". On Eggleston's Untitled, Berlin (lot 121), a bidding war broke out between New York dealer Deborah Bell and Ute Hartjen of Berlin's Camera Works. Bell won out with a bid nearly four times the high estimate at $27,500. While it is a strong and typical Eggleston color exercise of a dark green radiator and in quite a small edition size (1/5), I thought it was a bit expensive given that it is an early chromogenic print (at least according to the catalogue), very small in physical size (11 x 7-1/4) and German rather than American. By the way, Bell used numerous paddles during this auction and was apparently bidding for multiple clients here.
Bidder 177 was back on the next lot, another Eggleston, Untitled, Memphis, taking it for $20,000. It was a dye transfer, but it wasn't my favorite (a brick apartment). Lot 134, Robert Polidori's 2732 Orleans Ave, New Orleans, LA, set an auction record for this group of work, although missed on setting an overall auction record at a total of $47,500. It sold to a phone bidder, which Christie's again termed "private". The image was used on the cover of Polidori's book, "After the Flood". Lot 143, the back cover image of the Christie's catalogue, was a Stephen Shore that I actually liked called Sunset Drive-In, West 9th Avenue, Amarillo, TX 1974, but in a digital pigment print made in 1996 before such inks were encapsulated. That means that the print could be subject to some fading and color shifts if it is subject to ozone (this aspect of ink jet prints was corrected shortly after this). A woman and man battled it out in the room with the woman taking it for $25,000. Stephen Shore's "Group of Photographs from 'Uncommon Places', 20 chromogenic prints made about 1994 (lot 146), sold to a single order bidder for the reserve, which was 25% below the low estimate at $37,500.
Likewise Bruce Davidson's Subway portfolio, a group of 47 dye transfer prints (lot 151), sold to another single order bid at 20% below the low estimate at $146,500. Christie's claimed that this was a world auction record for the artist, but I do not recognize group or portfolio claims like this, which should be reserved for single photographs. Again Christie's indicated that the buyer was "private". Robert Polidori was having a decent day here. His NY Public Library, Reading Room sold to the room for $20,000. An interesting Eggleston dye transfer print of red gas pumps titled "Near Greenwood, MS" sold to a man in the room for double the high estimate at $37,500. Finally, Joel Sternfeld's ever popular and highly seasonal image of McLean, VA, December 4, 1978 in a 15 x 19 inch dye transfer sold just over its high estimate for $32,500 to an Internet bidder.

Bloomsbury sells less than 18% of Photographs at Fall Auction

2009-11-03T03:56:00.007-05:00

Richard Avedon, Cyd Charisse, Evening dress by Macrini, 1961 Gelatin silver print, printed 1981. Signed and numbered 39/50 in ink with title stamp and copyright credit reproduction limitation stamp dated in an unknown hand in ink on the verso. 17 1/2 x 23 3/4 in. (44.5 x 60.3 cm.) Provenance: Private Collection, New York

By Alex Novak
Bloomsbury Auctions had the unenviable position of being first up in this series of fall auctions here in New York City. According to auction writer Stephen Perloff (more on Steve in a story below), few people in the small auction room were there to bid, but plenty of consignors were there to watch the results. They were probably not too happy. At a mere 17.8% of its photographs sold, Bloomsbury was the only house to do poorly this time around. It did better on its large book selection and sold through at a respectable 63.8%. Overall the auction sold only 32.5% of the total lots, which with premium (now raised from 20 to 22%--a big mistake in my opinion) totaled well under $1/4 million. That is an average of considerably less than $2,500 per lot. I think the auction house might have done a bit better had it matched up its sale date with Swann, which chose a date two weeks later than most. Bloomsbury also must start to really promote its auctions and develop its mailing lists for this relatively new category for this house, and instead its management seems to be retrenching. It is actually too bad. The house did a nice job on its catalogue, and the material--while somewhat lower in value--was priced well. There were definite bargains to be had here: just very few bidders.

William Klein (b. 1928) Life Is Good & Good For You In New York Paris: �ditions du Seuil, Album Petite Plan�te 1, 1956. 188 black and white plates. 4to. Black cloth, spine stamped in white, photographic end papers, in pictorial dust jacket. Booklet with staple-bound wrappers, laid-in as issued. First Edition, signed.

The top image lot in the auction was #19, a dynamic fashion shot of Cyd Charisse in an evening dress by Macrini by Richard Avedon, which sold for $18000 (Estimate: $20000 - 30000). The top book lot was #229, a signed and dedicated copy of William Klein's "Life Is Good & Good for You in New York", which sold for just $7,930. (Estimate: $5000 - 7000) The Weegee's from the Suzanne and Hugh Johnston Weegee Collection, which were featured in the sale, seemed to be a strategic mistake: too many and at too high a price for this market. Out of 51 Weegees in the auction, only five sold.

This is a summary of the auction results.

This same year [1961], Avedon married a stark, white horizonless background - which he often used in advertising - with a particularly energetic form of movement. His conception of the shape and use of movement on the page expanded when he photographed a fashion story on the dancer Cyd Charisse, one among a number of international film celebrities who modeled for him. Avedon took full advantage of her long-legged velocity as she pranced with graceful, sweeping steps in front of his camera. Focusing on her grand athleticism, Avedon discovered new dimensions to the art of movement in which the gorgeous, sinuous lines of the human body were animated by an exquisite form of motion. In one photograph of Charisse sailing across two pages in gauzy chiffon, Avedon began to distill his long-running affection for motion into a passionate, expansive, almost sculptural form that is beautiful and significant in its own right.
Carol Squiers, "'Let's Call It Fashion', Richard Avedon at Harper's Bazaar", Avedon Fashion 1944-2000, p. 179

Marc Lavoine - La Semaine Prochaine: A video by Mona Kuhn

2009-11-02T03:48:00.000-05:00

Mona Kuhn is not only a photographer, she is a video artist as well. So just have a look at a video that evolves from the way she perceives people and life through the lens.

Marc Lavoine - La Semaine Prochaine from mona kuhn on Vimeo.

Interview with Mona Kuhn about her concept of photography

2009-11-02T03:35:00.000-05:00

Steidl has published Mona Kuhn's new photobook Native with images from Brazil where the artist was born. We already had a posting about it. To understand her concept of photography it's important to have a look at her work during the years 2002 - 2008 when Mona Kuhn was taking photos in southern france. Native seamlessly fits into the concept of these works. This is an interview with CHUM-TV, Canada, about Mona Kuhn and her way doing photography at the beginning of the 21st century.

Mona Kuhn Interview from mona kuhn on Vimeo.

Frederick Sommer - a surrealistic Photographer

2009-11-01T16:18:00.000-05:00

Frederick Sommer (1905-1999) crafted a vision inflected by Surrealist ideas, elements of surprise and chance, and an acute sense of design. He experimented with many forms of art while making photography his primary endeavor. The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Frederick Sommer Photographs, a survey of his art over five decades, with some 40 photographs shown along with drawings and collages, including all of his central motifs and many of his best-known works. Among the images on view are several of his desert landscapes from the 1940s, horizon-less images that only gradually resolve their components into landscapes, and bewildering subjects such as �Max Ernst� (1946), in which Sommer superimposed an image of an aged concrete wall onto a portrait of his friend, the pioneering Dada and Surrealist artist, to create the illusion of a man morphing into rock. Other highlights include a rare suite of macabre and humorous yet poignant photographs the artist made in 1939 using chicken parts collected from his butcher, and which reflect the artist's determination to find mystery and grace in the most debased aspects of physical existence. There are also numerous examples of Sommer's later experiments photographing other artworks, including his own elegant paper cutouts of the 1960s and '70s.

Frederick Sommer Photographs is the first exhibition of Sommer�s work in Philadelphia since 1968 and is drawn from loans from distinguished private collections. Organized by Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs, along with Julia Dolan, The Horace W. Goldsmith Curatorial Fellow in Photography, it will be on view in the Alfred Stieglitz Center Gallery.

"It is wonderful to be able to show this remarkable group of works,� Barberie said. �His photography represents a high point in American modernism and resonates powerfully with the many masterpieces of Surrealist painting, sculpture, and photography in our collection, as well as with our holdings of photographs by Edward Weston and other artists who were important to Sommer."

Born in Italy to Swiss and German parents, Sommer was raised in Brazil and studied landscape architecture at Cornell University from 1925-27. He settled with his wife Frances in Prescott, Arizona, and abandoned landscape design in the early 1930s, as he began to experiment with drawing, painting, and collage, as well as writing poetry and prose. Though he continued to incorporate other art forms into his pictures, by 1938 he had dedicated himself to photography as his primary creative medium, attracted to its capacity for providing abundant visual information. He was further inspired by encounters with the photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston.

His early imagery of animal remains and desert landscapes in Arizona caught the attention of Surrealist artists and writers such as Max Ernst and Andr� Breton. For his part Sommer was attracted to the Surrealists� use of surprising subject matter and odd juxtapositions, as well as their emphasis on chance as a vital element of the creative process. Sommer�s oeuvre included a great variety of subjects, as well as frequent art historical references. He had a keen interest in the interconnectedness of things natural and manmade, as reflected in his work. As he wrote in 1970: �Images have sources and antecedents. To turn away from them is to have no image to breathe life into.�

Related Events

In conjunction with the exhibition the Museum will host �Photography Conversation: The Art of Frederick Sommer� on Sunday, November 8 at 2:00 p.m. in the Van Pelt Auditorium. Curator Peter Barberie will discuss Sommer�s work and life be joined by Sheryl Conkelton, Director of the Art Gallery at Temple University and editor of the 1995 book Frederick Sommer: Selected Texts and Bibliography, as well as noted photographers Emmet Gowin and Douglas Mellor, both of whom visited Sommer frequently at his home in Prescott, Arizona. Tickets are $20 ($16 members; $14 students) and include Museum admission. Tickets available online at: www.philamuseum.org or at 215-235-SHOW. This event is free for art and art history students from select area schools.

Also on View

On view through January 31, 2010 in the Julien Levy Gallery at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s examines a critical period for the art of photography and for the Philadelphia art scene. The exhibition shares several points of intersection with Frederick Sommer Photographs. Many of the artists in Common Ground were influenced by Sommer�s work: Sol Mednick, Ray K. Metzker, and David Lebe worked closely with Sommer's photographs during the installation of his 1968 solo exhibition at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), while Emmet Gowin cultivated a personal relationship with Sommer.

Stranahan photo exhibit comes to Aspen

2009-11-01T03:22:00.000-05:00

By David Frey
George Stranahan is an accomplished photographer in his own right, but his photography collection, which used to hang on the walls of his Woody Creek home, included images of some of the 20th century�s greatest photographers.Now the collection is Colorado Mountain College�s collection. Stranahan and his wife Patti handed over an extraordinary gift of 80 black-and-white photographs they collected over a lifetime. Among the photographers whose work is represented are Ansel Adams, famous for his iconic Western landscapes; Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose street photos captured what he termed the �decisive moment;� Depression-era documentarian Walker Evans; trailblazing female photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Maplethorpe, whose images of flowers captured a subtle eroticism before he turned his lens to more controversial subjects. The photographs are rotating in a pair of exhibits traveling throughout CMC�s campuses. Next week, the larger of the exhibits is unveiled at the Aspen campus. A public reception is set for Nov. 5, from 6-8 p.m.
�It�s like someone taking their passion and saying, �Here�s my passion. I�m going to give it to you,�� said Alice Beauchamp, director of CMC�s Center for Excellence in the Arts and curator of the exhibit. The Stranahans asked that their permanent gift be used to strengthen the college�s educational mission, and that it be available to Colorado Mountain College students throughout CMC�s massive 12,000-square-mile region. They want the images to help to teach future photographers instead of remaining sealed inside a private museum. When they first announced their intention to donate the photos, Beauchamp went to their home to see them with longtime CMC photography instructor Buck Mills. The images were packed away in boxes. Unwrapping them was like unwrapping buried treasure, with photos valued from $400 to $4,000. Mills �was like a little kid in a candy store,� Beauchamp said. In front of them were images by some of photography�s greatest luminaries, like Sally Mann and Paul Strand. The photos were first displayed at the CMC gallery inside the college�s district office in Glenwood Springs. But the 80 photographs are too overwhelming for one site at CMC, so a second exhibit began at the Breckenridge campus. The two exhibits will circulate among the campuses for the next couple years, Beauchamp said, and then may make a bigger road trip to college campuses across the country. �I�m speechless when I think about it,� she said. �It was a huge personal gift from George and Patti.� The themes of these black-and-white images vary greatly, but they share one thing in common: They capture a moment in time � a glance to the camera, a glance away, a shaft of light. In one Cartier-Bresson image, a bicycle blurs down a winding French alleyway an instant before disappearing. In another, a girl is about to be swallowed in a whitewashed labyrinth of Greek stairways and doorways. The exhibit includes portraits of actress Marilyn Monroe and artist Frida Kahlo, and of Latin American peasants and a Haitian man who appears to be in the thralls of a voodoo trance. In one, poor Russian schoolchildren sit in class. A Depression-era woman bakes biscuits in another. A New Orleans sex worker reclines. A boy scrambles over a fence. A Mississippi couple dances the jitterbug. One of its most crowd-pleasing images is Steven Brock�s �Salud Compadre, Peru.� A trio of apparently pickled Peruvian peasants sit alongside a pockmarked wall. They wear rumpled hats and dirty clothes. One holds a walking stick. One holds a tiny cup. The third raises his fist in a toast of �Salud!�More than one visitor has left the gallery raising their fist and shouting �Salud!� Beauchamp said.

PHotoEspa�a creates new Forum for Photography and Visual Arts in Latin America

2009-10-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

PHotoEspa�a aims to promote the professional exchange and collaborative connections in the field of photography and visual arts in Iberoamerica. Trasatl�ntica will take place from November 2009 to January 2010 in diverse Latin-American countries and has organized a series activities for Iberoamerican photographers, critics, historians and curators to participate in: Portfolio reviews in Guatemala and Brazil. Open to Latin-American photographers, the portfolio reviews will take place on November 6 and 7 at the Centro Cultural de Espa�a en Guatemala and on December 4 and 5 at the Centro Cultural S�o Paulo through the collaboration with the Centro Cultural da Espanha em S�o Paulo. A selection of these projects will be selected to form part of a collective exhibition produced by the Instituto Cervantes in the context of PHotoEspa�a 2010.
Contest for curatorial projects online. Open to art curators, this contest allows participants to develop curatorial projects online, using the works by the photographers selected to participate in the portfolio reviews. The best projects will be featured in the Trasatl�ntica webpage and one winning project will be produced for an exhibition that will travel throughout the AECID Network of Cultural Centers Symposium of critics and researchers in Mexico. Open to Latin-American critics, researchers and theorists, this symposium will take place on January 13 and 14, 2010 at the Centro Cultural de Espa�a en M�xico. The selected essays will be published in the Tras�tlantica web and some will also be printed in the festival publication. In addition, Trasat�ntica has created a collaborative network with cultural institutions in Latin America, including 42 exhibitions hosted in 32 centers located in 14 countries, including: Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico DF, Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires and the Galeria Vermelho in S�o Paulo, who will be showing works by Ros�ngela Renn�, Yoshua Ok�n and Manuel �lvarez Bravo, among others. Trasatl�ntica PHotoEspa�a also organizes in Casa de Am�rica of Madrid a colloquium of graphics editors from the principal Iberoamerican Publications on January 29, 2010.

Auction of Photographs by Ilse Bing in Paris

2009-10-27T02:32:00.000-04:00

Ilse Bing, Three men on steps by the Seine, Paris 1931, Gelatin-silver print. Bequest of Ilse Bing Wolff.

Auction House Millon-Cornette de Saint Cyr will hold an auction of more than 500 photographs by Ilse Bing acquired by the current collector directly from the Ilse Bing Estate. Vintage exhibition prints, drawings, documents and other manuscript material are included in the auction, which will be held in Paris at Drouot Montaigne, 15 avenue Montaigne 75008 Paris on November 16, 2009, 7 pm (local time). The phone and fax during viewing: phone: +33 148 00 20 91 and fax: +33 148 00 20 83. The sale can be viewed November 14-15, from 11 am to 6 pm, and November 16, from 11 to 12 am, at Drouot Montaigne. You can also preview by appointment with the expert Christophe Goeury.

Ilse Bing (1899 � 1998) was a German avant-garde and commercial photographer who produced pioneering monochrome images during the inter-war era. Her move from Frankfurt to the burgeoning avant-garde and surrealist scene in Paris in 1930 marked the start of the most notable period of her career. Producing images in the fields of photojournalism, architectural photography, advertising and fashion, her work was published in magazines such as Le Monde Illustre, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue. Respected for her use daring perspectives and cropping, use of natural light and geometries, she also discovered a type of solarisation for negatives independently of a similar process developed by the artist Man Ray. Her rapid success as a photographer and her position of being the only professional in Paris to use an advanced Leica camera earned her the title "Queen of the Leica" from the critic and photographer Emmanuel Sougez. In 1936 her work was included in the first modern photography exhibition held at the Louvre, and in 1937 she travelled to New York where her images were included in the exhibition "Photography 1839�1937" at the Museum of Modern Art.

Andreas Gursky: Art Market Trends 2008/2009

2009-10-22T11:30:00.000-04:00

Shanghai,

Andreas Gursky is the highest priced of Bernd & Hilla Becher�s former art students and 97% of his auction revenue comes from the UK and the USA. Gursky has a pronounced appetite for monumental formats (some larger than 5 metres) in which individuals appear lost in the immensity of ordinary landscapes: supermarkets, stock markets or museums� he takes objective shots of the modern world and simultaneously produces breathtaking images. Unlike the work of his former teachers, 70% of Gursky�s work changes hands for prices above the � 10,000 line. His auction record stands at � 2.3m for a diptych measuring more than 3 metres. The photo entitled 99 cent II shows a saturated and highly constructed view of supermarket aisles. The diptych was sold on 7 February 2007 at Sotheby�s in London. Four months earlier, a similar example of 99 cent II was acquired for � 500,000 less at Phillips de Pury & Company, (16 November 2006). During this exceptional period of 2006/2007, Gursky�s work was fully implicated in the rapid ascension of Contemporary Art prices. In 2006 for example, his auction revenue was close to � 8m, a figure which corresponds to his combined auction revenue for 2003, 2004 and 2005! The � 3m total posted between July 2008 and June 2009 suggests a return of his market to a calmer rhythm, corresponding to his 2005 revenue just before the major speculative wave began. After a series of six auction results above the $1m between May 2006 and February 2008, the works proposed in 2009 at more than � 100,000 sold somewhat timidly and, at best, within their estimated price ranges. Gursky�s best auction results over recent months have been generated by pictures of the capitalist oases Dubai, Monaco and Shanghai. A view of Monaco sold for � 474,000 in February at Sotheby�s, a picture of Dubai World II fetched � 370,000 (� 434,000) and another of Shanghai went under the hammer for � 281,600 (25 June 2009, Sotheby�s). � artprice.com

Collector insists Garage-Sale Find is Ansel Adams� early Work

2009-10-18T03:50:00.001-04:00

By Chris Collins
A handful of experts are trying to prove what Rick Norsigian has suspected for years: that his garage-sale find of 60 glass photo negatives are the early works of famed California photographer Ansel Adams. Norsigian, a 63-year-old antiques collector who works in the maintenance department of the Fresno Unified School District, bought the negatives for $45 in the spring of 2000. But they may be worth millions. Some photography and restoration experts believe that the negatives may be Adams� early work � pictures taken in the 1920s and early 1930s, before Adams became wildly popular. On Thursday, the experts milled about in a conference room at a Clovis, Calif., hotel, pointing to evidence that they say proves the negatives are the work of one of California�s foremost nature photographers. For example, they said, the negatives were found in manila envelopes with notes that a handwriting expert has identified as written by Virginia Adams, Ansel Adams� wife. Most of the photos were of nature scenes in Yosemite National Park and San Francisco � two places that were often the subject of Ansel Adams� photographs. The experts were hired by a Los Angeles law firm that has been working closely with Norsigian for three years. The event on Thursday was meant to drum up publicity for the photos and help set the stage for a possible exhibition of the glass negatives in Fresno next year.
Patrick Alt, a photographer from Culver City and one of the experts, said he believes the glass plates were shot by Adams, because "there was no one else other than Ansel in that time period doing this quality of work." But not everyone is convinced. Most notably, Matthew Adams, the photographer�s grandson and president of the Ansel Adams Gallery, said Thursday that there�s "no absolute proof as to who did take them." In a separate statement he added: "Mr. Norsigian has been claiming these negatives were made by Ansel Adams for many years. I am unaware of anyone knowledgeable agreeing with him." Norsigian has had trouble tracking down how the negatives wound up in Fresno. He said that the person who sold the glass plates to him at the garage sale in Fresno told him that they had been stored in an abandoned Los Angeles warehouse. Norsigian has lost contact with that person, however, and he said he hasn�t had any success trying to figure out how the box of negatives got to the warehouse. One theory, however, is that they were stored there in the early 1940s while Adams taught in Los Angeles. Some of the negatives appear to have been singed by fire � evidence that they may have been part of the Adams� collection damaged by a 1937 fire that destroyed much of his work, Norsigian said.
Despite skepticism from Adams� family, he said he believes "without a doubt" that they are the work of Adams. Arnold Peter, an attorney with a Los Angeles law firm that has been working closely with Norsigian for three years, said he has recruited a team of experts to prove it.
Peter said the team is in the "final stages" of verifying that the photos were shot by Adams. On Thursday, the team began digitally scanning the negatives so the photos could be cleaned up and compared to other Adams photos. Peter said he expects a final conclusion in the "next couple of weeks." Peter noted, however, that there is no process for officially authenticating Norsigian�s negatives or other photographic work for which the authorship is in dispute. At some point, Norsigian said, he may sell the negatives for a handsome profit. But for now, he and Peter hope to display the photos around the country as a touring exhibition, starting in Fresno in the fall of 2010. "I�m hoping for the public to enjoy them," Norsigian said.

Photographer Irving Penn dies at 92

2009-10-08T15:05:00.000-04:00

Irving Penn, Dorian Leigh and Maurice Tillet, Silver gelatin print, 1945

Irving Penn, whose photographs revealed a taste for stark simplicity whether he was shooting celebrity portraits, fashion, still life or remote places of the world, died Wednesday at his Manhattan home. He was 92. The death was announced by his photo assistant, Roger Krueger. Penn, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects � from fashion models to Aborigine tribesmen � from their natural settings to photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures. Between 1964 and 1971, he completed seven such projects, his subjects ranging from New Guinea mud men to San Francisco hippies. Penn also had a fascination with still life and produced a dramatic range of images that challenged the traditional idea of beauty, giving dignity to such subjects as cigarette butts, decaying fruit and discarded clothing. A 1977 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented prints of trash rescued from Manhattan streets and photographed, lovingly, against plain backgrounds. Penn's most recent work was a series of still-life photos made of ceramics that he and his wife had collected in Europe. Penn was the older brother of filmmaker Arthur Penn, who directed "The Miracle Worker," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Night Moves." There is actually an exhibition, Small Trades, with photographs of workers by Irving Penn at the Getty Center, Los Angeles. A pre-scheduled exhibition of Penn's photographs will open at The National Portrait Gallery in London on 18 February 2010 (until 31 May 2010) and will be the first UK show of his work in twenty years.

Part of Photography Collection presented at Austin Peay State University, Clarksville (TN)

2009-10-08T04:41:00.000-04:00

Bruce Barnbaum, Antelope Canyon, Arizona, 1998

By Stacy Leiser

The mood was festive as people crowded into Austin Peay State University's small Trahern Gallery for the opening of "Modern Light: Selections from the Jim and Nan Robertson Photography Collection," the university's most important art show to date. "We can use it as a teaching mechanism. It's not going to be stored away. This is going to be out", Ned Crouch, former director of Customs House Museum, said while gaping at the photographs.The exhibit, curated by APSU photography professor Susan Bryant, is 58 photographs from a collection of more than 300 photographic artworks donated to the university. Jim and Nan Robertson live in Dover, but while living in Arizona, they ran Fifth Avenue Gallery,. They knew some of the photographers of that era, and collected their work as well as photographs by earlier masters in the field. "Modern Light" includes photographs by Paul Strand, Bill Brandt, Ruth Bernard, Brett Weston, Cole Weston, Clarence White and Harold Edgerton. It also includes one of Bryant's favorite photographs of all time, "Chez Mondrian, Paris" by Andre Kertesz. The exhibition will be on display through Oct. 28, and the collection is a permanent part of APSU's photographic library. Susan Knowles, an independent art curator, spoke about highlights of the show and the significance of the collection. "A photographer needs to have an eye for composition and a sensitivity for emotional and intellectual resonance," Knowles said. He pointed out various photographs in the show and revealed details about them that might elude a casual viewer. She also keyed in on Bryant's favorite piece. "'Chez Mondrian,' taken in 1926, is probably one of the best-known images in photography," Knowles said. "Kertesz did not speak French. He used the camera basically as an extension of his personality."

The dignity of losers: On the history and current relevance of socio-critical photography

2009-10-06T13:22:00.000-04:00

Sebastiao Salgado, Dispute between workers of a gold mine in Serra Palada, Brasil, and the military police, 1986

By Dr. Anton Holzer
The postmodern arbitrariness that went hand-in-hand with globalisation appears to have come to an end. It has been succeeded by a new trend in photography: a return to the documentary. People have recently started to reflect on the long-forgotten socio-critical photography of the 1930s. But does it really serve as a model? Social criticism in documental images? Elucidation, accusation and political change effected by means of the camera? No, during the last three decades this form of social criticism has not really been in demand. If we look at the exhibition policies of the large art museums, it is obvious that in the last three decades more and more photography as photo art has been shown, yet at the same time the documentary element of photography has gradually disappeared.

Larger formats
This tendency can be seen even in the superficialities: the format of pictures has moved further and further from the conventional dimensions of the ordinary, everyday snapshot and closer to those of the panel painting. In the 1970s and 1980s photos, if they did happen to find their way into an art museum, were exhibited in small or only slightly enlarged formats: 13 by 18 cm, 18 by 24 cm, or, at the very most, 24 by 30cm. Now photography demands more space on the museum wall than the venerable old large-format oil paintings that were once considered the flagships of 'high art'.

3.3 million dollars for '99 cent'
When the photographic series '99 cent' by the star German photographer Andreas Gursky was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2001, the pictures measured well over 2 by 3 m. The prices at the photographic art market kept admirable pace with these expansions. At an auction in 2007, a buyer paid 3.3 million dollars for a single print from the '99 cent' series, which Gursky had photographed in a New York discount supermarket where every product cost 99 cents. It was the most expensive photographic image ever sold.

The dizzying heights that photographic art reached in recent years did not happen by chance. They fit well within the economic climate of an unrestrained globalisation, in which stock exchange profits seemed inexhaustible and the business of speculative transactions just kept booming. The large-format photographic work of postmodernists such as Gursky, Struth, Ruff and H�tte would seem to be a fitting illustration of the years of economic euphoria. They composed a world not of hard social facts, but of a kaleidoscope of sparkling impressions.

Concrete social and political concerns are difficult to discern in this form of photography. The viewer stands filled with awe before the monumental tableaux � nothing more. In the twinkling of an eye these large-format panels make facts into fiction; the postmodern carousel of perception turns again and again. The pictures refrain from absolute, definitive assertions about the state of society and of things.

But then came the crisis. The profits tumbled, confidence in the monetary economy dwindled, banks and other businesses got into difficulty. The shock to the economy left its mark � even in the cultural domain, even in photography. Now a new trend in the photography of the early 21st century is tentatively starting to show itself: a renewed interest in socio-critical documentary photography. And it is not by chance that this return leads us back to the 1930s, when engag� documentary photography was at its zenith.

Taking sides
The heyday of the (mostly) left-wing, socio-critical photography of the interwar period admittedly lasted just a short time both in the USA and in Europe, from the late 1920s to the middle or end of the 1930s. Almost all the socio-documentary photo-projects from this period of violent political conflict commented on the pressing social problems of the time. Unemployment, poverty, housing shortages, homelessness. These were the issues at this time of great political conflict between left and right. The socio-documentary photographers took sides. They involved themselves in the conflicts on the street. As Tucholsky so aptly put it in the 'Weltb�hne' in 1925, the camera was their weapon. And photographs, he said, were 'dynamite and blasting cartridges in the battle for souls'.

Undertones
While Tucholsky was fascinated by the left-wing, militant 'biased photography' that aimed to ignite social and political sparks through radical juxtaposition such as that practised by the photo-montage artist John Heartfield in the 'Arbeiter-Illustrierten-Zeitung' (Workers Pictorial Newspaper), the language of other documentary photographers was to some extent gentler and subtler. One need only recall the work of the Soviet, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian socio-photography movements, for example, whose exponents combined political engagement with modern, objective imagery.

An astonishing number of women in central Europe took part in this political project for a political sociography in pictures. The Slovakian Irena Bl�hov�, for example, photographed a fascinating series about social outcasts for her 1930 work 'Cretins'. The Hungarian Kl�ra Langer took photographs of the dismal living conditions of gypsy girls in the 1930s. Around 1932 Judit K�r�sz, a Hungarian Bauhaus student, photographed the unemployed. Kata Sug�r took photos of the faces of the working class. And Kata K�lm�n, with her husband Iv�n Hevesy, devoted almost a decade to the social documentation of the lives of workers and peasants.

The offshoots originating from the workers' photography movement of the mid-1920s in Germany spread far across the German-speaking world. In Germany, well-known figures included Eugen Heilig, Erich Rinka, Ernst Thormann, Helmar Lerski and Walter Ballhause, in Austria Ferdinand Hodek, Nikolaus Schwarz, Alexander Stern and Edith Suschitzky, and in the Netherlands Mark Kolthoff, Eva Besny�, Wally Elenbaas, John Fernhout, Hans Wolf, Cas Oorthuys and Carel Blazer. In Hungary, other than those mentioned, S�ndor G�nci, Ferenc Ha�r, Lajos Lengyel and Lajos Kass�k were of note. In Czechoslovakia, alongside Irena Bl�hov� were also Karol Aufricht, Barbora Zsigmondiov� and, most importantly, Lubomir Linhart, who published the programmatic volume 'Soziale Fotografie' (Social Photography)in 1934. Even in Switzerland this interest in the underclasses of society made itself felt: in the 1930s Theo Frey, for example, photographed the everyday lives of workers, the unemployed and highland peasants.

Walker Evans, Starving cuban family, 1933. Silver gelatin vintage print, 13.8 x 22.7 cm. Private collection, � Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

'Not a single shot of Wall Street'
Although they used the camera in very different ways, there is one thing that the images of all these documentarists have in common: the poor, the outcasts and the lower classes are not represented as exotic objects, but rather portrayed in a way that points to participatory observation. The photographs do not present poverty as a human stain; they show the dignity of the poor. To the lowliest members of society, those who appear in all the statistics only as the anonymous collective, these photographs give back their individual � often proudly upturned � face. Socio-documentary photography from the interwar period is, as Tucholsky diagnosed, no austere and sober non-fiction record of things, but rather 'biased photography'. The documentary power of the images is related to the desire for political and social change. This desire could be conveyed in a variety of ways. The tradition of the socially reforming (largely civil) documentary photography of the turn of the century (such as that of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, who coined the term 'social photography' in 1909) appeared again in an altered and expanded form in the interwar period: such as in the large-scale propaganda project of the US Farm Security Administration (FSA), which in the 1930s wished to use government funding to eradicate rural poverty in the American South. Starting in 1935, a photo-documentary project was run alongside this economic campaign, and from it emerged such icons of American photography as Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein and Dorothea Lange. Roy E. Stryker, head of the photographic division of the FSA, did not pursue inflammatory social documentation, but rather used images to show wholehearted support for Franklin D. Roosevelt's national New Deal policy. He intervened wherever possible to bring into the public eye his idea of a positive documentary image in terms of the belief in progress expressed in the patriotic policy: he chose 'appropriate' photographers, gave them strict itineraries and guidelines regarding content, wrote detailed scripts, and chose pictures for the press and specified the captions. Stryker claimed: 'You'll find no records of big people or big events. There are pictures that say Depression, but there are no pictures of sit-down strikes, no apple salesmen on street corners, not a single shot of Wall Street and absolutely no celebrities.' Accordingly, Stryker made no great strides in any new political direction when in 1941 he became head of photo-propaganda in the American Office of War Information.

Academic analysis
Alongside the left-wing workers� photography and the nationally supported photo-propaganda, there was a third strand to socio-documentary photography in the 1930s: the academic analysis, using ethnological approaches, of the everyday proletarian life. We encounter this variety of photography in the �Mass Observation� movement in England, which was founded in 1937 by writer Charles Madge and anthropologist Tom Harrison, along with the filmmaker and photographer Humphrey Jennings. Between 1937 and 1950, when the project ended, 25 books and countless field studies about the daily lives, living conditions and leisure activities of the English working class had been produced with the aid of thousands of volunteers who participated in the collection of the data. The end of the 1930s heralded the temporary end of socio-documentary photography. National Socialism in Germany and the looming war drove left-wing photographers into inner emigration - the term used to describe the withdrawal of intellectuals and artists into private life during the Nazi occupation- exile, sometimes prison � or even into the arms of the national propaganda machine. In the USA and almost all the countries of Europe, from the middle of the 1930s social criticism entered into the service of patriotic rearmament. Even left-wing photographic movements, which until then had given national ideological exploitation an appropriately wide berth, fell into line within the phalanx of nationally stipulated and sponsored propaganda in World War II. An example of this was the �Photo League� founded in New York in 1936, the largest non-commercial photography school in the USA.

The return to the documentary
After 1945 � except in England, where the tradition continued a little longer � engag� and collectively organised socio-documentary photography could no longer really gain a foothold. The ruthless anti-communism of the McCarthy era imposed the verdict of evil on the left-wing, committed socio-critical photography of the interwar period. The great documentary photographers of the post-war period, such as W. Eugene Smith, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, William Klein and Mary Ellen Mark, were either lone fighters or forced to work supplying stories for the big illustrated magazines (particularly 'Life'). Constrained by the economic logistics of increasing circulation, political outsiders had little scope for expressing their views. In the shadow cast by the global economic crisis, is there now any trace of a reversal of the trend? The first signs of a new direction in photography can be identified: some European museums and academic institutions are looking back � it�s no coincidence that they were nudged by the shock of the economic crisis � to the documentary power of the photograph. In the summer of 2009, the renowned Budapest Ludwig Museum showed an outstanding exhibition of socio-documentary photography from the late 1920s and 1930s, entitled 'Things are drawing to a crisis'. In the centre of the display were the works of the American and European photographers and photography groups (such as those from the Dutch and Hungarian workers� photography movements) who, starting from the great economic crisis of 1929, documented the daily lives of the economic losers. In 2009, the photographer, critic and curator Jorge Ribalta organised 'Universal Archive' at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), a highly regarded exhibition on the history of documentary photography in the 20th century. Finally, in 2010 the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid will be hosting a large international conference on the history of the socio-documentary workers' photography movement. This does not in any way mean that the socio-documentary photography of the interwar period has made its comeback. But the public, which is now reflecting even more keenly on the socio-documentary images of the 1930s, also seems to be interested in the currently visible downside of unrestricted capitalism. Perhaps the economic losers of this latest crisis will now also gain a new photographic face.

Dr. Anton Holzer works as a photo-historian, journalist and curator in Vienna. He is editor of the journal 'Fotogeschichte'.

Michael Mann plans film of Robert Capa

2009-10-05T13:22:00.000-04:00

By Maximilian von Soltau
Director Michael Mann plans a film about Robert Capa. Columbia has bought the rights to the Susana Fortes novel Waiting for Robert Capa and has hired Jez Butterworth to adapt it. Robert Capa (1913 � 1954), born Endre Ern? Friedmann, was a combat photographer who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. Capa and his companion Gerda Taro had a great influence on photo journalism in the 20th century. In 1947, Capa cofounded Magnum Photos with, among others, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Police blocks nude Photographs of Brooke Shields at Tate Modern

2009-10-01T10:32:00.000-04:00

By Simon Perry
A nude portrait of Brooke Shields taken when she was 10 has been removed from a major London exhibition after police visited the gallery. Artist Richard Prince's photograph, set to be shown starting Thursday as part of the "Pop Life: Art in a Material World" exhibition at the Tate Modern, had raised the indignation of children's advocates. The room containing the shot of Shields, now 44, has been closed off. "The officers have specialist experience in this field and are keen to work with gallery management to ensure that they do not inadvertently break the law or cause any offence to their visitors," a Scotland Yard spokesman said, confirming the Wednesday visit by the Obscene Publications Unit. The investigation was prompted by Kidscape, a group that campaigns against child abuse in the U.K. Founder Michele Elliott said the image could be a "magnet for pedophiles." The Prince piece is a photograph of a photograph originally taken by Garry Gross, shot with permission of Shields's mother, Teri Shields, and showing the heavily made-up child star naked. Gross told Britain's Daily Telegraph that "the photo has been infamous from the day I took it, and I intended it to be." The Prince work has already been shown at New York's Guggenheim Museum without controversy.

Yearning and the Desire to Provoke

2009-10-01T09:35:00.000-04:00

Tanyth Berkely, Grace

When the photographer Berkeley steps out of the door of her Brooklyn apartment she is seeking out people, people who are unique. That perfect face of a model who could launch an advertising campaign � no, it is not to be found in her photographic portraits. Berkeley doesn�t call up New York modeling agencies to see their latest up-market versions of Venus and Adonis. Instead she wants to challenge and expand our sense of beauty. Instead she seeks extraordinary faces. Take Grace, for example, her hair, eyebrows, and skin completely white. Scientists would simply nod and classify her as an albino. Or Berkeley regularly photographs a woman from her neighborhood who is an artist in the manner in which she applies makeup to her face. Sometimes you�ll catch Berkeley leaning on a doorframe, studying her surroundings. Other times she wanders the streets of New York. Tanyth Berkeley�s quest for extraordinary human beings is one that betrays a profound loathing for the slick, airbrushed world of marketing and advertising. A loathing for the worldwide reign of terror by youth and beauty, one maintained by the fashion magazines, advertising spots, and billboards that serve as their commissars. A dictatorship of images.

Photo courtesy of Tanyth Berkeley

The documentary filmmaker Christian Klinger accompanied Tanyth Berkeley on her journey through New York in order to portray her life and work in the film People Love Photos. Just as with Traci Matlock and Ashley MacLean, two artists from the Texan city of Houston who appear in the roles of Rose and Olive � and whose work just as surely does not conform with any traditional pattern of photographic beauty. Here the principle is not applied to their models but rather to the settings they appear in: rundown quarters of the city, dusty parking lots, and all sorts of dingy and desolate environments. Sometimes the settings are in a nature that has been romantically transposed by means of image editing. Rose and Olive fathom the murky depths of modern society. Their world expresses a yearning for harmony between nature and culture.

Photo courtesy of Rose and Olive

On the contrary, the photographs of Elinor Carucci portray her family and illustrate her close relationship to her mother, illustrate her marriage bonds � love and quarrels with her husband, the whining faces of her children. Her photos arrestingly illustrate a whole world of feeling that is permeated with a deeply-felt sense of optimism. Christian Klinger documents the artists without further commentary. Scenes and people speak for themselves. Gallery owners interpret the works of the photographers. Therein lays the strength of the film, even if the slow settings of the hand-held camera used to make it sometimes give it a lengthy effect. Certainly the documentation shows no idealized world, such as is to be found in the photos of Jock Sturges. Carucci�s pictures have a transcendent effect while those of Rose and Olive or Tanyth Berkeley do not seek to emotionally engage the eye of the beholder. They only seek to show what is in its true environment regardless of whether the people, the settings, or the quarter of the city is beautiful or ugly.The motivating factor is the desire to provoke.

Photos courtesy of Elinor Carucci

Translation by Thomas Henry Irwin