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• Issue #123
• Article

Larry Gottheim's Be-hold catalog/internet absentee auction of photographs will take place on April 19th and will include some exceptional 20th-century photographs and historically important 19th century images.

A preview and reception will take place in New York City on April 12-15. The Reception will be held on April 12-14, Thursday, Friday and Saturday beginning at 5 pm at the Affinia 50 Hotel, 155 E. 50th St. (phone at hotel: 1-212-751-5710). The preview will also be held at the Affinia 50 Hotel, April 12, Thursday from 3-9 pm; April 13, Friday and April 14, Saturday from 9 am-9 pm; and April 15, Sunday from 9 am-noon.

The online auction will be held on April 19, Thursday, starting at 2 pm EST.

For further information email: behold@be-hold.com or contact Larry Gottheim at 1-914-423-5806. Information and scans can be found on the Be-hold.com web site at http://www.be-hold.com/ , and there is an informative illustrated printed catalog available for purchase by contacting Be-Hold.

There are two sections to the auction: photographs on silver, metal and glass; and photographs on paper.

A highlight of the latter section is a group of prints by Johan Hagemeyer. These include an important vintage 1920 platinum-palladium print of a rare moody self portrait of the artist taken on his voyage back to visit his native Holland on the Metegama, as he exploits the abstract potential of the ship's architecture. This is signed and dated by the artist on the print, and is one of his most personal images. There is a group of later portraits by Hagemeyer from his Berkeley and Carmel studios, including one of the psychiatric theoretician Alfred Adler, as well as two views of San Francisco.

Other city views, include a fine framed 1970 print of Berenice Abbott's "New York at Night," a vintage Chicago view by Gordon Coster, and several 1940s street scenes of Milan, Ohio by Tom Leonard, whose work appeared in "House and Garden" along with Kertesz and other photographers. Several Atget views of Paris in the auction provide an opportunity to compare Atget's own print with one printed by Berenice Abbott from the same negative.

There are several vintage photographs from the FSA period, including some by Rothstein and Vachon, as well as a signed later-printed "Dust Storm, Cimarron County", which is one of Rothstein's masterpieces and is nicely framed. This period is also represented by a signed later print of Horace Bristol's "Rose of Sharon," made on his trip through the Central Valley of California with John Steinbeck. That trip later inspired Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

There is an interesting group of early work prints by Harold Edgerton from his experiments with high-speed photography at M.I.T. in the 1930's, including s series of movie frames of a mosquito that recalls Muybridge's animal motion studies.

There are pictorialist prints by Sophie L. Lauffer and Fred R. Archer. Some important portraits in the sale include those by Doris Ulmann (of her mentor Clarence White), Herman Leonard, Arnold Newman, Judy Dater, a self-portrait of Carl van Vechten and an autographed portrait of the great Indian poet and spiritual leader Tagore. Doisneau, Lartigue, Madame D'Ora, Aaron Siskind, Arthur Siegel, Garry Winogrand and others round out this section, which also include some masterful 1980s prints by the German photographer and teacher Silke Grossmann.

The auction omits much of the early small-format historical paper material that has characterized other Be-hold sales, although there is an important group of photographs of members of the Jesse James gang killed or captured at the Northfield bank robbery, including two of the Younger brothers.

The first section with its photographs on silver, metal and glass includes a ½-plate daguerreotype showing 10 members of the 1854 Yale University rowing crew in their jaunty uniforms, all identified. A stunning ¼-plate scene of a house illustrates the type of artistry that can be achieved with this subject. An important group of early "melainotype" tintypes depict classic Greek ceramics.

Other early images include several with medical themes, including images before and after death, as well as some special portraits of those quite alive before the camera.

Again, to order catalogs and for other information, call 1-914-423-5806 or go to http://www.Be-hold.com .