This Friday, May 13, Skinner will present its spring Prints & Photographs auction (http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/fine-photographs-2895b/) in Boston, beginning at 12 pm. Additional Photographic works will also be on offer in a Fine Art Online sale (http://skinnerlive.auctionserver.net/view-auctions/catalog/id/242?page=1), closing Monday, May 16, at 3 pm.
The selection of fine photographs in Skinners' May sale features works by 20th-century masters, including Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Wright Morris, Gordon Parks, and others.
Ansel Adams, Pioneer Mill, Cimarron, NM, c. 1961, (Lot 107, $2,000-3,000)
Among the highlights is a photogravure of New York’s iconic Flatiron Building by Alfred Stieglitz (Lot 91, $2,000-3,000). As a founding member of the Photo-Secession and publisher of Camera Work, Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of photography as a fine art in America at the turn of the 20th century. This view demonstrates the Pictorialist aesthetic—painterly, soft focus images with subtle tonal variation and unusual compositions—that Stieglitz first championed. At the same time, Stieglitz’s embrace of a more modernist depiction of contemporary life is reflected in the architectural form of the new building.
Also of interest are two Abrams original edition prints from the 1970s: Arnold Newman’s 1948 portrait of Andrew Wyeth in his studio in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (Lot 101, $1,000-1,500) and Gordon Parks’ depiction of an unemployed domestic worker in Paris from 1950 (Lot 102, $1,000-1,500). In 1972 the publisher Harry N. Abrams announced a program offering limited edition black-and-white prints by ten eminent photographers. Each photograph (in editions of 99) was made from the original negative by the artist, assisted by a master printer from a custom lab. The photographers, representing a range of practices from photojournalism to creative photography, included Arnold Newman and Gordon Parks, as well as Wynn Bullock, Ernst Haas, Philippe Halsman, Marc Riboud, and Aaron Siskind, among others. It was the hope of the project’s founder and director Peter Pollack that Abrams Original Editions would be as successful as limited editions of fine etchings and lithographs, providing income to the artists while promoting photography as a good investment.
Several signed prints by Ansel Adams coming from the collection of a former Polaroid Corporation employee are sure to attract interest. Particularly appealing is a side view of Pioneer Mill, Cimarron, New Mexico, c. 1961, in which Adams incorporates a wooden archway as a dramatic framing device (Lot 107, $2,000-3,000). Two additional works are Boat Hull, Gloucester, 1968 (Lot 115, $1,500-2,500), and an untitled close up view of seaweed and stones (Lot 108, $1,500-2,500),
Wright Morris, Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, NE, (Lot 99, $1,200-1,800)
Other noteworthy lots include a haunting 1940 view (printed later) of a Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska, by Wright Morris (Lot 99, $1,200-1,800), who made beautiful and poignant photographs exploring the rural culture of the American countryside in the 1930s and 1940s, and a large print of Paul Caponigro’s Standing White Deer, Ireland, from 1967 (Lot 113, $2,000-3,000). Rounding out the offerings are a later print of Bernice Abbott’s classic Manhattan Bridge, 1936 (Lot 94, $1,500-2,500) and a Walker Evans’s photograph of street graffiti in lower Manhattan from 1963 (Lot 111, $1,500-2,500).
Other photographers represented include: Tom Baril, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Louis Faurer, Larry Fink, Peter Fink, Frank Gohlke, William Henry Jackson, Gus Kayafas, Linda Connor, Jim Marshall, Eliot Porter, Arthur Rothstein and Josef Sudek.
Among the Fine Art Online offerings are works by Dan Graham, Arthur Mones, Anne Noggle, Brett Weston, Joel Emmons Whitney and James Van Der Zee, as well as additional works by Baril and Porter.
The auction preview for both the live and online sales will take place at 63 Park Plaza, Boston, with viewing times as follows:
Wednesday, May 11: 12pm-5pm
Thursday, May 12: 12pm-8pm
Friday, May 13: 9am-10am
For more information regarding the auction, please contact Michelle Lamunière, Fine Photographs Specialist, at 1-508-970-3264 or photographs@skinnerinc.com. The auction offerings can also be viewed online here: http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/fine-photographs-2895b/, or you may order a printed catalogue by emailing subscriptions@skinnerinc.com, or calling 1-508-970-3240.
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