Photography Collection

Robert Capa is, without a doubt, one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. His most striking images—of the Spanish Civil War, of the Sino-Japanese conflict, of World War II—all appeared in the pages of the leading picture magazines of the day. This was the context in which Capa worked and was known, and where he honed his skills as a master of the cinematic photo narrative. This Is War! Robert Capa at Work is an exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York that reexamines Capa’s innovations as a photojournalist in the 1930s and 1940s. The title of the exhibition is drawn from the headline of a December 3, 1938 Picture Post story including Capa’s images from the Battle of Rio Segre. Never-before-seen photographs and newly discovered documents will illuminate six of Capa’s most important war stories. This Is War! Robert Capa at Work is on view at the International Center of Photography (ICP), 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, from September 26, 2007 through January 6, 2008.
“At a moment of conflict across the globe, and a decidedly new era in the making and distribution of war images through digital technology, it seems timely to examine the legacy of the photographer who defined the possibility of the medium with his Leica,” said Willis E. Hartshorn, ICP Ehrenkranz Director. “Robert Capa’s best work continues to serve as a benchmark for photojournalists today, and provides the world with some of the most indelible images of the twentieth century’s key conflicts.”
On September 5, 1936, just a month into the Republican struggle against General Franco’s fascist army, the twenty-two-year-old Capa made the most famous image of the Spanish Civil War, Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, Cerro Muriano (Cordoba front), now generally known as The Falling Soldier. This extraordinary picture, first published in Vu, at once became a sensation and was widely published at the time. It subsequently grew in stature to become the ultimate symbol of the Spanish Loyalist fight. However, this iconic image has been the center of much controversy over the context in which it was made. Is it indeed a soldier at his death? Was it staged? This exhibition will show for the first time all the known images taken by Capa on that day and provide new details to help understand the events that resulted in the creation of this iconic photograph.
In 1938, following the tragic death of his photographic partner, Gerda Taro, Capa traveled to China to document that country’s war with Japan, which was widely perceived as the eastern front of the international antifascist struggle. He entered the country as film assistant to documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, who eventually made The 400 Million. Based in Hankou, Capa, as part of the film crew, was under tight censorship and could not travel and photograph freely as he had done in Spain. Nevertheless, Capa managed to make dynamic images of the Chinese army and non-combatants, published in LIFE and Regards, covering the battle of Tai’erzhuang and the air raids on Hankou and including intimate portraits of generals Chiang and Chou En-Lai.
Capa returned to Spain in late 1938 and followed the Republican soldiers as they battled against the encroaching Francoist forces who were attempting to cross the Segre River. The images from the battle on November 7, 1938 represent the drama and emotion of Capa’s best war reportage and were published in an unprecedented number of page spreads in Regards, Match, Picture Post, and LIFE. Capa’s original captions and corresponding vintage prints allow us to trace the battle movements. Unfortunately, the triumph of the day did not change the course of Republican defeat, and in January 1939 Capa photographed the Spanish refugees, fleeing Franco’s advancement, on the road from Tarragona to Barcelona and eventually across the French border.
Capa’s photographs of the Omaha beach landing in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, have almost become synonymous with the Allied victory in World War II. The legend of his slightly out of focus images of American GIs going ashore increased greatly after it became known that many of his negatives were destroyed in a darkroom accident. The ICP presentation will unite the ten existing images of the beach landing in the original sequence in which they were shot. Many of these prints are the ones made in the LIFE darkroom for publication. Also included are never-before-published censor prints of the American troops preparing for the invasion in England and crossing the English Channel. Personal letters that Capa wrote and received following the dramatic coverage will complement the photographs.
Capa claimed that he photographed the last man shot in World War II in Leipzig, Germany in April 1945—a young American soldier killed by the bullet of a German sniper. This famous image published in LIFE is a fitting reflection back to The Falling Soldier picture. In both, Capa’s proximity to war and death unfolds in front of the camera. The exhibition will include Capa’s continued coverage in Leipzig of the American soldiers in their pursuit of the remaining German troops in the barren city. These original prints did not pass the censor’s office at the time because of the violence that was depicted.
Many of Robert Capa’s most famous photographs have come to define important historical moments—The Falling Soldier of the Spanish Civil War, the American troops landing on D-Day, the last man shot in World War II. But it is important to remember that it was their broad circulation in international picture magazines that first made them iconic. Many of the most visually sophisticated and politically engaged European and American magazines of the mid-century published Capa’s photographs of war, including the French Vu, Regards, and Match, England’s Picture Post and, of course, LIFE. Through vintage prints, contact sheets, caption sheets, handwritten observations, personal letters and original magazine layouts, the exhibition looks closely at Capa’s working process and the construction of six of his key photo stories. The Falling Soldier, 1936; The Battle of Rio Segre, 1938; and Refugees from Barcelona, 1939, trace his coverage of the Spanish Civil War. China, 1938, documents his six-month stay during the Sino-Japanese War. D-Day, 1944, and the Liberation of Leipzig, 1945, present his photographs of World War II.
The exhibition will be drawn almost exclusively from The Robert Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography, the most comprehensive collection of Capa’s work. It contains the complete holdings of the photographer’s career, including vintage prints, his personal papers, and related documents.

Biography

Capa was born in Budapest in 1913. A teenager with a precocious interest in literature and radical politics, he was exiled from Hungary at the age of seventeen as a result of his protests against the repressiveness and anti-Semitism of the government. He went to Berlin to study journalism but ended up working as an assistant in the darkroom of an outstanding photojournalistic agency (Dephot), from which he received his first assignment: to photograph the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Early in 1933 Hitler’s rise to power forced the young photographer to move on to Paris, where he covered the tumultuous politics of the anti-fascist coalition of liberals, socialists, and Communists known as the Popular Front. In 1936 Robert Capa went to cover the Spanish Civil War. After Spain, he went on to photograph Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion (1938), Italy, England, France and Germany during World War II (1941-45), the Israeli War for Independence (1948), and the French Indochina War (1954). While photographing French maneuvers in the Red River delta, Capa stepped on an anti-personnel mine and was killed on May 25, 1954.
In addition to the war photographs, Capa also created an enormous number of images that capture more joyful times—the Tour de France and other sporting events, the Paris cafés, and portraits of his many glamorous and successful artist friends including Ingrid Bergman, John Huston, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Pablo Picasso.

Curator

The preeminent Capa scholar Richard Whelan curated the exhibition and authored the accompanying catalogue. He had finished work on both before his untimely death in May 2007. Whelan was Consulting Curator for The Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archives at ICP. He wrote several major books on Capa: Robert Capa: A Biography (Knopf, 1985); Children of War, Children of Peace (Bulfinch Press, 1991); Heart of Spain: Robert Capa’s Photographs of the Spanish Civil War (Aperture, 1999); Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection (Phaidon Press, 2001). He also authored Cornell Capa (Bulfinch Press, 1992) and Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography (Little Brown & Co, 1995), and was the curator of numerous international Robert and Cornell Capa exhibitions.

Leonard Freed is one of the twentieth century's important documentary photographers. His photographs have graced the covers of major newspapers and magazines around the world on numerous occasions. The pictures are considered a milestone in what has been aptly called "concerned photography". The Musée de l'Elysée, in collaboration with Magnum Photos, Paris and the Fotomuseum, Den Haag, shows a retrospective of Freed till September, 2. His work spans half a century, including his coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American civil rights movement, the period of post-war German reconstruction, and the Romanian revolution. Among other photography is a selection of work from his famous project on the police, which culminated in a landmark publication, Police Work. Freed's vision is sharp, insightful and critical.

Leonard Freed was born in 1929 in Brookyln, New York, to a working-class Jewish family from Eastern Europe. In 1972, he moved from the Netherlands to New York, joining the legendary agency, Magnum Photos. Many of Freed's photographs have been published in the international press. He also published two other thematic books : Black in White America and La danse des fidèles. Leonard Freed died in Garrison, New York, on November 30, 2006.

This exhibition has been organized and curated by the Musée de l'Elysée, in collaboration with Magnum Photos, Paris and the Fotomuseum, Den Haag. It has been realised with the help and the commitment of Leonard and Brigitte Freed.

Thanksgiving, a work by New York photographer Nan Goldin, will be on show at BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, courtesy of The Sir Elton John Photography Collection from 21 September 2007 until 20 January 2008.
Thanksgiving is an installation of photographs that documents Goldin’s life from 1973 to 1999 - a micro-retrospective of her career. This first person account of life among her friends, lovers and acquaintances allows the viewer inside the private dramas of people and situations normally considered to be on the outer reaches of social acceptability.
The images chronicle both surviving friendships and friends Goldin has lost, many to AIDS or drug addiction, Goldin adds: "My desire is to preserve the sense of people's lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back."
Thanksgiving illustrates many uncomfortable moments from Goldin’s personal life and shows us the range of her photographic practice. The emotional states of her subjects are visually intensified by her focus on interior spaces, lush colour, and theatrical lighting giving a sense of intimacy and informality. Her subjects do not appear as objects of distant voyeurism, but are simply friends who have grown used to the camera's inevitable presence. This immediacy captured in Goldin’s earlier work is matched by the intensity of her later images of light-infused landscapes.
This exhibition is a unique opportunity to see a mini-survey of Nan Goldin and has been made possible by one of the UK’s leading collectors of photography, Elton John. Jane Jackson, Curator of The Sir Elton John Photography Collection adds: ‘Elton was first attracted to the directness, truth and poignancy of photography and her work forms a central part of Elton John’s collection. She is recognised as one of the world's most prolific, important and compelling contemporary photographers and her work has not only had a lasting impact on photography and film-making.”
Peter Doroshenko, Director of BALTIC adds: “We are delighted to be showing work from
Elton’s expansive collection. During this autumn season we are presenting two exhibitions taken from private collections; courtesy of Elton John and the Zabludowicz Collection, enabling the public to see works that would not normally be available to them. This is a direction that BALTIC will explore more in 2008 when we present exhibitions taken from corporate collections.”

Nan Goldin interviewed by Adam Mazur and Paulina Skirgajllo-Krajewska

A GHQ photographer provides a lens on post-World War II Japan in two recently published volumes of photographs edited by Yoneyuki Sugita, associate professor of Osaka University of Foreign Studies.
"GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon" (Japan After World War II by a GHQ photographer, Volume I), published in May by Tokyo's Archives Publishing Co., features postwar scenes from Tokyo intermixed with images of famous figures such as Emperor Showa and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and focuses on daily life in Tokyo and the political and social situation of the nation at the time.
Volume II, published in July, focuses on the postwar lives of ordinary citizens in prefectures such as Kyoto, Hokkaido and Okinawa.
The photographer, Dimitri Boria (1902-1990), an Albanian-born American, came to Japan in 1947 at the request of the GHQ to record the situation in Japan and stayed until 1961.
Before coming to Japan, Boria worked in Italy, Germany and Yugoslavia as a photographer for the United Nations.
A number of the pictures in Volume II were taken as he followed Emperor Showa around the nation.
Each volume contains more than 200 images selected from 30,000 from the collection of The MacArthur Memorial in Virginia.
Volume II focuses on the culture and lifestyle of ordinary people, who regularly became the subjects of Boria's camera during his tour with the emperor.
Volume II includes 31 pictures taken in Kyoto, including scenes near Kyoto Station, central Kyoto and one of the ancient city's red-light districts. It also features a photograph of students visiting Kiyomizudera temple during a school excursion and one of children playing in the street.
One picture shows a far less-crowded version of an area near Kyoto Station that is known for its many tourists and taxis.
Volume II also devotes space to Okinawa Prefecture, where fierce World War II battles were waged between Japan and the United States and the eventual location of important U.S. military bases.
The Okinawa section contains 36 pictures of scenes from everyday life--everything from girls selling commodities to customers in a dusty, crowded Naha market to women at a construction site carrying materials on their heads. Another picture shows an elderly woman in a kimono selling dried cuttlefish and other seafood.
Sugita learned about The MacArthur Memorial's photo collection from the president of Archives Publishing in the summer of 2006. Sugita, who advised the firm to publish the pictures, was put in charge of selecting the photos for the books.
The memorial's collections are open to the viewing public. However, Sugita said, many of the pictures had never been seen in Japan.
"Most of the images from the books were never released here," Sugita said. "Some pictures had already been released in Japanese books, but in poor quality or in black and white. We selected pictures that were historically significant or that would look high quality after even being enlarged."
A Volume I picture of U.S. soldiers with a GHQ flag marching through Sakuradamon, a gate of the Imperial Palace, was chosen because it symbolized the relationship at the time between Japan and the United States.
Another highlight of Volume I finds Emperor Showa smiling for Boria's camera.
"Emperor Showa, who had been regarded as a living god, showed his human side," Sugita said.
Volume I also includes pictures of the emperor attending events such as a planting festival, as well as pictures from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Tokyo Trial.
Volume I features photos from an event celebrating the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the fifth anniversary of the Constitution coming into force in 1952, with Emperor Showa and then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in attendance.
Pictures of ordinary people in Tokyo, such as boys playing baseball, are also featured in the first volume.
"This is the first time that Boria's collection has been published in a scale this large and of this quality," Sugita said. "I hope readers will discover something new in the books."
Volume I, "GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon" and Volume II, "Zoku GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon," retail in bookstores for 4,700 yen each, tax not included.

Bustling, picturesque River Street is a mecca for shoppers, diners and sightseers. It’s easy to forget that at one time, it was little more than a collection of tired, dilapidated buildings in a somewhat unsavory part of Savannah.
Fortunately, photographer Robert Heriot was there as the cranes rolled in and the transformation of River Street began.
A specialist in portrait, commercial and industrial photography, he photographed Savannah and its residents for more than 50 years. Heriot meticulously recorded the renovation of the historic cotton warehouses, providing a valuable historical record of before and after shots to show what once was and how it became what it is today.
In 1947, Heriot opened the Savannah Camera Company at 143 Bull St. Twenty years later, he moved the business to 307 Bull St. and renamed it Heriot’s Photography Studio. Even later, it became simply Robert Heriot, Photographer.
After Heriot’s death, his widow donated the collection to the Georgia Historical Society. Recently, the GHS opened the collection for research.
“He specialized in studio photography, but also did community photography as well,” says GHS Senior Archivist Lynette Stoudt. “The collection consists of a lot of passport photos, wedding photos, individuals and groups, as well as buildings in Savannah and the surrounding area.”
Stoudt is delighted the collection has come to the GHS. “We don’t have a large studio photograph collection from this time frame,” she says.
One other large photo collection at the GHS, the Cordray Foltz Collection, ends in the 1950s. Many of Heriot’s photographs were taken as Savannah was beginning to transform into the treasure it is today.
“There are buildings, a lot of buildings,” Stoudt says. “There are pictures of the Thunderbolt Blessing of the Fleet. There are St. Patrick’s Day parades.”
The oldest photographs in the collection were taken at the 1908 Savannah Races, although not by Heriot. Stoudt believes someone probably took negatives of the photos to Heriot to develop, and he kept copies.
“Some of the photos in the collection have been published, others haven’t,” she says. “There are aerial photos, photos of the new DeSoto Hotel under construction.”
Before and after photos of the Isaiah Davenport House show the meticulous work that went into the renovation project. There also are photographs of plantations, including some that no longer exist, including The Hermitage.
“There are more than 54,000 negatives in the collection,” Stoudt says. “We only have prints of 1,300. That was funded by a grant.”
The arrangement, description and preservation of the Heriot collection was supported by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board and the Georgia Archives through funding from the Office of Secretary of State. Matching funds were raised by GHS members.
The latest photos in the collection date to 1986. Heriot died in 1990.
“This is a really important group of photographs,” Stoudt says. “Some of them, such as the River Street renewal project, we didn’t have before.”
To utilize the collection, you will need to show GHS staff a picture ID and fill out a research form. If you are not a member of the GHS, there may be a $5 research fee. “Then you ask to look through the collection and we’ll pull the box,” Stoudt says.
If you want to join the GHS, memberships start at $50 a year for individuals. Membership forms are available at the GHS, which is located at the corner of Whitaker and Gaston streets, or online at www.georgiahistory.com.
“Along with the membership, you will receive publications in the mail and access to the material in the reading room,” Stoudt says. “You’ll also get 10 percent off photocopies and some merchandise.”
There are many amazing collections at the GHS. “We have rare books, and more contemporary books,” Stoudt says. “There are artifacts, including the second draft printing of the U.S. Constitution, one of our most prized documents.”
A display of Revolutionary War artifacts includes the dueling pistols used by Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Revolutionary War hero. Gwinnett was wounded in the duel and died several days later. He and Gwinnett are buried not far from each other at Colonial Park Cemetery.
“We have Cherokee land documents,” Stoudt says. “There are family papers, personal papers.”
The GHS itself has a long history. “It was founded in 1839 as sort of a library society,” Stoudt says. “The building was finished in 1870.”
Hodgson Hall was built by Margaret Telfair in memory of her husband, William Hodgson. It’s open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and the Heriot photographs can be viewed at those times.
“The River Street photos are my favorites,” Stoudt says. “It’s something we haven’t had before. It really puts it all into perspective. I had no idea so much work went into restoring River Street.”

The Georgia Historical Society is in Hodgson Hall at Whitaker and Gaston. Hours are Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. To utilize the Heriot collection you’ll need you will need to show a picture ID and fill out a research form. If you are not a member of the GHS, there may be a $5 research fee.

Margaret Bourke-White, Climbing the Mast. Warm-toned silver print, 1934.

Maritime and seafaring images have been a domain of painters for a long time. Fine-art seascapes also found their way into the medium of photography very early on.
A collection of nearly 40 nautical photographs by prominent American and European photographers will be featured in Swann Galleries’ auction of Important 19th & 20th Century Photographs on Monday, October 15. The collection was built over the course of 25 years by marine photography enthusiast Charles W. Sahlman of Tampa, Florida, and has been exhibited at the Tampa Museum of Art. Mr. Sahlman, now 80 years old, said he “shares the philosophy of many other collectors that great art should be made available to the marketplace, not hoarded, when it is time to simplify.”
A strong selection of 19th-century works in the auction includes a salted paper print from a calotype negative by the inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot. It is a very early (circa 1842-45) image of the Hungerford Suspension Bridge, with several docked boats in the foreground (estimate: $15,000 to $25,000). Gustave LeGray’s stunning Brig on the Water, large-format albumen print, 1856 ($25,000 to $35,000), and Timothy H. O’Sullivan’s Black Canyon, Colorado River from Camp 8, Looking Above, albumen print, 1871, from the Wheeler Geological Survey of the Western U.S. ($9,000 to $12,000), are other early highlights.
Also featured are Civil War photographer George N. Barnard’s Savannah, Georgia No. 2, gold-toned albumen print, 1866, from his photographic documentation of Sherman's Campaign ($2,500 to $3,500); the lyrical English photographer Peter Henry Emerson’s Marshman Going to Cut Schoof-Stuff, platinum print, circa 1885, from his masterwork Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, ($4,000 to $6,000); and the renowned Antarctic photographer Herbert G. Ponting’s majestic view of The Terra Nova Icebound in the Pack, oversize green-toned carbon print, 1914, taken during Admiral Scott’s ill-fated expedition ($15,000 to $25,000).
From the early 20th century are Karl F. Struss’s Sailboats, New England, platinum print, 1910 ($4,000 to $6,000); Alfred Steiglitz’s classic image The Steerage that appeared in his publication Camera Work, photogravure on Japan tissue, 1911 ($5,000 to $7,500); and Eugene Atget’s La Rochelle-Bateau, arrowroot print, circa 1920 ($7,000 to $10,000).
Modernist examples include master photographer Edward Weston’s abstraction depicting the bow of a Boat in San Francisco Bay, silver print, 1925 ($25,000 to $35,000); German artist Ernst Scheel’s New Objectivity view of Schiffmaste from below, oversize silver print, circa 1930 ($10,000 to $15,000); and Margaret Bourke-White’s powerful scene of a sailor Climbing the Mast, warm-toned silver print, 1934 ($9,000 to $12,000).
Other striking views of boats include Czech photographer Drahomir Josef Ruzicka’s Fishing Boats in Harbor in Winter, blue-toned bromoil print, circa 1930 ($2,000 to $3,000); Brassaï’s Regatte sur la Seine, ferrotyped silver print, 1933, printed 1940 ($5,000 to $7,500); Aldolf Fassbender’s Just Drifting, silver bromoil print, 1939 ($3,000 to $4,500); and A. Aubrey Bodine’s Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, gold-toned bromide print, 1947 ($3,000 to $4,500).
Among journalistic images are Berenice Abbott’s “Tusitala,” North River and 156th St., Manhattan, silver print, 1937 ($4,000 to $6,000); and Andreas Feininger’s Brooklyn Bridge and Fulton Fish Market, and New York, Fulton Fish Market, ferrotyped silver prints, 1940 ($3,000 to $4,500 each).

The auction also features Edward S. Curtis's magnums opus, The North American Indian, with 16 complete portfolios containing his large-format magisterial photogravures and 16 fully illustrated text volumes in handsome morocco bindings.
The auction will begin at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, October 15.
The photographs will be on public exhibition at Swann Galleries on Monday, October 8 by appointment only; Tuesday, October 9 to Friday, October 12, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, October 13, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Monday, October 15, from 10 a.m. to noon. Illustrated catalogues are available for $35 from Swann Galleries, 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, and may be viewed online at www.swanngalleries.com.

For further information, and to make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please contact Daile Kaplan at (212) 254-4710, extension 21, or via email at dkaplan@swanngalleries.com

For the first time in Europe, Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art inDuesseldorf, Germany exhibits the work by American Photojournalist Lawrence Schiller (1936, Brooklyn New York) till 08/28/2007.

Throughout the 60's Schiller photographed its icons, actors, artists, musicians and politicians: a sleeping Robert Kennedy on a plane, Barbara Streisand buying art in her hotel room or Mohammed Ali boxing. Schiller was always at the right place at the right time. His pictures were featured in the most influential magazines throughout Europe and the USA such as Paris Match, Life, Look, Newsweek, Time, The London Sunday Times, Playboy, and Stern. He won numerous significant international Photography prizes like the Picture of the Year Competition.

One early apogee of his photographic career is without a doubt the Marilyn series which he shot on the set of her last movie Something Has Got to Give in 1962. Through his long acquaintance with Marilyn he developed an extraordinary shoot of the star's bathing scene. Besides photo shoots, Marilyn let him have a glimpse of her life and persona on the other side of the camera. The photos that stemmed from behind the scenes mirror an equal deep trust between the both of them.


Lawrence Schiller, Robert Kennedy, last campaign, 1968 © East End Editions KLS, LLC, Los Angeles.

Only since beginning 2007 (after New York and Los Angeles) is Lawrence Schiller releasing his portfolio of photographs from the Marilyn and 60's series in a limited and signed available edition.

Besides being a photographer, Schiller is also known for many of his book publications such as LSD (1966); Marilyn (1972); Oswald's Tale (1994) both in collaboration with Norman Mailer; American Tragedy (1996); Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (1998); Into the Mirror (2002), that all feature on the New York Rimes Bestselling List. Schiller, to date is also a Film Producer and Director of 16 motion pictures which include Hey, I'm Alive (1976); The Executioner's Song (1982); Peter the Great (TV Series 1984). Schiller is currently working on a book on Chinese History as seen by Chinese Contemporary artists and their parents.

Schiller's photographs e.g. of Marily Monroe or Robert Kennedy haven been sold at prices between $ 300 and 1100 at auctions since the end of the nineties.