Photography Collection

Some record prices for Important 19th & 20th Century Photographs were achieved at Swann Galleries’ October 21 auction. An album containing 68 original photographs of Brazil, dating from the late 1880s to the early 90s, sold for $48,000*, an auction record for the photographer Marc Ferrez. Achieving record prices were Roman Vishniac’s The Vanished World, portfolio with 12 silver prints, 1936-38, printed 1977, $38,400; Margaret Bourke-White’s DC-4 Flying over New York City, silver print, 1939, printed 2001, $15,600; and Ruth Orkin’s The Cardplayers, from The Family of Man, 1947, printed 1955, $24,000—a record for the suite of six silver prints. Other 19th century highlights included Julia Margaret Cameron’s dreamlike Shepherds Keeping Watch by Night, albumen print, 1865-66, $9,600; a group of 75 rare Japanese landscapes by Felix Beato, albumen prints, circa 1870, $24,000; Timothy O’Sullivan’s Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelle, N.M., on the Wheeler Survey letterpress mount, 1873, $24,000; and Carleton E. Watkins and Isaiah Taber’s Section of the ‘Grizzly Giant,’ 33 feet diameter, Mariposa Grove, California, mammoth albumen print, 1865-81, printed circa 1885, $7,200.
From the early 20th century were Edward S. Curtis’s Chief of the Desert, Navajo, orotone, 1909, $16,800; Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather’s platinum-palladium print of three of the The Marion Morgan Dancers gazing at their reflections in a pond, circa 1921, $43,200; and Tina Modotti’s portrait of Maria Marin de Orozco, platinum print, 1925, $14,000, and a group of 4 photographs from the Tina Modotti portfolio, platinum prints, 1924-1927, printed 1993, $14,400 for the set. The 1930s were represented by documentary images such as Walker Evans’s Coal Stevedore, Havana (Dockworker, Havana), silver print, 1933, printed circa 1970, $14,400, and Sidewalk in Vicksburg, Mississippi, silver print, 1936, printed 1940s-1950s, $18,000; and Dorothea Lange’s Ex-Slave with a Long Memory, Alabama, silver print, 1937, printed 1950s, $19,200; as well as Horst P. Horst’s stylized Mainbocher Corset, Paris, silver print, 1939, printed 1980s, $15,600. Mid-century highlights included several works by Ansel Adams, among them Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, silver print, 1944, printed 1978, $31,200, and Sonoma County Hills, silver print, circa 1955, $14,400; as well as Minor White’s Snow on Garage Door, Rochester, New York, silver print, 1960, $14,400, and Jupiter, portfolio with 12 silver prints, 1947-1971, printed 1975, $19,200. Contemporary photographs included Francesca Woodman’s Untitled (skull), silver print, 1977-1978, $14,400; William Eggleston’s Untitled (Confederate flag), dye-transfer print, 1973, printed 1996, $13,200; and Horst’s Round the Clock I, New York, silver print, 1987, printed 1980s, $13,200.