Photographers: 2022

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

July 1 to September 25, 2022, come and discover the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation’s “L’Expérience du Paysage” exhibition.

Selected by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) towards the end of his life, the photographs in L’expérience du paysage show the artist approaching an element that is not just simple background for observing human beings, but a subject in its own right. Each image, taken between the 1930s-1990s in Europe, Asia and America, illustrates the photographer's construction of landscape, natural or urban.

Le Rhin, Allemagne, 1956 © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Sienne, Italie, 1933 © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

It's worthwile to gaze at landscapes by Giovanni Bellini, Hokusai, Poussin, Corot, Cézanne, Bonnard, and so many others, before going out into the world, pencil-in-hand. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson, September 1999

Cartier-Bresson began his long career with painting and drawing. Early on at André Lhote's atelier, he was taught the watchword of the Académie de Platon, later applying it to photography: “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.” His work, which inspired many artists to come, is characterized by composition, juxtaposition of planes, respect for proportionality, and pursuing balance between forms.

Unlike nature in its “unprocessed form”, the notion of landscape is relative to a subject–that of the observer with a certain point of view. From this order among the components of reality, Cartier-Bresson found poetics and pleasure. Landscapes are not just frames enclosing a subject but seemingly timeless patterns interacting with human figures. He decided on this selection of images shortly before his death in 2004, even though he had abandoned photography in favour of drawing since the early 1970s. These photographs bear witness to the experience of landscape, which, like drawing, is close to meditation.

In this 70-photograph selection, Cartier-Bresson implicitly unveils the self-portrait of an artist in the process of questioning his relationship to the world. The exhibition culminates in a selection of drawings by the artist found in the Fondation HCB's collections, for a journey through the œuvre of Henri Cartier-Bresson along a contemplative path.

Born in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne, in 1908, Henri Cartier-Bresson began studying painting at the André Lhote atelier in Paris before he turned to photography. In 1931, following a year in Côte d’Ivoire, he purchased his first Leica.

His work was exhibited and published, first abroad and then in France, starting in 1933. He then traveled in Europe, to Mexico and the United States, and became interested in filmmaking. In 1936 and 1939, he collaborated with Jean Renoir and produced three documentaries on the Spanish Civil War in the same time period.

Taken prisoner on June 23, 1940, he managed to escape in 1943, after two unsuccessful attempts. The New York MoMA presented an exhibition of his work in 1947, the same year that he created the Magnum Photos agency, along with Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. He then spent three years in the East. Back in Europe, he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (The Decisive Moment), in 1952. After this, he traveled on numerous occasions and devoted himself to drawing starting the early 1970s.

Dubbed “l’œil du siècle” (eye of the century), Cartier-Bresson bore witness to the great events of the 20th century: Gandhi’s funeral in India, the last days of the Kuomintang in China, first photographs of the USSR... At his passing in 2004, he endowed the history of photography with an inimitable legacy, which is still subject to new interpretations.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Gordon Parks

Howard University and The Gordon Parks Foundation have announced a historic acquisition of 252 photographs representing the arc of Gordon Parks’s career over five decades. The breadth of the collection--which spans Parks’s earliest photographs in the 1940s through the 1990s--makes it one of the most comprehensive resources for the study of Parks’s life and work anywhere in the world. The Gordon Parks Legacy Collection, a combined gift and purchase, will be housed in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Organized thematically by subject into 15 study sets, the photographs serve as a rich repository for the development of exhibitions and multidisciplinary curricula that advances scholarship on Parks’s contributions as an artist and humanitarian.

Howard University’s acquisition is part of The Gordon Parks Foundation’s commitment to supporting initiatives that provide access to and deepen understanding of the work and vision of Parks for artists, scholars, students, and the public. Building on this partnership, the Foundation and Howard University are exploring future projects that draw on the collection to catalyze new research and joint programming.

"This landmark collection of photographs by one of the great chroniclers of Black American life provides artists, journalists, and scholars at Howard University with a new resource to study and embrace the lasting impact of Gordon Parks," said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation. "As a photographer working in segregated Washington, D.C., in 1942, Parks established his first connections with Howard, which then embodied many of the values that his work came to represent. For him that was a learning experience, which makes Howard a fitting place to keep his art alive."

Gordon Parks, Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun, New York, NY, 1959.

"Howard University is proud to be the recipient of such an important collection of work by African American artist and photojournalist Gordon Parks," said Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, President of Howard University. "Mr. Parks was a trailblazer whose documentation of the lived experiences of African Americans, especially during the civil rights period, inspired empathy, encouraged cultural and political criticism, and sparked activism among those who viewed his work. Having a collection of his timeless photographs in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center will allow Howard University faculty, students, and visiting scholars to draw on his work and build upon his legacy of truth telling and representation through the arts."

"I am extremely excited about this historic acquisition by Howard University and this rich addition to Moorland-Spingarn’s collection," said Benjamin Talton, Ph.D., Director of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. "The collection fortifies Howard’s place as the preeminent institution preserving the legacy of the global Black experience. In addition to acquiring the nation’s largest Gordon Parks collection, Howard University is gaining a partner in the Gordon Parks Foundation. I am grateful that our students and faculty will have direct access to Parks’s work and the resources of the Gordon Parks Foundation for research and teaching. As a photographer and filmmaker, Parks left us with a unique narrative of the rich diversity that is African American life in the United States and the beauty and pain of the American story more broadly, during the second half of the 20th century."

Gordon Parks, "Marian Anderson at the dedication of a mural installed at the Dept. of the Interior, commemorating the outdoor concert she gave at Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing in Constitution Hall." Washington, DC, 1943.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for both Howard University and The Gordon Parks Foundation. Gordon Parks's work helped define American art in the 20th century and there is no better place poised to help safeguard his legacy than the Mecca of black education," added Jelani Cobb, Board Member of The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Among the qualities that make this acquisition distinct is the inclusion of photographs created by Parks early in his career, during the 1940s. His portraits of members of Black communities in Minneapolis and Chicago, some of which circulated in Black media outlets of the time, are crucial for understanding Parks’s emergence as a photographer working for the popular press. These communities and the Southside Community Arts Center, where Parks operated his studio and exhibited work, allowed for the creative exchange of ideas and inspiration from the talents it attracted, and this confluence would forge some of Parks’s most consequential relationships. Other highlights of the collection include early portraits of historical figures before they achieved national and international recognition, including Robert Todd Duncan, who is best known for his role as Porgy in the premiere production of Porgy and Bess and as one of the first African Americans to sing with a major opera company; Margaret Taylor-Boroughs, visual artist, writer, poet, educator, and arts organizer who co-founded what is today the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago; renowned musical conductor Charles Dean Dixon, the first African American guest conductor of The New York Philharmonic; and stage actress Hilda Simms, who played the title role in the boundary breaking all-Black production of Anna Lucasta on Broadway.

Gordon Parks, Duke Ellington, New York, 1960.

The collection traces Parks’s progression from these early portraits of rising talents to becoming a leading photographer of Black celebrity through the subsequent decades. Represented are Parks’s mid-career works Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun, New York, New York, 1959; Duke Ellington in Concert, New York, 1960; Louis Armstrong, Los Angeles, California, 1969; among other photographs of notable figures from the period.

Following this arc, the holdings also include photographs taken later in Parks’s career of subjects representing new generations of changemakers at the height of their emergence on the cultural scene, including portraits of the iconic fashion model Iman from the 1970s, and images taken in New York of Jazz musician Miles Davis in 1981, and filmmaker Spike Lee in 1990.

Gordon Parks, Untitled, March on Washington, D.C., 1963.

Using his camera as his "choice of weapons," Parks chronicled Black America’s struggles and triumphs throughout his career as a means of advancing social justice. This lifelong commitment is reflected in several study sets featured in the acquisition, including select works from Parks’s landmark 1956 color photo essay for Life magazine, later known as Segregation Story, which had exposed the daily realities of Black Americans living under Jim Crow law in the rural South. Also represented are Parks’s photographs of the March on Washington and leaders of the Civil rights movement, including Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.

Monday, April 11, 2022

Fine Photographs: April 14, 2022 Auction Highlights

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Browse Catalogue

**Lot 186:** Horst P. Horst, *Carmen Face Massage,* platinum-palladium print, 1946, printed 1980s. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000.

Edward S. Curtis — The North American Indian

The April 14 auction will be headlined by the seminal Portfolio I from Edward S. Curtis’ The North American Indian, featuring many of his most important and iconic images, including his portrait of Geronimo, Cañon de Chelly, A Chief of the Desert – Navaho, Son of the Desert—Navaho, The Vanishing Race, and many more.

**Lot 1**2: Edward S. Curtis, Portfolio I from *The North American Indian,* complete with 39 photogravures on Van Gelder paper, 1907. Estimate $60,000 to 90,000.

**Lot 11:** Edward S. Curtis, Volume I from *The North American Indian,* complete with 79 photogravures, signed by Curtis, 1907. Estimate $15,000 to $25,000.

The Human Form, Landscape & Nature

An impressive selection of classical twentieth-century photographs for the new and seasoned collector includes work by Ansel Adams, Horst P. Horst, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and Lisette Model among others.

**Lot 36:** Ansel Adams, *Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, California,* silver print, 1932; printed 1970s. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.

**Lot 93:** Berenice Abbott, *Gasoline Station, Tremont Avenue and Dock Street, Bronx,* silver print, 1936. Estimate $6,000 to $9,000.

**Lot 220:** Robert Adams, *Amongst the last trees and lilacs surrounding a farmhouse, Edge of Longmont, Colorado,* gelatin silver print, 1982. $7,000 to $10,000.

Monday, January 24, 2022

Swann Fine Photographs: Celebrating 70 Years of Photographs

70 years ago, Swann Galleries held the first auction dedicated to photography in the United States. The 1952 auction was astonishingly early for a sale devoted to a medium just 113 years old and still finding its artistic footing in the marketplace. Seven decades later, however, the landscape for this diverse and innovative medium has grown dramatically. On Thursday, February 10, Swann will hold a sale of Fine Photographs marking this achievement. The specially curated sale will celebrate the history of the market for photography at auction while exploring the medium’s future.

Early work includes Charles Marville’s Rue des Déchargeurs, de la Rue de Rivoli, circa 1865 ($6,000-9,000), Carleton Watkins’s The Pavilion on the Stump, Calaveras Grove, 1878–81 ($8,000-12,000), and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Baby Blossom (Alice Keown), circa 1866 ($15,000-25,000). Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work Number 36, 1911 ($18,000-22,000), and Edward Curtis’s Three Chiefs, Blackfoot, Mountain, 1900 ($6,000-9,000), showcase two early masters of photography as well as the medium’s rise as an art form.

American photography features a run of important Civil Rights imagery by Danny Lyon, including SNCC Staff Sit-In, Atlanta, John Lewis behind Mendy Samstein (+ the Pastries), Stokely Carmichael Standing at Right, 1963-64, together with The Movement, 1969 ($10,000-15,000), as well as images from Ole Miss, the March on Washington, and James Baldwin in Selma, Alabama. Robert Fank is present with two early masterworks: Café, Beaufort, South Carolina,1955 ($20,000-30,000), and Los Angeles, 1956 ($25,000-35,000), both from The Americans (also available, at $1,500-2,500). Further documentary photographs include works by Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lange, Lewis W. Hine and Walker Evans, among others.

Also of note from Mid-century American photographers is Ansel Adams’ Oak Tree, Snowstorm, Yosemite Valley, 1948, a stunning print seemingly used as the master for his Portfolio I ($20,000-30,000), and Evening Clouds, Sierra Nevada, 1936, printed 1963-70 ($12,000-18,000); as well as Robert Adams’s Entry, Methodist Church, Calhan, Colorado, 1966, printed circa late 1960s ($10,000-15,000).

A rare vintage example of Helen Levitt’s dynamic photograph of boys playing on city streets New York (Foreign Legion), 1940; printed 1940s ($25,000-35,000)—the cover image to her iconic A Way of Seeing), is on offer alongside Diane Arbus’ Female Impersonator with Jewels, N.Y.C., printed and signed by Arbus 1958-60 ($25,000-35,000), and O. Winston Link’s Hotshot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1957, printed 1987 ($7,000-10,000). The house will also offer works by Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, George A. Tice, Stephen Shore, and Margaret Bourke-White.

Contemporary highlights are led by Sally Mann’s Untitled (Self-Portraits), a 2011 triptych of three unique ambrotypes on black glass ($30,000-45,000). Also of note is Barbara Kasten’s Construction 33, 1986, and Construct LB/3 ($5,000-7,500, apiece); Masahisa Fukase’s Nayoro, from The Solitude of Ravens, 1977, printed 1980s ($10,000-15,000); and Carrie Mae Weems’s May Flowers, 2002 ($6,000-9,000). Further contemporary work includes early work by Katy Grannen, color photography by Richard Misrach and Sandy Skoglund, Cindy Sherman self-portraits and more.

Photobooks and portfolios of note include Emmet Gowin’s early book with photographs, Concerning America and Alfred Stieglitz, and Myself, 1963-64, printed 1965 ($8,000-12,000); a suite of 10 abstract expressionist photographs by Aaron Siskind from 1949-80, printed circa 1980. ($10,000-15,000); Berenice Abbott’s Berenice Abbott’s New York, a complete portfolio with 12 of Abbott’s iconic NYC views ($20,000-30,000); and Lisette Model’s Twelve Photographs, a complete 1937-46 portfolio with 12 silver prints from an edition of 15 proof copies, printed 1977 ($12,000-18,000).