Bill Brandt, Early Prints from the Collection of the Family @Houk

JTF (just the facts): A total of 74 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against beige walls in the entry area, the main gallery space, and the smaller side room. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, made between 1929 and 1966. While no size information was available on the checklist, most of the images were roughly 9x7, with a few slightly larger. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When a big museum retrospective comes to town, it's common practice for the relevant galleries to put on companion shows to capitalize on the fresh interest created by the exhibit. While these shows make complete sense from a business perspective, they're usually not all that noteworthy. But on the heels of the masterful Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light retrospective at the MoMA (here), Edwynn Houk has put on an unexpectedly strong supporting show, gathering together an exemplary group of prints drawn from Brandt family members.

The Houk show is organized in roughly the same manner as the one at MoMA, creating a kind of echo effect if you've seen both exhibits. What is so surprising about this gallery show is its comprehensive depth; it's not just a handful of random prints, but a deep, well-edited selection of standouts. The gallery has been representing the estate for roughly 30 years, and during that time, it stands to reason that many of its great treasures were long ago dispersed. But this show brings to market a new cache of vintage prints that had been stored away by the family. I was particularly astonished by the large group of Brandt nudes assembled here, some 30 prints of interior scenes, high contrast abstractions, and rocky beach distortions. From our own collecting activities, I know how hard it would be to amass such a group in this day and age, so to see them all together outside the confines of a museum was pretty magical. There were even a few images that were new to me (a patterned wallpaper interior nude, a crossed knees beach study), unpublished or lesser known gems that were exciting to encounter for the first time.

So while this is a standard selling show paired with a retrospective, it's certainly a best of breed example of such an exhibit. It covers all the major projects from his career, with plenty of superlative prints and memorable images. It's like the Brandt market has received a much needed blood transfusion, with many classic photographs that were thought to be entirely unavailable now floating freely once again.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $18500 and $60000, with most between $25000 and $40000. Brandt's work is consistently available in the secondary markets, with dozens of prints on offer each year. Recent prices have ranged from $2000 for lesser known works and later prints to more than $90000 for vintage prints of his most iconic images.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Estate site (here)

Bill Brandt, Early Prints from the Collection of the Family
Through May 11th

Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A total of 156 black and white photographs, variously displayed in white, grey, and black frames with mats, and hung against white walls with grey horizontal stripes in three interconnected gallery spaces on the third floor of the museum. The works on view are generally vintage prints, taken between 1929 and 1978. The exhibit was curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister with assistance from Drew Sawyer. A catalog was published by MoMA in conjunction with the exhibition (here). (Installation shots at right.)

The show is divided into six named sections, with a short introductory prelude. For each section, the number of prints on view has been tallied, along with relevant dates for the images. Books and magazine spreads shown in cases have also been listed.

(Prelude)
4 gelatin silver prints, 1929, 1930, 1933
1 case containing 9 album pages, 1920s-1930s

London in the Thirties
36 gelatin silver prints, 1932-1939

Northern England
12 gelatin silver prints, 1937

World War II
22 gelatin silver prints, 1939-1945
7 cases containing 11 magazine spreads, 1939-1945

Portraits
25 gelatin silver prints, 1946-1978

Landscapes
13 gelatin silver prints, 1945-1963
1 case containing 8 magazine spreads and 2 books, 1942-1961

Nudes
44 gelatin silver prints, 1945-1959

Comments/Context: When a photographer starts to have labels like "the most important British photographer of the 20th century" affixed to his name, it might be safe to assume that the story of his art and life would be well understood, that it could be summed up in a pithy sentence or two designed for easy recitation. But of all our modern masters, Bill Brandt remains the most stubbornly elusive. Whether we are looking at the trajectory of his life or the evolution of his photography, the facts just don't seem to fall neatly into place. This robust and scholarly retrospective does an admirable job of trying to make sense of it all, diving into the forgotten details and uncovering important missing links, but in the end, Brandt resists easy interpretation, remaining ever evasive and ambiguous, an artistic shape shifter quietly slipping through our fingers.

While most exhibition introductions feel like throwaways, this one sets the stage particularly adeptly. Four early prints from the late 1920s and early 1930s show Brandt searching for his own vision, trying on the styles and subject matter of Kertesz, Brassai, Man Ray, and Abbott, with a little rich Eastern European darkness here and a little distorted Surreal camera angle there. The albums of early snapshots displayed underneath find Brandt examining British life with an unexpected mix of outsider perspective (he was German by birth after all) and upper class insider access. Together, this smart prelude conceptually brings together the many influences of his early years and loosely predicts some of what would come later.

The first major section of the exhibit combines images from Brandt's first real claim to fame, his 1936 book The English at Home, and its speedy follow up, A Night in London, from 1938. The pictures capture a broad spectrum of British life, from parlourmaids and bar customers to top-hatted aristocrats and grimy miners, and from street kids and theatregoers to intellectuals and illicit lovers. But there is much more going on in these pictures than straight documentation; each photograph has an undercurrent of almost anthropological curiosity, an eye for the dark oddness of the everyday. Fancy men in morning suits and ladies in hats cluster atop a carriage for a better view of the hunt, while blank-eyed children stand frozen in a forest of weary birthday party balloons. A fish market porter balances a tuna on his head, while a young girl prances in the street saucily showing off a bit of leg. A raceday barker stands in a pose of crucifixion, while a policeman guards a gloomy brick alley. Back and forth, Brandt mixes high and low with unexpected deftness, highlighting the muted eccentricities of both with equal success. In his hands, even little details, like a display of opera hats and an elegant white egret in a grassy manicured garden, seem at once entirely ordinary and surprisingly weird.

Many of Brandt's 1930s images are steeped in deep darkness, full of shadows and hollows and printed with an eye for middle range greys. Brandt's photographs of the depressed coal mining and industrial towns of Northern England follow in this stylistic path, capturing sooty smokestacks, rainswept cobblestones, and dirty children with heavy visual weight. His images of the London blackout and the bombed out buildings of World War II are equally pensive and moody. Crowds sleep on top of each other in improvised air-raid shelters in tube stations, while moonlight darkly illuminates rubble piles in front of the looming dome of St. Paul's. As the years passed, it was almost as if the novelty of being British had started to wear off, and a more morose tone took its place.

I think the biggest revelation this exhibit has to offer is the examination of the middle years of Brandt's career in the context of magazines. The many spreads from Lilliput, Picture Post and others show Brandt on assignment, his images reproduced in thematic groups in small hand held (mostly vertical) formats. For me, this background material helped to fill in an underlying logic for how and why Brandt transitioned from his early work to the landscapes, portraits, and other subjects that seem less obviously connected. His 1940s landscapes have a rough, elemental wildness, from sheep grazing near the stones of Avebury to the dramatic wind-blown grasses of Top Withens. Forests and rolling hills are reduced to expanses of darkness, while paths and rivers burn with bright whiteness against the encroaching land. Brandt's commissioned portraits from the same period (and later) settle into a similarly serious mood: Norman Douglas glowers from his writing desk and Francis Bacon looks lost in a brooding reverie while walking along a grey park path. The shifting moods of these images point to a increasingly psychological approach to photography, with Brandt layering swaths of dark, personal emotion on top of whatever was in front of his camera.

When we finally get to Brandt's superlative nudes (in the final room), there is the sense that his full creative voice has come though, and that a further evolution of his artistic thinking continued to take place as he dove deeper into the subject matter. While a stupendous room of Brandt nudes should be enough to please anyone, my one quibble with this otherwise extraordinary exhibit is that I wish the nudes had been arranged more chronologically, rather than mixed together on the walls (salon style in one case). Then it would have been easier to see the minute transitions that took place from the late 1940s Victorian interior nudes, to the more distorted close-up interior nudes of the mid 1950s, to the rocky beach nudes of the late 1950s, and on to the sometimes scary and disturbed 1970s nudes (which have been omitted here), and the amazingly intense, close-up eye portraits of the early 1960s (shown in the previous portrait section) would have had a more time-specific context. The result of this hanging choice is that the nudes seem like an indivisible whole, a theme and variation story of body parts, fragmented forms, and elegant distortions, when in fact I think there is more sequential evolution going on (from more narrative infused, psychologically rich nudes on chairs and in dark rooms all the way to full abstractions over the course of more than a decade). There is so much to explore in these nudes, and I just wish the organization of this particular section had been more strictly rigorous, so Brandt's churning, changing brilliance could have been more step-by-step visible.

One topic that is touched on in this show and expanded on with more force in the accompanying catalog is a discussion of Brandt's printing techniques. As the years pass in this exhibit (and as you walk through the sections of the show), Brandt's palette very visibly moves from an enveloping thick blackness to a grainier, more exaggerated high contrast extremity of black and white; it's impossible to miss if you sweep your eyes across the rooms. If you look closely at Brandt's prints, they are heavily retouched, covered in ink blots, scrapes, highlights, and scrawls that enhance the visual effect. I always used to chalk this up to Brandt being a poor or messy printer, who required all kinds of post-production modifications to make his prints even workable. I have now come to see Brandt's tuning as something more consciously and controllingly artistic, a physical process of reinterpreting the negative again and again. Three prints of his famous nude with her elbow bent (unhelpfully entitled London, but iconic nonetheless) show how he was experimenting with size and contrast over the decades, moving between curved, nuanced depth and rough flatness. Lee Ann Daffner's text in the catalog is truly fascinating, showing thumbnails of each additive and reductive technique, a kind of parade of obsessive hidden craftsmanship.

What I find exhilarating about this exhibit is that even with all the obvious smartness poured in here, and all the new things to be learned, Brandt emerges with his elusiveness intact. I still walk away unsure of where exactly he stands. For me, this is part of his enduring draw; his photographs are mercurial, and volatile, and ultimately unknowable, even when I feel like I've found my way in.

Collector's POV: Given this is a museum show, there are of course no posted prices. Brandt's work is readily available in the secondary markets, with dozens of prints on offer each year. Recent prices have ranged from $2000 for lesser known works and later prints to more than $90000 for vintage prints of his most iconic images. The Brandt estate is represented in New York by Edwynn Houk Gallery (here).

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Estate site (here)
• Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), Boston Globe (here), TimeOut New York (here), New Yorker (here), Time LightBox (here)

Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light
Through August 12th

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Photography in the 2013 Armory Show, Part 1 of 2

In what might sound like a contradiction, this year's Armory Show has both more and less photography than in previous years. "More", in that by my count, there were 97 booths showing something that might be called photography (out of a possible 214 not including the publishers). That's over 45% of the galleries, which must be some kind of record and is certainly an increase from what was on offer last year. But a glass half empty kind of person might characterize this show as quite a bit "less", in that eclectic mid-tier randomness seems to have replaced the parade of boldfaced names and highly saleable, contemporary material that we've come to expect at this kind of gathering. If you are looking for Sherman, Gursky, Prince, Gilbert & George, Ruff, Struth, Tillmans, and the like, you will wear out your shoe leather and generally come up empty handed.

This portion of my notes covers the Focus area and the long extending arm of Pier 94; the second part will cover the remainder of Pier 94 and all of Pier 92. The booths/galleries are arranged by my path through the fair, roughly up and back along the aisles. For each booth, a list of photographers has been provided, with the number of works on display in parentheses. Additional commentary, prices, and pictures of the installation are also included as appropriate.

Galleria Continua (here): Carlos Garaicoa (2)

Higher Pictures (here): This booth contained three new works by Artie Vierkant. They're physically thinner than his last works (now on Dibond instead of thick Sintra) and more compositionally complex and multilayered ($17000 each). I think they're getting better.

Aisho Miura Arts (here): Shuhei Yamada (9)

Various Small Fires (here): Liz Magic Laser (2)

moniquemeloche (here): Joel Ross and Jason Kreps (4)

CONNERSMITH (here): Lincoln Schatz (1 set of 30, 1)

Anthony Meier Fine Arts (here): Roy McMakin (1 set of 6, 1 set of 4)

Francis M. Nauman Fine Art (here): Sherrie Levine (1 set of 18 postcards)

Pilar Corrias Gallery (here): Leigh Ledare (1)

Pekin Fine Arts (here): Kata Legrady (1), John Clang (2), Martin Parr (1), WassinkLundgren (4 diptychs). The photography duo of WassinkLundgren have taken to the streets of Tokyo, simultaneously taking two images of the same scenes from slightly different vantage points. The effect is Paul Graham's The Present meets Barbara Probst, highlighting the particular unmistakable flow of Tokyo ($2000 for each diptych). While discussing the fine Martin Parr auto show image on the outside wall, I heard that Parr is at work on a book of Chinese photobooks.

Kalfayan Galleries (here): Hrair Sarkissian (12)

Spaces Corners (here): Ed Panar (2), Andrea Galvani (1), Tim Hyde (5). These four photo collages by Tim Hyde were shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a few years ago. I like the way they break up the parking lot view into Cubist shards that are reassembled into abstract interruptions ($5000 each).

Andy Warhol Museum (here): Andy Warhol (5 modern enlargements)

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (here): Cui Xiuwen (1)

Aperture (here): James Welling (1), Andrea Galvani (1), Enrique Metinides (1), Bill Armstrong (1), Doug Rickard (1), Michel Campeau (1), Sarah Moon (1), Richard Mosse (1), Silvio Wolf (1), Lars Tunbjork (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), David Levinthal (1), Abelardo Morell (1), Rinko Kawauchi (1), Bruce Davidson (1), Michal Chelbin (1), Denis Darzacq

Whitechapel Gallery (here): John Baldessari (1), Roy Voss (1), Thomas Ruff (1), Zarina Bhimji (1), Rodney Graham (1), Peter Abrahams (1), Gerard Byrne (1)

Upstream Gallery (here): Frank Ammerlaan (1)

Baró Galleria (here): Ricardo Alcaide (2)

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): André Kertész (3 Polaroids), Max Neumann (6), Man Ray (1), Silvio Wolf (1 set of 30, 1), Trine Søndergaard (4), Bill Brandt (1), Shinichi Maruyama (3), Keith Smith (2), Constantin Brancusi (2), Michael Wolf (1), Todd Hido (2), Mark Cohen (1), Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard (1), Walker Evans (1), Aaron Siskind (1), Nicolai Howalt (1), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1). This booth was a solid mix of both contemporary work and vintage gems. This 1930s Brandt nude was a particular surprise, as I hadn't previously seen one from earlier than the mid 1940s ($35000).

espaivisor - Galeria Visor (here): Nil Yalter (1 set of 10, 1 triptych, 1 set of 16), Sanja Ivekovic (1 set of 100)

ONE AND J. Gallery (here): Jung Lee (5). I suppose it was inevitable that the "pithy phrase in neon" so prevalent in contemporary art would finally make the jump to staged photography ($15000 each).

Galeria SENDA (here): Oleg Dov (2), Anna Malagrida (2)

Galerie Crone (here): Daniel Megerle (10), Adrien Missika (4)

Galerie Ron Mandos (here): Hans Op De Beeck (1)

Rhona Hoffman Gallery (here): Luis Gispert (1), Xaviera Simmons (1), Karthik Pandian (2), Vito Acconci (1), Robert Heinecken (3)

Ingleby Gallery (here): Garry Fabian Miller (1 set of 4)

Sies + Höke (here): Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva (1), Daniel Gustav Cramer (1 set of 7)

Sprüth Magers (here): John Baldessari (1), David Lamelas (8), Cindy Sherman (5), Louise Lawler (1)

Goodman Gallery (here): Mikhael Subotzky (2), Alfredo Jaar (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1 set of 6), David Goldblatt (3)

Luciana Brito Galeria (here): Caio Reisewitz (1). Marina Abramović (2), Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich (1), Regina Silveira (1 installation). This is a new work by Marina Abramović; I liked the tiny cracks climbing up the expanse of green and the unsettling blackened finger ($90000).

Cardi Black Box (here): Shirana Shahbazi (4). These are new works by Shahbazi, more active and overlapped than other abstractions I have seen by her.

Corkin Gallery (here): arbara Astman (5), Thaddeus Holownia (1 set of 100), André Kertész (3), Constantin Brancusi (1), Marion Post Wolcott (1), Frank Mädler (1)

Tang Contemporary Art (here): Wang Gongxin (2 videos), Ji Zhou (1), Yang Yong (1 diptych)

Galerie EIGEN + ART (here): Ricarda Roggan (3)

PPOW (here): Adam Putman (10)

Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): Joel Meyerowitz (2), Gordon Parks (1), Edward Burtynsky (1 diptych, 2), Imogen Cunningham (1), William Klein (4), Bruce Davidson (2), Robert Frank (2), Vivian Maier (4), Saul Leiter (4), Ted Croner (1), Caleb Cain Marcus (2). This lively diamond mural abstraction isn't what you might expect from William Klein ($19000).

Angles Gallery (here): Ori Gersht (5, 1 lightbox, 1 diptych) Soo Kim (5). This handcut inkjet print by Soo Kim is elegantly interwoven and delicate ($10000). Another example of a contemporary photographer playing with the surface/physicality of the print.

Haines Gallery (here): David Maisel (1)

Galerie van Gelder (here): Steven Parrino (1)

Leila Heller Gallery (here): Reza Aramesh (1 triptych)

Hales Gallery (here): Sebastiaan Bremer (1)

Vistamare (here): Mimmo Jodice (1)

Pierogi (here): Nadia Bournonville (1), Kevin Cooley (2)

Susan Inglett Gallery (here): Sarah Charlesworth (2)

Yossi Milo Gallery (here): Alison Rossiter (3), Simen Johan (1), Myoung Ho Lee (3), Mark Ruwedel (1 set of 15), Matthew Brandt (3), Doug Rickard (1), JD Okhai Ojeikere (2), Julie Cockburn (3). This new Matthew Brandt is more swirly and abstract than other works from this same series ($19000); the underlying lake drenched image is hardly recognizable.

Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporaneo (here): Jorge Pedro Nuñez (4). Square format Artforum ads projected into Albers-like layers of color ($4000 each).

Loevenbruck (here): Morgane Tschiember (1 set of 6)

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): Richard Mosse (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), Barkley Hendricks (1). I was blown away by the electric contrast between the blue and the red/pink in this new Richard Mosse ($24000).

Corvi-Mora (here): Anne Collier (2)

Kukje Gallery (here)/Tina Kim Gallery (here): Kimsooja (1), Haegue Yang (2 sets of 4, 1 set of 3, 1 set of 2), Candida Höfer (1), Jenny Holtzer (1)

Part 2 of this post can be found here.

Auction: Photographs, May 18, 2011 @Bloomsbury London

Bloomsbury's upcoming Photographs sale in London next week continues the house's pattern of gathering a broad variety of lower end and lesser known vintage material, much of it European. Most of the lots have a high estimate of £2000 or lower, so bargain hunting will be the norm. Overall, there are a total of 225 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of £405750.

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 207
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £254750

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 18
Total Mid Estimate: £151000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 125, Irving Penn, Five Dahomey Girls, One Standing, 1967/1974, at £10000-15000.

Here is a short list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Eugene Atget (5)
Walker Evans (5)
George Rodger (5)
Cecil Beaton (4)
Edouard Boubat (4)
Bob Carlos Clarke (4)
Frank Horvat (4)
Yoshiyuki Iwase (4)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

(Lot 67, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Petals of the Echinopsishybride, 1928, at £1000-1500, at right, middle, lot 79, Bill Brandt, East Sussex Coast, 1957/1960, at £3000-4000, at right, top, and lot 112, Berenice Abbott, Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place, 1936, at £9000-12000, at right, bottom, all via Bloomsbury.)

Photographs
May 18th

Bloomsbury Auctions
24 Maddox Street
Mayfair
London WS1 1PP

Auction: Photographs, December 13, 2010 @Christie's

Christie's ends the 2010 auction season for Photographs with a mop-up sale of generally lower end material in New York next week. With a high percentage of later prints or lesser known images, it's a grab bag to pick through. Overall, there are a total of 187 lots on offer, with a total High estimate of $1234000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:
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Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 173

Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $951000

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Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 14

Total Mid Estimate: $283000

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Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0

Total High Estimate: NA

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The top lot by High estimate is tied between two lots: lot 65, Irving Penn, Cuzco Children, Neg. No 142, Peru, Dec 1948, 1949, and lot 137, Irving Penn, Juliet Auchincloss, 1949, both at $30000-50000.

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Here's the complete list of photographers represented by five or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Ansel Adams (14)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (8)
Edward Weston (7)
Leonard Freed (7)
Brassai (6)
Harry Callahan (5)
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(Lot 33, Bill Brandt, Nude #68, London, 1953, at $7000-9000, at right, bottom, lot 55, Irving Penn, Dorian Leigh and Ray Bolger, Vogue cover, 1946, at $20000-30000, at right, middle, and lot 122, Eddie Adams, Symbolism: March on Washington, 1963, $1500-2500, at right, top, all via Christie's.)

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The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.

Photographs

December 13th

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Christie's

20 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10020

Auction: Photographs, November 16, 2010 @Bonhams London

Following up on its New York Photographs sale last week, Bonhams has another Photographs auction scheduled for London next week. The sale includes mostly lower end material, with a solid helping of British photography. Overall, there are a total of 150 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of £477000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 130
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £285000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 19
Total Mid Estimate: £162000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 1
Total High Estimate: £30000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 43, Frantisek Drtikol, Nude Study, 1927, at £25000-30000. (Image at right, top, via Bonhams.)

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Willy Ronis (15)

Brassaï (6)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (6)

Peter Henry Emerson (5)
Wolfgang Suschitzky (5)
Mario Giacomelli (4)
Horst P. Horst (4)
Angus McBean (4)
Sebastião Salgado (4)
Jürgen Schadenberg (4)

Jock Sturges (4)

André Villers (4)

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Since we have a collection of vintage Brandt nudes, we would likely be interested in lot 77, Bill Brandt, St. John's Wood, London, 1958. (Image at right, bottom, via Bonhams.)

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The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographs
November 16th

Bonhams

101 New Bond Street
London W1S 1SR

Auction: Photographs, November 19, 2008 @Christie's King Street

Whether gallery owners (or artists for that matter) feel comfortable with how auction houses have been expanding their scope of influence over the past few years, the reality is that the world is indeed changing and the auction houses are innovating at a faster pace than their competitors. Christie's now has its own gallery (Haunch of Venison) and Phillips has been slowly building a stable of artists it represents directly (Annie Leibovitz being the highest profile recent convert). So the lines between "retail" and "wholesale" are blurring even further, and the auction houses are working aggressively and creatively to find ways to sell more stuff to their client lists.

When the upcoming Christie's King Street catalog thumps down on your doorstep, you won't think anything unusual is going on; indeed what could be safer than Irving Penn's Woman in Moroccan Palace (cover image at right)? And yet, as you begin to flip through the pages, you will find that there are two carefully curated group exhibitions going on in the midst of this sale, complete with scholarly essays by museum directors. And given the breadth of artists represented in each mini-exhibit, these are not gallery type shows - these are the kinds of shows you would expect to see in a small museum.

As collectors, we come armed with a healthy dose of skepticism for the methods of those trying to sell us something, and Christie's has gotten its fair share of our criticism of late. That said, I think there is some genius here (assuming the sale does modestly well). Instead of giving their clients yet another dose of the same old material, Christie's has taken a risk and exposed us to two sets of interesting contemporary work, grouped geographically. These shows even have names: Distinctively Nordic and Distinctively Dutch. Each group has 20+ photographers represented, and there is the constant reminder in the catalog text that these images are from sold out editions (you can't get them anywhere else!). The essays that accompany each section (written by Elina Heikka, Director of the Finnish Museum of Photography and Hripsime Visser, Curator of Photography at the Stedelijk Museum respectively) help provide some much needed context, as many of the artists will be unfamiliar to most viewers. Overall, we thought both groups had generally strong work, and each had a distinct point of view and common aesthetic. Moreover, we liked being challenged to look at some work we might not have spent time on before.

The sale has a total of 97 lots up for sale, with a total high estimate of 1556000 Pounds. Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below 5000 Pounds): 15
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 70000 Pounds

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 5000 and 25000 Pounds): 70

Total Mid Estimate: 796000 Pounds

Total High Lots (high estimate above 25000 Pounds): 12

Total High Estimate: 690000 Pounds

Other than the two mini-shows, there is a small array of other work, all lavishly displayed with one image per page, often with an accompanying image of a book in which the image can be found. This was certainly a reminder for us about the difference production values can make when looking at a catalog: the environment of this catalog makes the work look better (and more valuable), in contrast to the "garage sale", 3 or 4 items on a page, feel that can be found in most other auctions.

For our specific collection, there were only two lots that would really fit perfectly:

• Lot 64 Bill Brandt, London, 1958 (image at right)
• Lot 65 Bill Brandt, Campden Hill, London, 1950

Of the Nordic work, we found the images of Joakim Eneroth, Esko Mannikko, and Marjukka Vainio of interest (realizing that it is hard to make generalizations about whole bodies of work from one image). Of the Dutch work, we liked Gerco De Ruijter, Ruud Van Empel, and Desiree Dolron. We will be very interested to see if this experiment with focused groups of contemporary work is successful for Christie's. But even if it isn't, we like the fact they are taking some chances.

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Photographs

November 19th

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Christie's

8 King Street

St. James's

London SW1Y 6QT