Out of Town Gallery Shows (Volume 2)

Earlier in the fall, we offered a list of out of town gallery shows that we would have enjoyed seeing, had we been in the right city at the right time. With this post, we're updating that list to include a number of new shows open through the rest of this season and into the New Year.

Frank Breuer @Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
Through November 26th

Vik Muniz, Paper Trails @ Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
Through November 29th

Wolfgang Tillmans, Half Page @Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Through December 6th

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Portraits & Drive-In Theaters @Hemphill Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
Through December 20th

Great Women of Photography: Berenice Abbott & Imogen Cunningham @Lumiere Gallery, Atlanta
Through December 23rd

Horace Bristol, Capturing LIFE, Celebrating a Century @Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco
Through January 3rd

Michael Wolf, Transparent City @Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco
Through January 3rd

Plus Ca Change: Daido Moriyama, Toshio Shibata, Shomei Tomatsu @Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston
Through January 6th

Lee Friedlander, New Mexico @Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Through January 15th

Ruth Bernhard, The Small Pictures @Robert Tat Gallery, San Francisco
Through January 17th

As always, if you're a collector and have seen any of these shows, give us your thoughts in the Comments section.

Auction: Photographs, November 22, 2008 @Phillips London

Given the nature of the auction business, it is often the case that collections and groups of work are sold all at once, the result of death, divorce, or some other life changing event that requires the liquidation of one's assets. Parsing through the catalog's fine print, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct where the lots came from en masse, or where the original groupings were. The current London sale from Phillips has a very structured feel as a result of this kind of group selling, with distinct sections of work that are nearly unrelated, intermingled with various lots from other consignors. Let's take a look at the underlying framework of this sale:

Lots 1-5 Oxfam benefit lots
Lots 6-23 Mixed/random (mostly pre 1975)
Lots 24-31 Mapplethorpe lots from Lisa Lyon
Lots 32-101 Mixed contemporary lots (Phillips' bread and butter)
Lots 102-120 Arab/Iranian lots (new area of exploration, perhaps another area to separate themselves from the rest of the auction pack)
Lots 121-130 Contemporary Chinese/Korean lots (area of Phillips' leadership, due to being the first to bring this type of work to the auction market)
Lots 131-175 Japanese lots from the Jacobsen/Ishimoto collection (mostly 1930s)
Lots 176-188 Other Japanese lots (mostly contemporary)

So depending on your interests, you can likely focus on certain parts of this catalog and browse through the others as background or general education. The sale has a total of 188 lots up for sale, with a total high estimate of 1623500 Pounds. Here's the price breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below 5000 Pounds): 98
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 296500 Pounds

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 5000 and 25000 Pounds): 81
Total Mid Estimate: 807000 Pounds

Total High Lots (high estimate above 25000 Pounds): 9
Total High Estimate: 520000 Pounds

The heaviness at the Low end of this sale is due to the large number of low priced lots in the vintage Japanese collection. Otherwise, this is a generally strong Mid range sale.

For our collection, there are some interesting pieces among the Jacobsen/Ishimoto collection, many of which aren't often readily available here in the US:

• Lot 134 Ori Umesaka, Flower I, II, III, IV, c1930
• Lot 156 Iwao Yamawaki, Bicycle rack, 1930-1932 (image at right)
• Lot 173 Iwao Yamawaki, Abstraction (scissors and cardboard with shadow), 1932

Beyond these, we also like the following contemporary lots, even though they don't fit into our collection as directly:

• Lot 66 Desiree Dolron, Librario Escuela Julio Mela, 2002-2003
• Lot 70 Ruud van Empel, Moon #1, 2005
• Lot 82 Edward Burtynsky, Shipyard #22, Qili Port, Zheliang Province, China, 2005

While these Japanese lots may be of interest to those attending Paris Photo (where this year's focus is on Japanese photography), we wonder about how broad an audience this work actually has. It will also be interesting to see how the Arab/Iranian work does, given that it is new to most collectors. All in all, a bit of a strange mix, but at least it isn't a boring rehashing of the usual suspects.

Photographs
November 22nd

Phillips De Pury & Company
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Short Note on Auction Results

One quick clarification on our Auction Results posts. We tend to get our summary statistics on auctions out rather quickly, often just a day or two after the sale has ended. It is always the case that there are lots that are picked up by buyers after the sale is over, usually at or below the reserve, and these sales are fed back into the auction house's results page sporadically for a week or two. These sales raise the total proceeds and lower the buy-in rate incrementally, even though they didn't actually sell in the live auction. So if you see summary results from an auction house (or other source) two or three weeks after the sale, and they look "better" that what we reported, it is likely a result not of our mistakes (we like to think we are pretty diligent with the numbers) but of these after sales getting added in.

New York, N. Why?: Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937-1940 @Met

JTF (just the facts): 24 framed diptychs, consisting of 67 black and white images, 6 poems, and an excerpt from the New Yorker, mounted to unbound album pages (almost like a scrapbook). Displayed in three small back rooms, behind the current British prints show. All of the images are from 1937-1940. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The 1930s were an exciting time for photography in New York city. Berenice Abbott was doing her Changing New York series. Walker Evans had his seminal American Photographs show at the MoMA. Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Weegee, and Andre Kertesz, among many others, were all working around town. The combined output of these great photographers has given us a memorable portrait of the city and its inhabitants at that time.

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Rudy Burckhardt emigrated to the US from Switzerland in 1935 and found himself taking photographs in New York at this same time. Burckhardt selected a group of his images, paired them with poems by his then roommate, Edwin Denby, and put together a self published portfolio of work, called New York, N. Why?, which has been unbound and shown in full in this exhibit. The slim volume is divided into three sections: Part 1 which is focused on architectural fragments, walls, and stand pipes, Part 2 which depicts storefronts, advertising and commercial signs, and Part 3 which shows pedestrians from various angles. It is clear that these images were selected and sequenced very carefully, as the structure of the work as a whole is very crisp and defined.

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An easy conclusion from scanning these images is that there are plenty of echoes of Abbott and particularly Evans, and that Burckhardt was a talented, but basically second tier practictioner. And even if that is the ultimate verdict on this work, I found a surprising number of excellent images in this show, and a strong, but subtle point of view in these seemingly plain photos that is indeed different from those who were working with the same material at the same time. The walls and stand pipes of the first section are much more pared down, abstracted and austere (the influence of Mondrian discussed in the essay seems right on), and the best images of signs, storefronts and bodegas of Part 2 are direct, bold and graphic, without being heavy. In Part 3, I liked very much the low angle shots of feet and sidewalks, especially those with manhole covers or the embedded patterns of circles as part of the composition. While not every image is a winner on its own, together they show intriguing patterns quite successfully.

Collector's POV: While we are city scene collectors, we haven't spent much time on Burckhardt to date. There doesn't seem to be much of his best vintage work moving around in the secondary market, and I certainly haven't seen many of the images in this show anywhere for sale in the past few years. But I will say that I came away from this show with renewed respect for Burckhardt's work and its verifiable difference from others of the same period. I can now absolutely imagine adding a Burckhardt to our collection, should we come across one of the best from this series out in the open market. As a small, tight show, it's well worth a visit.

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There is also an amazingly faithful page-by-page reproduction of the album (containing all the images and poems) available from Nazraeli Press, with an essay from Met curator Doug Eklund. Reading the fine print, you'll discover our friends at JGS once again supporting a high quality photography show/book.
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Rating: ** (2 stars) VERY GOOD (rating scale defined here)

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New York, N. Why?: Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937-1940

Through January 4th

Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10028

Ralston Crawford @Zabriskie

JTF (just the facts): A total of 25 works of art: 4 paintings, 4 drawings/watercolors, and 17 photographs, shown through the main gallery and back room. Crawford died in 1978 and most of the work in this show is from his later life (i.e the 1960s and 1970s) although there are a handful of earlier pieces mixed in as well. (Installation image at right.)

Comments/Context: Ralston Crawford is best known as a 1930s/1940s painter of pared down and often abstracted views of American vernacular architecture: industrial buildings, docks, factories and the like. He is often lumped in with Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth as a Precisionist, or more loosely associated with artists like Stuart Davis or movements with titles like Geometric Abstraction or Synthetic Cubism. He made crisp, flat, simplified images of recognizable objects, where detail was eliminated and the relationships between form, line, color, and space were carefully selected and balanced. With the arrival of the wild, emotional excesses of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1950s, he was largely marginalized and forgotten.
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What is less known about Crawford is that he was also a photographer. Starting in the late 1930s, he used a 35mm camera as a kind of sketch pad, where he would capture images he found out in the world, to later be reworked and synthesized down for his paintings. As the years passed, he began to see the some of the photographs not as intermediate steps but as works of art in and of themselves, and in his later life, his activity as a photographer was much more pronounced.
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One of the neat things about this show is that Crawford's photographs, drawings and oils of the same subject have been hung together, so you can really see how his mind was working through the problems of picture making. The installation shot above (not easy to see I realize) shows 4 different iterations of the same anchor, and how he carefully chose his elements and then amplified and distorted them to get the effects he wanted.

I think Crawford is under appreciated in terms of his place in the history of photography. Prior to the late-1930s, abstraction in photography was still in its infant stages. Many artists both in America and Europe were experimenting with pared down industrial forms and Modernist simplification, but most of the objects are still clearly recognizable. Crawford's early photographs provide an interesting bridge to Callahan and particularly Siskind, who both came along in the late 1940s and 1950s and really started to break things down further. Crawford's later photographs continue along the same path, exploring forms and shapes, light and dark, while still adhering to his consistent and original point of view.

Collector's POV: In the past five years, there have been a total of two (2) Ralston Crawford photographs available in the auction market (one sold for just under $5000 and the other was bought in), so his work is scarce. (There is also one nice, albeit small Crawford available in the upcoming sale at Rago, preview here.) The photographs in this show are priced between $7500 and $15000, and are generally 8x10, 11x14 or slightly larger. The oil paintings are priced between $140000 and $200000, although a few are NFS (not for sale). As collectors of city and industrial imagery, we are absolutely on the look out for a Crawford photograph to add to our collection. Even if you're not in the market for a Crawford, the show is worth seeing, especially to consider the interplay of photography and painting in the history of American Art.
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By the way, there was a nice retrospective catalog on Crawford put out by the Whitney in 1986, if you are looking for some background on Crawford for your library.

Rating: * (1 star) GOOD (rating system defined here)

Ralston Crawford
Through November 29th

Zabriskie Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Paris Photo, November 13-16, 2008

Paris Photo opens next week, but unfortunately, we won't be going this year. According to the show website (here), there will be 86 galleries/dealers and 21 book publishers exhibiting (38% of the exhibitors are new this year), and 66 magazines and other press covering the event. It seems from a quick glance at the list that there are fewer US-based galleries represented than in prior years (the usual suspects are present, but the next tier down seems thinner.) They're expecting 40000 visitors, but that sure seems high, given the tough economic times.

The theme this year is Japanese photography, with over 130 Japanese photographers showing work (the largest such grouping in Europe ever, according to the site). There are special sections of the show devoted to Japanese galleries, book publishers, and artist videos.

Since we won't be attending the show this year, we are hoping to get some insightful comments from other collectors who are going. We're interested in the general feel of the show, how crowded it is, and which galleries were showing something unexpected or exciting. Feel free to call yourself a "special assignment correspondent" for DLK COLLECTION!

And don't forget, no trip to Paris would be complete without at least one visit to Laduree (site here) for their best-in-the-world macarons (image at right). We usually go to the shop on Rue Bonaparte in Saint-Germain, but there are a couple of others around town as well.

UPDATE: There are videos of the show here.

Paris Photo
November 13-16
Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris
France

Auction: Photographs, November 18, 2008 @Sotheby's London

The upcoming Photographs sale at Sotheby's New Bond Street is a perfectly respectable gathering of items, with a representative sample of most of the photographers you would expect to find and a few lesser known artists thrown in for good measure. And yet, for us, reading this catalog felt like watching cable TV - clicking through hundreds of channels, but nothing really grabs your attention. This is surprising, as we think of Sotheby's as being on top in terms of unearthing rare and exciting material.

The sale has a total of 177 lots up for sale, with a total high estimate of 1490000 Pounds. Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below 5000 Pounds): 65
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 291000 Pounds

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 5000 and 25000 Pounds): 109
Total Mid Estimate: 1059000 Pounds

Total High Lots (high estimate above 25000 Pounds): 3
Total High Estimate: 140000 Pounds

This sale has the highest number of Mid range lots in the European sales we have reviewed to date, so clearly there has been some discipline and effort exercised in putting the sale together. Perhaps it is merely the randomness of consigning activity that accounts for the absence of the usual Sotheby's spark. Alternately, this reaction may be a result of "our" kind of work being mostly missing, and that others who are after different things will find it up to the usual standards.

In any event, for our collection, there is really only one item, Lot 121 Bernd & Hilla Becher, Untitled (Pitheads), 1974, (image at right) that would fit into our collection well. Additionally, we very much admire the three Andy Goldsworthy images up for sale (Lots 159, 160, and 161), even if they don't fit into our collection exactly.

If there is a silver lining here, it may be that we can feel some odd relief that there aren't too many great things up for sale that we might miss, at a time when we are being extra cautious with our purchases.

Photographs
November 18th

Sotheby's
33-34 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA

Auction Results Fall 2008: Saturday @Phillips, Bonhams & Butterfields, and Yann Le Mouel

It’s time for a results roundup from the auctions in the past few weeks. We’ll cover three sales: Saturday @Phillips (New York), Bonhams & Butterfields (New York/San Francisco) and Yann Le Mouel (Paris). All results include the buyer’s premium.

Saturday @Phillips

Total Lots: 524
Total Photo Lots: 111
Photo % (By Lot): 21.18%
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate (Photo Only): $235100
Pre Sale High Total Estimate (Photo Only): $334700

Total Photo Lots Sold: 74
Total Photo Lots Bought In: 37
Buy In %: 33.33%
Total Sale Proceeds: $794313
Total Sale Proceeds (Photo Only): $193688
Photo % (By Dollar): 24.38%

The photography in this sale performed just fine, with a generally satisfactory buy-in rate (given the times). I think this is a result of a solid and well chosen group of pictures and a focus on a different group of collectors. Additionally, the photo lots more than carried their weight (21.18% by lots, but 24.38% by proceeds). Unfortunately, on such a small base, it’s still only a few thousand dollars.

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 110
Low Sold: 73
Low Bought In: 37
Buy In %: 33.64%
Total Low Estimate: $322700
Total Low Sold: $184313

Mid Total Lots: 1
Mid Sold: 1
Mid Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 0.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $12000
Total Mid Sold: $9375

High Total Lots: 0
High Sold: 0
High Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 0.00%
Total High Estimate: $0
Total High Sold: $0

Not much to say here, beyond the numbers, as it was a low end sale by design, and performed adequately as such.

Bonhams & Butterfields

Total Lots: 222
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1004800
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1439000

Total Lots Sold: 111
Total Lots Bought In: 111
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total Sale Proceeds: $602580

Bonhams & Butterfields’ 50% buy-in rate was the highest among the US based houses this season, and the approximately $600000 in proceeds was pretty far below their expectations, so I’d guess that they’re disappointed with these results. Perhaps it was a function of being the last in line and buyers having already folded up their wallets and gone home.

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 202
Low Sold: 100
Low Bought In: 102
Buy In %: 50.50%
Total Low Estimate: $965000
Total Low Sold: $397380

Mid Total Lots: 19
Mid Sold: 11
Mid Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 42.11%
Total Mid Estimate: $384000
Total Mid Sold: $151200

High Total Lots: 1
High Sold: 1
High Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 0.00%
Total High Estimate: $90000
Total High Sold: $54000

The numbers above are pretty ugly all around. Sitting in the room must have been painful.

Yann Le Mouel

Total Lots: 322
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: 649200 Euros
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: 872800 Euros

Total Lots Sold: 147
Total Lots Bought In: 175
Buy In %: 54.35%
Total Sale Proceeds: 295080 Euros

The numbers for Yann Le Mouel are actually a bit hard to parse through, as nearly 40 unexpected lots (?) were added the day of the sale (most were bought in), but only show up as results without estimates or lot information. In addition, the results are posted as hammer only, so I’ve grossed them up to include the premium. That said, no amount of massaging the numbers will make them look any better. This was a dismal outing, with less than half the lots selling and less than half the low estimate being realized as proceeds.

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 310
Low Sold: 144
Low Bought In: 166
Buy In %: 53.55%
Total Low Estimate: 546800 Euros
Total Low Sold: 239880 Euros

Mid Total Lots: 10
Mid Sold: 3
Mid Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 70.00%
Total Mid Estimate: 206000 Euros
Total Mid Sold: 55200 Euros

High Total Lots: 2
High Sold: 0
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 100.00%
Total High Estimate: 120000 Euros
Total High Sold: 0 Euros

Whether this sale is a bellwether for a softer European market is still unknown. We have the London and various German sales coming up in the next few weeks, so we’ll have to wait and see if this sale is at all representative of the overall tenor of the market. Since the quality of the material in this sale was weaker than that of the stronger upcoming sales, I'm not sure we can draw many conclusions from this data, except that the whole market has pulled back substantially.

Halsted Visit

Wendy Halsted Beard from the Halsted Gallery (website here) came by our house for a visit last week, and as always, we had a terrific time looking at lots of great prints in one sitting. If you aren't familiar with the Halsteds, Wendy's father, Tom Halsted, started the gallery back in the late 1960s and they've been at it ever since, although Wendy is now leading the effort for the most part. They're based in the Detroit metro area (Blooomfield Hills), but seem to be out and about constantly, seeing clients and doing photography/art fairs.

Over the years, the Halsteds have developed close personal relationships with a variety of great American photographers and have helped to build some tremendous collections. For us, the fact that the Halsteds are so close to the estate and family members of Imogen Cunningham (one of our favorite photographers) means they have the more vintage Cunningham inventory than any other dealer/gallery on the planet, by at least an order of magnitude (and believe me, we have scoured the earth for Cunningham prints, so we can say this with some authority). Beyond having the prints we're interested in, the Halsteds are low-key, nice folks, in a Midwestern kind of way, and have always been extremely fair with their pricing (not true of many other galleries/dealers out there); in general, they are the kind of people we enjoy doing business with.

It is virtually impossible for Wendy to bring her inventory by and not have us come away with something, and this visit was no exception. We'll have our newest Cunningham up on our collection website as soon as it comes back from the frame shop. In the meantime, I highly recommend that collectors out there take the time to connect with Wendy and see what she has in her traveling boxes.

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

Photography in the New York Times

Back in September, I was reading Holland Cotter's review of Catherine Opie's retrospective at the Guggenheim (which we will cover soon I imagine), and I started to wonder what your view of the whole world of photography would look like if your only news source was the printed version of the New York Times (no online additions). October is a busy month for photography; there are lots of gallery and museum shows opening and the NY photography auction season takes place. So I thought I would do an experiment and cut out every article about photography for the entire month and then put them together to get a picture of how the NYT was reporting on the medium.

Of course, there is great photography published in every section, every day in the NYT. But I decided not to count great photojournalism in this tally; only the articles in the Arts section which covered the medium as an art form. (There was recently an article about a well known collector in the Obituaries which I also did not count.) I also did not count the advertisements for gallery shows and auctions, of which there were many.

So here's the data:

October 3
Full article in Arts about Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum (Cotter)
Short article in Arts about Josef Koudelka at Aperture (Smith)
Short blurb in Listings about Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about New Photography 2008 at the MoMA (Rosenberg)
Short blurb in Listings about Hans Silverster at Marlborough (Smith)
Short blurb in Listings about Roe Etheridge at Kreps (Johnson)

October 10
Short blurb in Listings about Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about Josef Koudelka at Aperture (Smith)

October 17
Short blurb in Listings about Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about Susan Meiselas at the ICP (Johnson)

October 24
Short blurb in Listings about Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about Josef Koudelka at Aperture (Smith)

October 31
Short blurb in Listings about Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim (Cotter)
Short blurb in Listings about America and the Tintype at the ICP (Rosenberg)

So what are the conclusions?

First, anecdotally, I think of photography as being generally well represented in the NYT, but at least in the last month, this wasn't the case. If you are a purist and eliminate Gilbert & George from your count, then there was only one real article longer than one paragraph in the entire month. I also think of the Sunday Arts & Leisure being a good place for photography in more depth, but not so this month.

Second, I had not noticed how the NYT clumps the Arts news together and pushes it out on Fridays. I also had not really noticed how the same shows get repeated week to week in the Listings.

Third, the group above is mostly established, well known artists. Not a lot of experimentation or coverage of emerging artists going on here.

Fourth, there is no coverage of any exhibits outside of the New York area.

Lastly, they have clearly delivered the message that if you are going to see only one exhibit of photography any time soon, it should be the Catherine Opie show.

This post is not meant as a gotcha on the NYT. I conceived of it as simply a data gathering exercise to see if there were any patterns (and indeed, there were). I came away with the conclusion that if you are passionately interested in photography (as we are), the NYT can be a good first pass source, but if you want a fuller picture of the real action in this medium, you will need to look elsewhere to bring in other viewpoints. All in all, perhaps that conclusion is not surprising.

Happy Halloween!

If you are a collector focused mostly on "vintage" photography (like us), it is easy to lose sight of what it means to be a working photographer on a day to day basis. Many of the artists we collect are no longer alive, so our focus is on talking with dealers, auction house specialists and estate managers about work that is available in the secondary market. This kind of collecting has its own pace and style that is very different than collecting work by contemporary photographers, where there often can be direct, personal interaction with the artist.

Amy Stein is a contemporary photographer working and teaching in the New York area who writes a terrific blog (here) about her life as a photographer. We've never met her, but we have enjoyed reading about the gallery shows of her work and those of her friends, the events she is going to, her trips to take pictures, and more generally, watching from afar as a photography career gets built, brick by brick. Of all the artist/photographer blogs out there (and there are a staggering number), it is the only one we read on a regular basis. To us, it feels like an authentic view into life as a contemporary photographer at this moment in time, right now.

Stein has opted for the series approach to her work and has explored four different projects to date: Women and Guns, Halloween in Harlem, Domesticated (animals in human environments), Stranded (motorists on the roadside). Each of these efforts have produced thought provoking, well made color images that have a distinct and consistent point of view. In honor of Halloween, I've selected a few images below from her Halloween in Harlem series (Powerpuff Girls, Hulk, and Dog, respectively):

Stein's artist site can be found here, with images from all four series, as well as the other usual biographical information. And while her work doesn't fit into the narrow definition of our particular collection, we will continue to pay attention as her career evolves.

Photo Book Grab Bag

One of the ways we approach the process of teaching ourselves about photography in its many forms is to always be on the lookout for photo books that we can add to our library, even if their subject matter doesn't fit with our specific collecting themes. At this point, after many years, we've built up a pretty strong group of books centered on the photographers key to our collection, with a wider smattering of books representing the rest of the history of photography. But we're still expanding our knowledge, and new books are always being published, so whenever we hear about a book (new, old, out of print) that sounds interesting and is not already on our shelves, we order it on the Internet, from one of a variety of sources (Amazon, Abebooks etc.). This produces a wonderful element of surprise to the receipt of the daily mail - will there be a photo book (ordered weeks ago) in the pile? We're not particularly fussy about first editions or perfect condition; we just like having a solid copy as reference.

So today's post outlines (in summary form) a handful of books that we've have piled up in recent weeks. I don't believe there is any pattern to this particular group, but plenty of interesting material nonetheless:

1.) Light Readings, A Photography Critic's Writings, 1968-1978, A.D. Coleman, University of New Mexico Press, 1998 (second edition)

Believe it or not, we had never heard of this book until recently, when it came up in passing during an email exchange with gallery owner Joseph Bellows. I have since spent time reading each and every essay in this volume, and can wholeheartedly recommend finding a copy and reading it for yourself. These essays show what it was like to be a photography critic in the late sixties and early seventies, and you can clearly see Coleman struggling with what that meant and how to approach the task. What I appreciate most is that he was unmerciful. When he didn't like a show or a book he read, he said so, with a level of scholarship, intelligence and wit that is virtually absent from our public discourse on photography today; when he did find something of value, he was eloquent in his support. Overall, the level of craftsmanship in the essays is consistently high. This book has been inspiring to me (in the context of this blog) to work to reach for a higher standard of quality in our posts, and to be honest in our appraisals of what we see (rather than simply reporting that everything is wonderful), even when it might be unpopular. Go out and get this book if you don't have it already.

2.) Think of England, Martin Parr, Phaidon Press, 2000

We have run across the work of Martin Parr in quite a few places recently, and since we didn't have any books of his in our library, we decided to start with this one. Parr is famous for his humor, and while this is clearly evident in these images, I was struck by the careful framing and thoughtful use of color across this entire volume. These are very well made, memorable photographs.

3.) Delta West, The Land and the People of the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, Roger Minick, Scrimshaw Press, 1969

While these images were made in the 1960s in the Sacramento delta in California, they echo images from the FSA in the 1930s, full of dusty roads, falling down shacks, and farm workers. This book has high quality reproductions of the photographs, interspersed with commentary from the residents.

4.) Dan Graham, Gloria Moure, Ediciones Poligrafa, 1998

Dan Graham's color photography of houses and buildings in the 1960s seems to be coming up again and again for us, and so we needed to get some background on his career. This book has some excellent examples of these housing tract images, as well as a solid retrospective of all his work, from video and performance art, to conceptual installations and other structural elements. While his photographs aren't particularly representative of all that he has done, they would clearly fit well with Lewis Baltz and Robert Adams.

5.) It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It..., Luigi Ghirri, Aperture, 2008

We've seen a few Ghirris in the past months, and are looking forward to the Ghirri show to be held at Aperture in November (which we will certainly visit). We bought the book to get a fuller view of his work, especially in the context of trying to get our heads around color work from the 1970s and 1980s. It's an excellent volume, showing an extended exploration of how color can be used as an element of picture making.

6.) Roy DeCarava, A Retrospective, Peter Galassi, Museum of Modern Art, 1996

We have been exposed (pardon the pun) to a city scene or two by DeCarava that might fit into our collection, so I wanted to get a better picture of DeCarava's career (since we weren't particularly familiar with it) and thus we bought this retrospective book. In looking through this exhibition catalogue, there are indeed some terrific city views of Harlem that would match our collection. But these bare, geometric prints are a minority in a spectacular body of work that is focused on people and their lives. These images are a testament to the power of photography in capturing the quiet, fleeting moments of life. I was also impressed by the tonal range of these prints, especially the dark greys and blacks, and how well they are handled; there is some amazing craftsmanship at work here.

7.) Sequences, Duane Michals, Doubleday, 1969

Duane Michals will likely never be represented in our collection, but we've seen so many of his sequences over the years that we felt the need to have a book to better understand how all the work fits together. This is a simple volume of thought provoking works that explore the nature of narrative and time in photography.

The library is always expanding, so by all means, tell us about great photo books we may have missed in the comments section.

Auction: La Photographie IV: Collection Marie-Therese et Andre Jammes, November 15, 2008 @Sotheby's

The catalogue for the final part of the Jammes sale arrived a week or so ago, and I must admit, it feels somewhat bittersweet. During our years of collecting, we have admired their efforts from afar and their influence has been strongly felt, even though we have not had any personal contact with the famous pair. They have become the standard bearers for systematic and scholarly collecting, for taking it seriously, for being rigorous and thoughtful, for educating others, and for working patiently and diligently over a lifetime at building a careful and meaningful collection, regardless of the interest of anyone else. Their knowledge has filled in gaps in the historical record, their books are key reference volumes, their exhibitions are historic, and the catalogues from the previous sales are collector's items in their own right. They are the antithesis of the flashy, bling bling collector of the 21st century. So it is with some sorrow that we see the final chapter of their amazing collection being cast to the wind.

Given the unspoken move away from 19th century material in the mainstream photography market (evidenced by the very few 19th century lots among the literally thousands of photographs for sale in this season's auctions), it is refreshing to get a full dose of unexpected 19th century work in a single sale. There are a total of 192 lots in this sale, approximately 30 of which are buy-ins from the previous sales (now with lower estimates). The total high estimate for the sale is 2970800 Euros, and given the success of the previous parts of this sale, it won't be surprising if this sale also performs strongly, even in the face of volatile market conditions.

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below 7500 Euros): 98
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 385800 Euros

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500 and 35000 Euros): 77
Total Mid Estimate: 1160000 Euros

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000 Euros): 17
Total High Estimate: 1425000 Euros

Given that we have very little 19th century material in our collection, there aren't many lots that fit for us in this sale. This is a result of the parameters of our genres, rather than any comment on the high quality of the work in this sale. A couple of lots that do fit are:

• Lot 178 Germaine Krull, Metal (a photo book we have long wanted to have for our library)
• Lot 187 Emmanuel Sougez, Etude Industrielle, 1930

Hopefully, many of these lots will end up in museums, or with collectors who share the Jammes' passion for the medium. In any case, keep the catalogue as a reminder of what great collections look like and as an impetus to set your standards high.

La Photographie IV: Collection Marie-Therese et Andre Jammes
November 15

Sotheby's
76, Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honore
75008 Paris

New Exhibits @JGS Forward Thinking Museum

The JGS Forward Thinking Museum is brimming with photography exhibits worth checking out. If you haven't visited the museum before, it is an online, immersive environment, where you "enter" the museum and use an "elevator" to visit various "floors" where exhibits are displayed. There are now over 35 floors of photography exhibits, with some floors holding a variety of shows. Every time I visit this site, it seems there are new exhibits to see or old ones worth revisiting. While we can't possibly review each and every one of the shows on display, here are a few (both new and old) that we have found of interest

• David Maisel, Oblivion: There are 8 high contrast black and white aerial views of Los Angeles in this exhibit, filled with patterns of freeways, developments, streets and intersections. There are certain reminders of Ed Ruscha in these prints, but in a much darker, moodier, almost apocalyptic way. There are also a few negative prints that are even more haunting.


• Jan Banning, Bureaucratics: This show is a series of 49 color portraits of bureaucrats from all over the world (Yemen, India, China, Bolivia etc.), sitting behind their desks. They are a fascinating kaleidoscope of odd environments, with flags, political portraits, bold paint, and other surprising accoutrements.


• JGS Theater: There are 30+ videos of various photographers on view in the "theater". While I haven't seen them all, I have enjoyed Naoya Hatakeyama's The Skin of the City, Daido Moriyama's Memories of a Dog, and Stephen Shore's American Beauty. They all incorporate the photographer talking directly about his work.


• Risaku Suzuki, Snow and Cherry Blossoms: There are 22 color images in this exhibit. The blurred images of snow against the night sky and of a clear blue sky seen through a veil of pink cherry blossoms are quiet and lovely, without being cliche.


• Martin Parr, Art World Openings: This show has 22 color images of patrons at art openings, some looking at the art, some looking at each other. Parr's wry observations are palette cleansing in a world of people taking themselves too seriously.


• Daido Moriyama, Shanghai: There are 45 black and white images of Shanghai in this exhibit. It is interesting to see Moriyama, whom we associate with uniquely Japanese subjects, taking his eye for darkness and shadows to China.

You could spend hours digging around all that is available in the museum, and there is a wide variety of photography on view, including a strong emphasis on contemporary photojournalism. It is well worth your time to pay a visit. The JGS Foundation site (with an amazing photography collection) can be found here. The Forward Thinking Museum can be reached from that site or directly, here.

By the way, if you subscribe to the feed from this blog, your reader will show an earlier post showing some random notes I inadvertently published this morning, which I have since deleted (but the first mistaken post doesn't disappear for you unfortunately). Sorry for the confusion.

Auction: Photographs, Featuring Works from the Estate of Dan Berley, November 21, 2008 @Rago

It's easy to get lulled into thinking that the only photography auctions worth following are those of the top two (or four, or however many) houses that are household names. The fact is, if you are as crazy as we are, there are lots of sales at smaller auction houses all over the world that have interesting photography up for sale (often at lower prices) that are worth checking out.

A terrific example of this is the upcoming sale at Rago (just outside Trenton, NJ). Dan Berley was a long time collector of photography (beginning in the 1960s) who partnered with gallery owner Lee Witkin to publish a number of photography portfolios in the days when photography galleries were few and far between. His collection spans all types and styles of photography, and this sale offers a wide range of excellent prints, particularly the portfolios, which are available from many artists (there are also quite a few complete Camera Work issues). There are a total of 301 lots up for sale, with a total high estimate of $1453600.

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate below $10000): 277
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $857600

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 22

Total Mid Estimate: $476000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $120000

Here are some of the lots we find of interest:

• 1032 Dr. Dain Tasker, Fuschia - Upright Type, 1930s
• 1042 Karl Struss, Cables, Singer Building, 1912
• 1080 Imogen Cunningham, Two Callas, 1929/1970
• 1084 Imogen Cunningham, Triangles, 1928/Later
• 1137 Edward Steichen, The George Washington Bridge, 1931 (image at right, top)
• 1146 Ralston Crawford, Interior View of Station, Newark, 1942 (image at right, bottom)
• 1254 Aaron Siskind, Chicago, 1952

There is some high quality work in this sale, well worth taking a look, even if you've never bought from Rago.

Photographs, Featuring Works from the Estate of Dan Berley

November 21st

Rago Arts and Auction Center

333 North Main Street

Lambertville, NJ 08530

Jeff Curto's History of Photography Podcast

For the past month or so, I've been listening to a History of Photography podcast when I have some time to fill on a train or airplane. The audio is a recording of the live class that Professor Jeff Curto teaches at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois (a Chicago-area community college) each week, complete with student questions and discussion. If you have a video-enabled iPod (or the like) or listen over the Internet, his slides are also included; they are synchronized with the audio, so you can see the images he is showing as they are discussed (very cool).

While I think most collectors have a decent general understanding of the history of the medium, what I have liked about this class is that it has both refreshed my memory about some things I already knew and filled in some gaps, especially in the areas of 19th century processes (can you remember how wet collodion and gum bichromate were actually done?) and the relationship between 19th century photography and the other arts and culture of that time. I have listened to the first 7 lectures (so I am not quite current), and most of them have been thematic, rather than chronological in their organization. After setting the context of the course with a whirlwind tour of the invention and history of photography in the first couple of lectures, Curto has focused on portraiture (with a heavy emphasis on daguerrotypes by Southworth & Hawes), transportation (Grand Tour and western exploration photography), the interaction between photography and painting, and most recently, stereoscopic photography and photography of standard subjects (particularly 19th century landscapes). I believe there are 8 more lectures to come.

I have enjoyed listening to this course and would recommend it to you as a collector, unless you have a Ph.D. in photography (in which case it will be completely review).

The podcast website can be found here. There are links on this page to iTunes (for getting the podcast - it's free by the way), as well as to the class homepage and other resources.

As an aside, if you spend some time digging around on iTunes, you'll find that many major museums (MoMA, SFMOMA, Tate Modern etc.) are making their artist lectures and interviews, recorded at live events, available for free as podcasts. I have recently listened to some interesting talks given in the past few years by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin and others, dug up from these archives, and I have Jeff Wall, Gilbert & George, Robert Adams, and Dan Graham all queued up for my next plane trip. A good (and somewhat hidden) resource worth exploring.

In Search Of: Imogen Cunningham Tuberose

Virtually every photography collector we have ever met has a short list of pictures that they are constantly searching for. Every time a new auction catalogue comes, they look for these images. When they meet their favorite dealers, they ask about these images. Sometimes, these searches can go on for years.

This blog continues to be an experiment in how the process of collecting can be augmented by the virtual world. And so today, we are going to try a new feature, called In Search Of (you may remember a 70's TV show by the same name, but in that case, Leonard Nimoy was searching for Bigfoot and aliens, not photography). The concept behind this type of post is simple: tell the community of readers what you are looking for (no matter how random or arcane), and maybe someone out there will have some useful information to contribute. Perhaps a dealer will read this and have that exact work hiding in a flat file somewhere. Perhaps a collector will have the image and be ready to deaccession or trade it. Or perhaps someone will see a print in an obscure auction somewhere and call your attention to it.

To test drive the process, we'll start with an image that has been on our short list for a long time. If you have looked at our collection, you will likely notice that Imogen Cunningham is our largest holding. Her florals and nudes are amazing (we think), and the Tuberose, from the 1920s, is one of our favorites. Here's the image (scan courtesy of the Met collection):

Given all the florals that Cunningham did, you may ask yourself why we are interested in this specific image; it is clearly a good one, but there are many that are far more unusual. The reason is that my wife and I very much enjoy this particular type of flower; it has an amazing fragrance. So we're particularly interested in adding this image to our collection, as it has a sort of sentimental value for us.

We have only ever seen one print of this image in the market, and it was a later print that we somehow let slip through our fingers (and is now at the top of our "Ones That Got Away" list). At this point, we are interested in finding any high quality print we can: signed/unsigned, vintage/later, variant cropping, etc. as long as it is in decent condition. So if you know anything about a print of this image, please post a comment directly in the blog or send us an email at search@dlkcollection.com, if you prefer some privacy. We'll certainly update everyone if something good happens.

If you are a collector out there searching for something in particular, we'd be happy to feature your search next time we do one of these posts (perhaps once a week if there is interest). Send us (at the same search@dlkcollection.com address):

• a scan of the image you're chasing
• as many details as you have (artist, title, negative date, size etc.)
• how you'd like to be contacted (either via post in the blog or via email directly)

We are happy to be a blind router of information between parties to start, if privacy is of importance to either side (one collector friend likes to call this the "cone of silence"), but please be aware that we intend to get out of the way and let the parties talk between themselves as soon as possible, and that openness is what is making this process work.

We hope this idea just might work and people can get the word out about specific images they have been agonizing over for a long time. If it doesn't, we are no worse off, as there is little downside in our minds to readers knowing what we are looking for. And if, in the process, we expose people to new images they weren't aware of, then we're all getting educated along the way. If we've missed some important part of the process, by all means, let us know. Otherwise, let's see what happens.

Auction: Photographies, October 29, 2008 @Yann Le Mouel, Paris

With the New York season tailing off, we are now moving onward to the European fall season, with Yann Le Mouel (Paris) the first up. The material in this sale is heavy on European, particularly French, photographers (as to be expected), but generally, it is a broad-based sale of pieces from all over, with a significant amount of lower priced work available (many lots with a high estimate under $1000 Euros). There are a total of 322 lots up for sale, for a total high estimate of 872800 Euros.

Here's the breakdown (break points in Euros chosen to roughly match the break points used in dollars for the US sales):

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to 7500 Euros): 310
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 546800 Euros

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500 Euros and 35000 Euros): 10
Total Mid Estimate: 206000 Euros

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000 Euros): 2
Total High Estimate: 120000 Euros

We are always struck when the European catalogues start to arrive at just how subtly different the photographic aesthetic is from the dominant American view (a large generalization I realize, but meaningful for us nevertheless). Seen over a handful of lots, it's easy to miss or gloss over; seen over hundreds of lots, across many photographers known and unknown, the difference in overall feel (or the "eye") becomes very much more pronounced.

Below are a handful of lots we find of interest:

• Lot 57 Albert Rudomine, Nu feminin, c1925
• Lot 78 Roger Parry, Nu, 1930
• Lot 108 Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Liba, Mexico, 1979
• Lot 116 Germaine Krull, Pont de Crimee, Paris, 1927/1960
• Lot 158 Margaret Bourke-White, Aluminum Rods & Bars in Stock, 1939 (image at right)

While we have monitored sales at Yann Le Mouel over the years, we have never actually been a successful bidder/buyer, so we would certainly welcome any comments from other collectors about working with the specialists there or their experience in getting a work paid for, packed and shipped back to the US.

Photographies
October 29th

Yann Le Mouel
22, Rue Chauchat
75009 Paris

Weston Elbow Revisited

A reader posted an insightful comment on the Edward Weston, Elbow, 1935, (poor image at right, taken from the catalog) from the recent Christie's sale (original post here) and I wanted to take a moment to explore this image a bit more, as well as talk a bit about collectors working together. This print was estimated between $90000 and $120000 and did not sell.

Let's start with some background. Here is a snippet of the text from the Christie's catalog, describing this lot:

"Elbow is, then, rather a curiosity. If any other prints exist of the image, they are certainly few in number. It is not in the collection of The Center for Creative Photography and is unillustrated in the usual documentary sources. It is however a masterpiece..."

Then yesterday, in gallerist Alex Novak's E-Photo Newsletter #150, in listing a bunch of lots that passed at Christie's, Alex wrote the following:

Edward Weston's Elbow (this was a MoMA print of the month club issue that was a bit yellow at the edges and was totally overestimated)

Then last night, we had an anonymous comment from a reader here on our blog:

Alex Novak wrote that "Edward Weston's Elbow (this was a MoMA print of the month club issue..." This was incorrect, it was NOT a MoMA Print of the Month Club issue but rather an Edward Weston Print-of-the-Month-Club.

The following is from Amy Conger's authoritative catalogue on Weston's work from pp. 28-29 of the biography. "That spring [1935] he began a new venture, the 'Edward: Print-of-the-Month-Club.' Camera Craft, ran a note on it explaining that although prints by him usually cost $15 or $20, it would be possible for only $5 a month to subscribe for a year to this club ($50 if paid in advance). Each month the subscribers would receive a new print by Weston; the total edition of each print would be limited to forty, thirty-five for subscribers and five for the photographer. Weston probably got no more than eleven subscriptions. Twelve monthly EWPOMC prints were issued, although the date he actually began or the exact order in which he sent them out is unknown. Today these prints are recognizable not only because of the edition numbers written on them but also because they were consistently exquisite."

By consulting the footnotes to this text and cross-referencing with the Edward Weston Negative Log (there is a photocopy of this from the Weston Archive housed at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson), it can be deduced that this print of the elbow is from Weston's negative 208N which is of Charis in 1935, and that other EW Print-of-the-Month-Club prints of this negative are to be found in the collections of Indiana University Art Museum, MoMA, Norton Simon Museum and SFMOMA.

So, a few thoughts on this dialogue. First, Christie's doesn't seem to have done their homework on this lot as thoroughly as it might have, but was willing to engage in the usual salesmanship in favor of the print (buyer beware). Second, I too looked at this print out of the frame, and as Alex noted, it was a bit yellowed and the mount was lightly foxed. I agree with him that it was significantly overestimated, especially given the prices of other abstract nudes from this series/time period.

Finally, I want to touch on the idea of "open collecting" once again, especially in the context of this lot and what the back and forth above represents. It is our view that being open about what we are doing as we journey along the collecting road enhances our enjoyment of the process. Thus we have placed our entire collection up on the web and started this collector-focused blog. We don't believe that collecting must by nature be ruthlessly competitive (perhaps this is idealistic we realize) and that our ability to find the best material for our collection will somehow be compromised by making our activities known. In fact, we believe the opposite, that over time, being open will bring better quality material to our attention because more people will be aware of what we're interested in (an economist might call it signaling).

The world of photography is full of experts, from gallery owners and dealers, to auction house specialists, to other collectors, all of whom have detailed knowledge that can be shared and leveraged. If we can get some of them to come out of their shells just a bit and share some of their specific knowledge (even anonymously like the comment above that drove this post), we will all be better informed and make better decisions.

I am heartened to see that there are people out there who continue to do detailed detective work (even after the sale) and who bring a serious and thoughtful level of scholarship to this medium. It is our hope that this blog can be a place where all of these voices can be heard (even when they disagree), so that we can learn from and leverage this collective knowledge. At least for us, more information makes collecting more fun.

So keep the comments coming, as we will all benefit. On our side, as we post, we'll redouble our efforts to keep the level of commentary both hype free and content rich, and we'll ask a few more open ended questions, hoping to entice some answers from the lurking crowd. And if there is more to this specific Weston story, beyond where we are now, by all means, let us know.

Auction Results Fall 2008: Bloomsbury and Swann

Sales at Bloomsbury and Swann (last Friday and yesterday respectively) continued this year's New York auction season. Both sales had a significant percentage of lower end material, which had performed decently well in the previous sales at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips, despite the economic downturn. The results are below.

Bloomsbury Inaugural Photographs Sale

Total Lots: 145
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1767200
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $2588800

Total Lots Sold: 75
Total Lots Bought In: 70
Buy In %: 48.28%
Total Sale Proceeds: $710760

These numbers are a bit skewed, given that the big trophy lot (the five volume 19th century Russian set) didn't sell, thereby zeroing out a major portion of the estimated proceeds. Given the combination of Bloomsbury's new entry into the marketplace and the financial crisis, I think you can call this sale a lukewarm success; they sold a bunch of lots, tested all their infrastructure, and established themselves as credible. The bar will be much higher next season.

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 118
Low Sold: 59
Low Bought In: 59
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total Low Estimate: $733800
Total Low Sold: $309360

Mid Total Lots: 24
Mid Sold: 15
Mid Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 37.50%
Total Mid Estimate: $515000
Total Mid Sold: $299400

High Total Lots: 3
High Sold: 1
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 66.67%
Total High Estimate: $1340000
Total High Sold: $102000

As an aside, we had hoped to sneak off with the tasty Lewis Baltz image from the New Industrial Parks series (one of the best from that series we have seen at auction in several years), assuming we might be able to get a bargain, given it was Bloomsbury's first NY sale. No such luck. We were trounced, as the lot estimated $6000-8000 went for $12600 (including premium). It was one of only four lots in the entire sale to go above its high estimate.

Swann Galleries Important 19th & 20th Century Photographs

Total Lots: 390
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1815300
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $2659900

Total Lots Sold: 257
Total Lots Bought In: 133
Buy In %: 34.10%
Total Sale Proceeds: $1462921

This was a solid, workmanlike performance for Swann. The range of material was broad, the buy-in percentage was respectable, and the total proceeds were decently close to the pre sale low estimate, despite the challenging external conditions.

Here's the breakdown (again using definitions from the preview post, here)

Low Total Lots: 346
Low Sold: 226
Low Bought In: 120
Buy In %: 34.68%
Total Low Estimate: $1732900
Total Low Sold: $930731

Mid Total Lots: 43
Mid Sold: 30
Mid Bought In: 13
Buy In %: 30.23%
Total Mid Estimate: $867000
Total Mid Sold: $488990

High Total Lots: 1
High Sold: 1
High Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 0.00%
Total High Estimate: $60000
Total High Sold: $43200

This sale was remarkably consistent across all categories, likely a result of generally less volatile material (price-wise).