USA: Photographers Irving Penn and Edward Weston top Christie's and Sotheby's Spring photo sales

Record ID: 1530192

  • Title: USA: Photographers Irving Penn and Edward Weston top Christie's and Sotheby's Spring photo sales
  • Date: 10th April 2010
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHRISTOPHER MAHONEY, VICE PRESIDENT, SOTHEBY'S PHOTOGRAPHIC DEPARTMENT, SAYING: "The shell is really one of the icons of 20th century photography, made in 1927. Since that time it has become one of the most reproduced images, certainly in Weston's body of work and really in all of 20th century photography. It really is modernism, as it pertains to photography embodied."
  • Embargoed: 25th April 2010 11:02
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA90BPA556S40UZF00UF1U1TGXX
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Iconic images from the history of photography are up for sale in upcoming Christie's and Sotheby's auctions in New York.
    Works by photographic heavyweights like Irving Penn and Edward Weston are just some of the works on sale next week when Christie's and Sotheby's hold their big Spring photo sales.
    Christie's is offering a large collection of Irving Penn images from the collection of Patricia McCabe. McCabe was Penn's assistant and Penn gave her the prints, including one of his most famous images called "Cuzco Children", which is estimated to sell for between 100,000 and 150,000 dollars U.S. dollars.
    Irving Penn died in 2009 at the age of 92, and his work has been the subject of museum retrospectives and gallery shows around the world.
    Laura Paterson of Christie's Photographic Sales Department spoke about the surprise she felt when she first saw the collection of 67 prints on the invitation of McCabe's family.
    "They said they had one or two Penn's, could we come and investigate. So I went to a mini-storage unit and there were these amazing photographs still mainly in their original wrappings from the Penn studio and the rest kind of is history," said Paterson.
    Penn's camera captured a wide variety of subjects, including both everyday people and objects, to the rich and famous.
    Paterson talked about Penn's way of getting the most from his subjects.
    "The important thing for him was to have the people relax in their setting. He wanted them to be at ease."
    "He waited for them to sort of exhale. It's completely opposite the approach of someone like Richard Avedon who actually liked people to be a little bit more 'jumpy', He would try and kind of get their mettle up or make them a little briskly before they would shoot. Penn is interested in having people be themselves."
    Portraits of artist Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning are part of the Christie's sale, as is that of another man famous for being behind the lens - director John Huston.
    The Irving Penn images will be sold on April 14.
    Rival auction house Sotheby's is leading their sale with the 1927 photograph by Edward Weston called "Nautilus Shell". This work, which Sotheby's expects to fetch between 300,000 and 500,000 dollars U.S. dollars, is one of the more recognisable images in photographic art history, according to Christopher Mahoney of Sotheby's Photographic Department.
    "The shell is really one of the icons of 20th century photography, made in 1927. Since that time it has become one of the most reproduced images, certainly in Weston's body of work and really in all of 20th century photography. It really is modernism, as it pertains to photography, embodied," said Mahoney.
    And it has an interesting story that illustrates the changing attitude towards photography as an art form over the years.
    "This photograph was priced by Weston at 10 dollars (USD). It was seen at the exhibition at East West galleries by a young photographer named Bernice Lovett who fell in love with the image and decided to buy it. The price of 10 dollars was a little steep for her, but the gallery, luckily for her, had a flexible payment plan, and she paid it off in 50 cent increments over a period of time," said Mahoney.
    Also by Weston in Sotheby's sale is another iconic Weston image, a work called "Civil Defense", a portrait of the photographers wife donning a gas mask, taken during World War II in 1942.
    Other works in the Sotheby's sale include images by photographic greats like Robert Frank, Margaret Bourke-White and Ansel Adams.
    Sotheby's holds its photographic sale on April 13.
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