newsfromsothebys201110

Sotheby's NY sale on photographs brought three records over US$100,000, demonstrating once more "that collectors are prepared to go the distance for truly rare and important" photographic works, either being photographs, sketch books or magazines: Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (Complete Set) magazine (estimate US$200,000-$250,000), bought by art collector Christian Keesee, for US$398,500 (£258,062); a photograph by Pierre Dubreuil, The First Round (estimate US$150,000-$250,000) for US$314,500 (£203,665); and Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of The War (estimate US$70,000-$100,000), for US$158,500 (£102,642), by a private collector.

«Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work, one of the key documents of 20th-century photography, is rare as a complete set. The present offering, 50 volumes in their original bindings, is complete with all of the plates as issued, as well as the Stieglitz Icy Night photogravure as an advertisement for Goerz lenses in Number 4, and the green-and-gold Steichen-designed advertisement for the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in Number 13. This set is further distinguished by Steichen's signature on the title page and on all of the Steichen plates in Number 2.

According to Sotheby's 1981 cataloguing for this set of Camera Work, about half of the volumes were given by Stieglitz to his close friend, Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), a prolific writer and critic of modern art, architecture, and city planning. Mumford was one of the writers and critics attracted to the intellectual atmosphere at Stieglitz's Intimate Gallery, along with Sherwood Anderson, Hart Crane, Jean Toomer, and others. His column on architecture, The Sky Line, along with art reviews and other pieces, appeared regularly in The New Yorker from the 1930s through the 1970s. He was an editor of America and Alfred Stieglitz, a collection of essays celebrating the photographer's 70th birthday, and the author of over 30 books, primarily or architecture and the modern city, including The Culture of Cities (1938). [...Sotheby's...]»

Photographs (Sale N08775), Oct. 5 2011. Auction Result US$4,754,376
Photographs (Sale N08669), Oct. 10 2010. Auction Result US$4,970,753
Photographs (Sale N08575), Oct. 9 2009. Auction Result US$3,751,754
Photographs (Sale N08475), Oct. 14 2008. Auction Result US$5,666,313
Photographs (Sale N08349), Oct. 15 2007. Auction Result US$10,950,038