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Curator's Picks: April 7 Photographs Signature® Auction
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Nigel's Picks
Nigel Russell | Director, Photographs, New York
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In
2004, Chris Levine was commissioned to create an official portrait of Queen
Elizabeth II to commemorate the Island of Jersey's 800-year allegiance to the
British Crown, a project that resulted in the formal work Equanimity (offered
here as lot 73259). While Equanimity presents a composed and
regal likeness, it was during the brief pauses between exposures that an
unexpected moment occurred: the Queen gently closed her eyes, creating an
expression of rare calm and introspection. Levine captured this fleeting
instant, which became Lightness of Being, a portrait that departs
from traditional royal imagery and instead conveys a sense of transcendence and
humanity. The photograph has since been widely celebrated for its quiet power
and meditative quality, with photographer Mario Testino notably describing it
as the most beautiful portrait ever made of the Queen.
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Every
time I see Terry Richardson's Batman and Robin (1999) it makes
me smile. It exemplifies his signature blend of provocative humor and
deliberately raw, snapshot-style photography. The photograph feels less like a
dramatic superhero moment and more like something you'd stumble upon at a very
unexpected Halloween party. Instead of brooding over Gotham, Batman and his
trusty sidekick are caught mid-kiss, turning their crime-fighting partnership
into something a bit more... affectionate. By subverting the traditionally
hyper-masculine identities associated with Batman and Robin, Richardson
challenges cultural assumptions about heroism, sexuality, and pop iconography.
The photograph walks a fine line between parody and critique, using shock value
and irony to question how media constructs identity, while also reflecting the
irreverent, boundary-pushing ethos of late-1990s contemporary photography.
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This
photograph fits squarely within Stephen Shore's broader practice, particularly
his Uncommon Places series of the 1970s, in which he turned
his attention to the everyday landscapes and interiors of America with a
large-format camera. Like many of those works, it emphasizes seemingly ordinary
subject matter-a luncheonette interior, mundane objects, a quiet street
outside-presented with precise detail, balanced composition, and rich but
naturalistic color. Shore rejected dramatic or romanticized imagery in favor of
a detached, observational approach, allowing banal scenes to carry visual and
cultural weight. The careful framing, frontal perspective, and even lighting
seen here are consistent with his interest in how space is organized and
experienced, while the inclusion of signage, commercial fixtures, and traces of
human presence reflects his ongoing exploration of American consumer culture.
This photograph exemplifies his role in legitimizing color photography and
elevating the everyday into a subject worthy of sustained artistic attention.
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Laura's Picks
Laura Paterson | Consignment Director, Photographs, New York
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Ansel Adams photographed Winter Sunrise during the
winter of 1944 while he was working on a project to
document a Japanese internment camp at nearby
Manzanar. He rose early for several days
and drove to the pasture, waiting patiently to get the
perfect shot. It happened on the fifth morning, as the dawn
rays illuminated the Sierra Nevada peaks and bathed a
horse in the foreground in sunlight, providing an ideal focal
point for the viewer.
I find a number of things exciting about this
picture. Not simply that its subject matter underscores the
beauty of the American west to me, a not-so-recent immigrant to the US,
but also the fact that it is a
mural print. Adams made enlargements of his most
popular images in three sizes (here medium,) long before
the digital age--a printing feat that demanded extraordinary technical
virtuosity. Indeed, he prized this image so highly that he hung a
large-format mural print of the image on the wall of his Carmel darkroom.
This particular print also includes the ghostly remains of
the original whitewashed initials LP (for Lone Pine)
in the background hills which Adams found to be a "hideous
and distracting scar" on the landscape and ruthlessly
spotted them out until the 1970s. As another LP and Adams
superfan, the work has obvious personal appeal beyond the
simple fact that is undoubtedly a masterpiece of American landscape
photography.
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Now, if ever, seems an
appropriate time to celebrate the work
of innovative fashion photographer Lillian Bassman, the
subject of a small, exquisitely
curated retrospective exhibition currently on display at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bassman possessed an
inimitable ability, through experimentation, to distill
her elegant subject matter, whether gowns or lingerie, to something
more elemental and abstract, her "chance gestures and elegant
lines conveying the sensations of garments, as their details dissolve into
atmospheric blur." (Metropolitan Museum of Art). This is certainly the
case in this atmospheric image of Margi Cato, New York where
the model is seated in the shadows with her back to the
camera so that we are more conscious of the model
and have only a vague sense of her sophisticated
party dress. Unlike contemporaries Irving Penn
and Bassman's protégé Richard Avedon who
concentrated primarily on the arrangement of
the formal components of their imagery, Bassman's
pictures exude something more intimate, and feminine.
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A native of Shanghai and dubbed the "Cartier-Bresson of
the east', as a young man Fan Ho moved to Hong
Kong, a territory in flux caused by rapid
industrialization, renewed British sovereignty (after Japanese
occupation during the Second World War) and its uneasy
co-existence alongside the newly formed communist People's Republic of
China on the mainland. Armed with his Rolleiflex camera, Fan Ho
explored the streets of this new home capturing scenes of everyday
life with unparalleled artistry. His images, here Along the
Tracks, Hong Kong, often have an ethereal, cinematic
quality reflective of his mastery of light manipulation to
create atmosphere. Ho's work only occasionally appears
at auction, and this is a good example of his best mature
work.
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Holly's Pick
Holly Sherratt | West Coast Director, Photographs
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Joel-Peter Witkin's Las
Meninas (1987) reworks Diego Velázquez's 1656 painting. The central
Infanta is replaced by a figure seated in a basket mounted on a wheeled wire
cage, echoing the shape of her dress while revealing it as a constructed
apparatus. The artist remains at the left but appears masked and ambiguous, and
the attendants become fragmented, partially nude, and hybrid bodies. The
doorway figure persists, yet the deep, illusionistic space collapses into a
compressed, staged environment filled with props and layered imagery. The
surrounding walls, with references to other artworks, including glimpses of
Picasso's Guernica, turn the scene into a dense montage of visual
quotation. These changes parallel a shift in interpretation: Velázquez's
painting is often understood as a meditation on power and representation within
a structured courtly setting, while Witkin's reworking exposes that system as
an artificial construction
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Toshiko's Picks
Toshiko Abe | Cataloguer, Photographs
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Elliott Erwitt was an
exceptional photographer who had a remarkable ability to see and capture
special moments in everyday life-whether it was a famous movie star, a stranger
walking down the street, a child, or even a dog. Through his lens, ordinary life
transformed into a witty and charming world.
When he was not on assignment
for the Magnum agency, he often strolled through museums around the world,
observing people as they gazed, glanced, smiled, or reacted to works of art. A
picture of two groups next to each other- a woman standing before The
Clothed Maja, while a group of men gathered in front of The Naked
Maja, a stunned looking back of a boy in front of huge Picasso's Guernica,
or a crowd of tourists before the Leaning Tower of Pisa (reminiscent of Martin
Parr)-all became subjects of his keen eye.
The lot in our sale exemplifies
this beautifully: a girl standing upright, aligned with four Egyptian
goddesses. It is a superb example of Erwitt's sense
of humor that makes us smile.
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Sebastião Salgado's series on
the Kuwait oil well fires captures a devastating crisis caused by Iraqi forces
setting the wells ablaze as they retreated from Kuwait. More than 700 oil wells
erupted in flames, sending thick smoke into the sky and turning it pitch black
with soot, severely degrading air quality across the region. It took nine
months to extinguish the fires. In this haunting image, a firefighter confronts
an immense fireball, walking through a chemical spray for protection. His
courageous advance into catastrophe reflects resilience and determination in
the face of overwhelming danger. Salgado renders the scene as a dramatic
spectacle in stark black and white-the blazing flames set against dark smoke,
with a lone figure illuminated in the foreground by a white shower. The image
serves as a powerful reminder of the destructive consequences of human
conflict, affecting the environment, the economy, and humanity itself.
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Youssef
Nabil is known for his hand-painted black-and-white photographs, which evoke a
dreamy, nostalgic atmosphere. He began his artistic career in his native Egypt
in the early 1990s, before later moving to Western countries. Drawing on the
melodramatic tableau style of movie posters from the golden age of Egyptian
cinema, his work reflects a deep engagement with film. Nabil has long been
fascinated by cinema, and his photographs are often composed to resemble
individual scenes from a larger narrative.
Self-portraits,
an important part of his practice, follow this same approach. They present
moments that hover romantically between painting and photography, and explore
dualities such as life and death, reality and dreams, and home and exile. The
self-portrait in this sale depicts the artist nude, lying face down in the
forest of Vincennes, prompting the viewer to wonder whether he appears asleep
or dead-and what story might be unfolding. This image intriguingly recalls the
world's first photographic self-portrait by Hippolyte Bayard, which was staged
as a drowning and carried its own compelling narrative.
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Mya's Picks
Mya Adams | Cataloguer, Photographs
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Anyone who owns a cat knows they have a talent for
inserting themselves exactly where they're not supposed to be. I like to
imagine Kertész setting up this still life, only for his feline companion to
wander in and take over the scene.
Instead of ruining the composition, the cat completely
steals it. There's something in its expression-almost like it knows it
shouldn't be there but doesn't care in the slightest.
As both a Kertész admirer and a cat lover, this photograph
really makes me smile. It captures a simple, familiar moment that anyone who's
lived with a cat will instantly recognize.
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Horst P. Horst has become one of my favorite photographers
for a number of reasons, especially the ethereal atmosphere he's able to create
in his work. Mainbocher Corset captures that perfectly-a
smoky, almost dreamlike image of a woman attempting to lace her corset herself,
while also suggesting the ghostly presence of someone who isn't there to help
her.
A fun detail about this photograph: the original negative
was subtly retouched along the model's waistline to make it appear slightly
smaller. It's not immediately noticeable unless pointed out, but it opens up an
interesting conversation about beauty standards-ones that, even today, often
feel just out of reach.
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Nigel Russell
Director,
Photographs, New York
NigelR@HA.com
(212) 486-3659
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Laura Paterson
Consignment Director,
Photographs, New York
LauraP@HA.com
(212) 486-3525
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Holly Sherratt
West Coast Director,
Photographs
HollyS@HA.com
(415) 548-5921
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Toshiko Abe
Cataloguer,
Photographs, New York
ToshikoA@HA.com
(212) 486-3523
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Mya Adams
Cataloguer,
Photographs, Dallas
MyaA@HA.com
(214) 409-1139
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