Online Auction:
25 October - 8 November 2022 4pm

Viewing Paris: 4 - 8 November, 10 am – 6 pm
Sun 6 November, 2 – 6 pm

Online catalogue: here

Specialist, Head of Sale:
Fannie Bourgeois
fbourgeois@christies.com
+33 (0)1 40 76 84 41

Head of Photographs, Europe:
Elodie Morel-Bazin
emorel-bazin@christies.com
+33 (0)1 40 76 84 16

Christie’s Paris is proud to present Photographies, an online sale taking place from 25 October to 8 November, ahead to Paris Photo Art Fair. 108 lots will be offered, bringing together some of the most recognized photographers from the 20th and 21st centuries such as Zanele Muholi, Nan Goldin, Candida Höfer and Alex Prager, as well as Man Ray, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Peter Lindbergh. The overall estimate for the sale is around €1.4m with lots ranging from €1,000 to 120,000.

Contemporary photography, the main focus of the sale, is magnified through a selection of great diversity. A section is dedicated to African photography, including The power of choice / The choice of power (estimate: €4,000-6,000) by the young and talented Ghanaian photographer Prince Gyasi.

The sale also explores contemporary themes through strong pieces that use symbolically charged aesthetics such as Spix's Macaw, Rearview, Unextinct, 2022 by Tim Flach. The photographer celebrates the return to the wild of the Spix's Macaw in a large print showing the cerulean blue feathers of the magnificent bird taking flight (estimate: €10 000-15 000).

Several pieces in this sale explore the nude, a classic theme playing with the forms of body as an abstract pictorial element. A group of seventeen prints from a chronophotographic film by Etienne-Jules Marey presents The Walking Man, Chronophotography, c. 1890-1895 (estimate: €30 000-50 000). Mario Testino, the world-renowned Peruvian fashion photographer, unveils Naomi Campbell & Sean 'P Diddy' Combs in a life-size print (estimate: €15,000-20,000).

Six pieces from the collection Pierre Borhan, curator, author and cultural manager will also be offered in the sale. From Henri Cartier-Bresson to Diane Arbus, to a diverse selection of photographs belonging to Louis Aragon, such as this portrait of him by Man Ray - Portrait de Louis Aragon, 1925 (estimate: €4,000- 6,000) this selection intertwining/harmonizing the private and the intellectual, the sensual and the abstract.

In the first part of the auction, Christie’s presents Circles, The Collection of Joanna Vestey, a group of 50 photographs that whilst broad in subject range, are all connected by the motif of the circle. The works span more than a century of pioneering image-making, and were assembled discreetly over a period of 25 years by the British photographer and collector, Joanna Vestey. The orb, the sphere, and its two-dimensional counterpart the circle have all been represented across time as potent and transcendental emblems, carrying a myriad of meanings across a variety of disciplines, not least within the arts. This is the curatorial thread that has led Vestey to bring together work by artists including John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Guy Bourdin, Will Brown, Ben Cauchi, Robert Frank, Adam Fuss, William Klein, Garry Fabian Miller, Sarah Moon, Sohei Nishino, Max Pinckers, Man Ray, Boris Savelev, Edward Stiechen, Shomei Tomatsu, and Francesca Woodman.

Joanna Vestey’s passionate engagement with photography began as a teenager, as she describes: “Photography offered me a way to navigate and explore the world; building this collection has been an enormously instructive and enjoyable extension of that journey.” For Vestey, the circles played their part in different ways, “sometimes clearly and deliberately, at other times more obliquely or incidentally’, as she sought out, with the help of curator Tristan Lund.”

Vestey continues: “For me, one of the greatest joys of photography is that the more time you spend looking at an image, the more you are rewarded, not just by what is held in the frame but by what lies beyond, within the rich layers of its historical and social context.”

Philippe Garner, Photography Consultant, Christie’s: “The ‘Circles’ collection – fifty very diverse images linked by the theme of the circle – is an inspiring tribute to the thoughtfulness, discerning eye, and visual savvy of collector Joanna Vestey.”

Highlights include two works by Edward Steichen: his enigmatic Diagram of Doom (1922, estimate: €70,000-90,000)’ and Blossom of white fingers, in which his wife Dana’s hands give form to an invisible sphere (1923, estimate: €40,000-60,000); a unique photogram by Adam Fuss that captures circular ripples in water (2007, estimate: €30,000-50,000); and Self-Portrait by Francesca Woodman (1976, estimate: €25-35,000). and engaging works by celebrated and less well-known artists.
The collection was recently exhibited as part of the Photo Oxford Festival in 2020.