JFK ASSASSINATION COLLECTION, INSPIRED VIEWS OF NEW YORK CITY, HAUNTING WAR PHOTOGRAPHS FEATURED IN SWANN GALLERIES’ AUCTION OF FINE PHOTOGRAPHS & SELECT PHOTOBOOKS ON OCTOBER 19

On Tuesday, October 19, Swann Galleries will conduct an auction of Fine Photographs & Select Photobooks that offers several extraordinary items, from groundbreaking 19th-century works to celebrity portraits and heart-rending war photographs.

The sale features a host of icons of photojournalism, including Eddie Adams's Pulitzer Prize winning General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van Lém, Saigon, 1969, with an inscription from the photographer to William J. “Sandy” Colton, an Associated Press photographer and editor ($9,000 to $12,000). Proceeds from the sale of this lot, as well as two others from the Colton estate, will go to the Eddie Adams Workshop, a tuition-free photography program in the Catskill Mountains.

Another shocking documentary image is Robert A. Cumins’s World Trade Center, September 11th 2001, chromogenic print, which captured the approach of the second plane to the South Tower. This photograph appeared on the cover of People Magazine and won Picture of the Year from the National Press Photographers Association ($1,500 to $2,500).
As a 14-year-old boy, Cumins collected and compiled 12 hand-made albums with more than 340 wire-photo images depicting the JFK assassination, motorcade, funeral, Oswald's capture and murder, and associated historical events. This one-of-a-kind visual and historical artifact is also featured in the sale ($25,000 to $35,000).

A run of rare early works devoted to capturing the “vanishing race” of Native Americans includes volume I of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, signed and dated, Cambridge, Mass., 1907 ($10,000 to $15,000); a suite of 29 portraits by Alexander Gardner, Chas. Bell and others from the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, late 1860s – early 1870s ($25,000 to $35,000); and a fascinating album by Adam Clark Vroman, A Trip to Snake Dance, Moqui-Indian-towns, and Petrified Forests of Arizona, with 76 platinum prints depicting southwestern Native American culture, 1895, which was once in the library of Senator Barry Goldwater ($30,000 to $45,000).

Another view of a fleeting culture is Roman Vishniac’s portfolio A Vanished World, with 12 photographs illustrating the life of Polish Jews in the late 1930s, from an edition of only 50 and five artist’s proofs, printed 1977 ($25,000 to $35,000). The work was the subject of a recent New York Times piece that reexamined Vishniac’s claims regarding the taking of the photographs in the days leading up to the Holocaust.

Desirable portraits of noted figures include Robert Doisneau’s Portraits, portfolio with images of 15 notables, such as Pablo Picasso, 1943-71, printed 1984 ($12,000 to $18,000); Richard Avedon’s Lena Horne & Lenny Hayton, silver print, 1956 ($5,000 to $7,500); Ken Heyman’s Pop Art portfolio, with images of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, among others, 1964, printed 2003 ($5,000 to $7,500); and Annie Leibovitz’s iconic John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York, cibachrome print, 1980, taken just hours before Lennon’s murder ($10,000 to $15,000).

A section devoted to “The City as Muse: Views of New York” offers several works by Berenice Abbott, including New York at Night, silver print, 1932, printed 1980s ($8,000 to $12,000); André Kertész’s Washington Square (Winter), silver print, 1954, printed no later than 1967 ($6,000 to $9,000); and Roy DeCarava’s Dancers, New York, silver print, 1956, printed 1982 ($7,000 to $10,000).

Extraordinary photobooks include a complete series of 291, edited by Alfred Stieglitz, numbers 1-12, with artwork by John Marin, Picasso, Edward Steichen and others, New York, 1915-16 ($20,000 to $30,000); Emmet Gowin’s Concerning America and Alfred Steiglitz, and Myself, a self-published work, one of 100 with 14 silver print photographs, signed and inscribed and with additional ink drawing on the cover, 1963-64, printed 1965 ($25,000 to $35,000); and Sally Mann, platinum edition from 21st Editions, signed, numbered and issued with a print, South Dennis, Mass., 2005 ($12,000 to $18,000).

Rounding out the sale are cased images, such as a quarter-plate daguerreotype of gold miners at work in California, early 1850s ($14,000 to $18,000); albums containing 19th century images of Japan; albumen prints of the western United States by the likes of William Henry Jackson and Carleton E. Watkins; a group of six of Wilson A. Bentley’s groundbreaking turn-of-the-century photographs of snow crystals and ice shards ($8,000 to $12,000); classic landscapes by Ansel Adams; poignant views of immigrants and factory workers by Lewis W. Hine; and nudes by artists including Ruth Bernhard, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Horst P. Horst and Edward Weston.

The auction will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 19.
The photographs and books will be on public exhibition at Swann Galleries Saturday, Thursday, October 14 and Friday, October 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, October 16, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Monday, October 18, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Tuesday, October 19, from 10 a.m. to noon.

An illustrated catalogue with information on bidding by mail or fax, is available for $35 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.

For further information, and to make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please contact Daile Kaplan at (212) 254-4710, extension 21, or via e-mail at dkaplan@swanngalleries.com.
Live online bidding is also available via Artfact.com.