Title: THE STEPHEN L. WHITE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION & FINE PHOTOGRAPHS
Date: March 23, 2010
Time: 1:30 PM
Exhibition: Thurs., March 18, 10-6
Fri., March 19, 10-6
Sat., March 20, 10-4
Mon., March 22, 10-6
Tues., March 23, 10-noon
Contact Person: Daile Kalpan
dkaplan@swanngalleries.com

Auction records for 19th and 20th century photographs were achieved on March 23 at Swann Galleries’ two-part auction of The Stephen L. White Photograph Collection; and Fine Photographs.

The White Collection, which was exhibited at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 2001, consisted of just over 100 remarkable works depicting aspects of the American Dream. Record-setters from the collection included a half-plate daguerreotype of American statesman Henry Clay attributed to Montgomery P. Simons, circa 1848, which sold for $24,000; a signed and inscribed copy of Eadweard Muybridge’s seminal stop-motion work, Animal Locomotion, Author’s Edition, with 21 plates, 1872-1885, printed 1887, $57,600; James Wallace Black’s portrait of Kit Carson, the last known image of the frontiersman before his death, albumen print, 1868, $48,000; and one of Lewis W. Hine’s poignant images of a child laborer, Spinner, Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia, silver contact print, 1909, $26,400.

Andrew J. Russell’s Golden Spike Ceremony with Flag and Camera, Promontory Point, Utah, documenting the completion of the transcontinental railroad, albumen print, 1869, sold for $43,200.