January 10, 2020Lauren KristinPhotographs & Photobooks Classic & Contemporary Photographs: Winter-Spring 2020 Read more about Classic & Contemporary Photographs: Winter-Spring 2020 Photographs by outstanding American artists headline this auction: Berenice Abbott, Dawoud Bey, Margaret Bourke-White, Harry Callahan, Edward Steichen and Minor White. Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Edward S. Curtis & Irving Penn Shine in Fall 2019 Classic & Contemporary Photographs October 22, 2019 Photographs & Photobooks Edward S. Curtis & Irving Penn Shine in Fall 2019 Classic & Contemporary Photographs Swann’s Thursday, October 17 sale of Classic & Contemporary Photographs featured a broad range of photographic material including works by Edward S. Curtis, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and W. Eugene Smith. Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about 2019 Spring Season in Review July 1, 2019 Swann 2019 Spring Season in Review A season of firsts. The 2019 spring auction season at Swann Galleries delivered an impressive range of sales, rife with auction premiers and record prices. We started our season off… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks April 23, 2019 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks Martín Chambi & Images of South America Lead Classic & Contemporary Photographs at Swann Our sale of Classic & Contemporary Photographs on Thursday, April 18 saw active bidding across all categories with early-twentieth-century photography, Humanist portraits and sublime images of nature… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Upcoming Highlights: Classic & Contemporary Photographs March 5, 2019 Photographs & Photobooks Upcoming Highlights: Classic & Contemporary Photographs At Auction April 18 Complete Catalogue Our diverse April auction bridges classical and contemporary visual idioms with important work, including Robert Mapplethorpe’s Lisa Lyon, Dorothea Lange’s emotive Korean Child,… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks February 27, 2019 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks A Record for Malick Sidibé in Swann Photo SaleVernacular albums of nineteenth-century India bring $30k Our sale of Photographs: Art & Visual Culture on February 21, a curated sale celebrating photographs as physical objects, saw success across the board with contemporary, twentieth-century and… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about In Your Hands or On the Wall: an Appreciation for the Tangible Photograph February 12, 2019 Photographs & Photobooks In Your Hands or On the Wall: an Appreciation for the Tangible Photograph Our upcoming sale of Photographs: Art & Visual Culture celebrates photographs as objects. Daile Kaplan, the house’s Director of Photographs & Photobooks, shares her appreciation of the tangible in the… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about 2018: Year in Review December 21, 2018 Swann 2018: Year in Review A year of records, debuts and rediscovered works. As we reflect on 2018, we look back at an excellent year of auctions. In April we held our highest-grossing African-American Fine Art… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks October 22, 2018 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Photographs & Photobooks Brâncusi Breaks $100k at Photographs Auction Records for DeCarava & Sidibé Swann Auction Galleries’ Thursday, October 18 sale of Photographs & Photobooks, which boasted historical and contemporary fine art… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Records & Results: Art & Storytelling: Photographs & Photobooks October 21, 2017 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Art & Storytelling: Photographs & Photobooks On October 19 our sale of Art & Storytelling: Photographs & Photobooks combined works spanning the lifetime of the medium into an auction intended to “highlight the interrelationships between fine art, documentary and… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Identifying Types of Photographic Prints August 11, 2017 Photographs & Photobooks Identifying Types of Photographic Prints Our Photographs & Photobooks department has put together a cheat sheet for identifying some of the more common types of photographs we handle. A cyanotype print is made by… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Ed Ruscha: “I Want To Be The Henry Ford of Bookmaking” October 18, 2016 Photographs & Photobooks Ed Ruscha: “I Want To Be The Henry Ford of Bookmaking” We asked Oliver Lott from the Photographs department to talk about twentieth century photography’s man of mystery, Ed Ruscha: Edward Ruscha is a pioneer of the American photobook. Between… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Robert Frank and The Americans October 4, 2016 Photographs & Photobooks Robert Frank and The Americans Robert Frank is one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. Some of his masterpieces will be offered in our October 25 sale, Art & Storytelling: Photographs &… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Notes from the Catalogue: Vernacular Photographs of New York April 13, 2016 Photographs & Photobooks Notes from the Catalogue: Vernacular Photographs of New York Our upcoming auction Images & Objects: Photographs & Photobooks features a compelling section of vernacular photographs; among them are some fascinating images of New York from bygone eras. … Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about Records & Results: Icons & Images: Fine & Vernacular Photographs October 26, 2015 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Icons & Images: Fine & Vernacular Photographs The results of our autumn auction, Icons & Images: Fine & Vernacular Photographs, emphasize the magnetism and enduring popularity of iconic imagery with collectors and dealers alike. Over time, icons (such as… Share Facebook Twitter
May 1, 2015 Photographs & Photobooks Vernacular Spectacular: A Note About Our Photographs Catalog Daile Kaplan, Swann Vice President and Director of Photographs & Photobooks, contributed the following post in response to recent questions about Vernacular Photography: Within the past few days, since… Share Facebook Twitter
February 18, 2015 Photographs & Photobooks Edward J. Kelty: Circus Photographer The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is currently on tour with its latest spectacle, Circus XTREME, and a collection of photographs coming up for auction at Swann Galleries… Share Facebook Twitter
December 18, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Vernacular Imagery, Photobooks & Fine Photographs Swann’s second sale devoted to Vernacular Photography showed the strength of this growing segment of the photo market, with strong results for esoteric material. The top vernacular lot was… Share Facebook Twitter
December 3, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks The Hall-Harte Archive of Suffragist Photographs We are delighted to offer a suffragist archive of rare and important photographs documenting “The Liberty Bell Tour, Votes for Women.” The march was organized by Louise Hall and her life-partner Ethel… Share Facebook Twitter
July 2, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Rencontres d’Arles Director Interviews Daile Kaplan As Swann Director of Photographs & Photobooks Daile Kaplan jets off to France for Les Rencontres d’Arles 2014, those of us left stateside stifle our jealousy and devour all of the… Share Facebook Twitter
April 21, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Records & Results: Vernacular Photographs Last week Swann Galleries held an auction devoted to Vernacular Photography, which was the first sale of its kind. Two items led the auction–bringing $22,500 each–and they could not… Share Facebook Twitter
April 17, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Photographs at Play: Bill Hunt on the Morgan’s Photography Exhibition Celebrated photography collector and author–and Swann friend–Bill Hunt has written a wonderful review of the Morgan Library’s A Collective Invention: Photographs at Play show–the first mounted by their newly appointed Curator… Share Facebook Twitter
April 15, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Avery Willard Model Visits Swann New discoveries are often made during our auction previews. Sometimes a guest will identify a place depicted in a work of art, or recognize a name in an inscription. One… Share Facebook Twitter
April 3, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Let the Spirit Move You: Spiritualist Photographs Back in December 2013, Swann auctioned an album of 27 spiritualist photographs from seances at Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton’s Psychic Room in Winnipeg, Canada in the early 1920s for $93,750–in fact,… Share Facebook Twitter
March 28, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Gay New York Among the highlights of our April 17 auction of Vernacular Photography is a small archive of photographs and ephemera relating to transvestism and gay rights in New York City from… Share Facebook Twitter
March 27, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Aviation and the Age of Invention There are many marvelous aspects of vernacular imagery but one, in particular, is essential: its chameleon-like identity. Lot 56 is a group of 19 photographs, most from an album formerly in… Share Facebook Twitter
March 25, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks Cyanotypes: Into the Blue Lot 44: an album of 200 cyanotype snapshots mostly from Eastern Massachusetts, 1899 The cyanotype or blueprint process has a poetic quality that embodies a painterly aesthetic and is defined… Share Facebook Twitter
Read more about What is vernacular photography? March 24, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks What is vernacular photography? What is vernacular photography? According to our director of Photographs & Photobooks Daile Kaplan, it is photography taken for the sake of the photograph. Share Facebook Twitter
February 26, 2014 Photographs & Photobooks They’re All Ears: Folsom Prison Mugshots Before the system of identifying individuals by fingerprint was developed, the authorities relied on the distinct, intricate hollows and folds of a person’s ear in order to positively link… Share Facebook Twitter