NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips’ 11 October Photographs auction will present an exceptional selection of work across the history of the medium, including the special single-owner sequence HIGH VOLTAGE: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection of Fred and Laura Bidwell. Offering over 300 lots, the sale features some of the most desirable classic photographers, such as William Eggleston, Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, and many others, as well as numerous contemporary practitioners, among them Hiroshi Sugimoto, Laurie Simmons, Zanele Muholi, Gillian Wearing, and Anne Collier. Also on view will be Inside the Photograph: Further Selections from the Peter C. Bunnell Collection, Phillips’ final online sale from the collection of this esteemed curator and photographic historian which opens for bidding on 10 October.
Vanessa Hallett, Deputy Chairwoman, Americas and Worldwide Head of Photographs said, “The wide range of works in this sale allow us the opportunity to see that the creative continuum of photography remains unbroken, and that truly expressive and creative work is present throughout the medium’s timeline. Collectors will have ample opportunity to compete for stellar works, whether their collecting focus is contemporary, Modern, or 19th century. We look forward once again to welcoming photography lovers to our pre-sale exhibition and our live auction.”
Leading the auction is William Eggleston’s iconic Memphis, 1969, his classic study of a tricycle that was the cover illustration for his seminal 1976 monograph William Eggleston’s Guide. Presented here as a rare dye-transfer print, Memphis monumentalizes its subject, and is exemplary of Eggleston’s unique ability to utilize color to portray the American cultural landscape.
Ansel Adams’s classic study of the Western American landscape, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, presents an especially nuanced example of this famous image. Printed in the early 1960s, this is one of the comparatively few examples of Moonrise made before the 1970s and shows Adams working at the peak of his abilities as a printer.
Edward Steichen’s likely unique mural-sized multiple-exposure Radio City and Rockefeller Center, 1933, captures the soaring architecture of New York City in a dynamic abstract composition. This monumental photograph is a rare survivor from the brief period in the 1930s when Steichen experimented with printing his images in increasingly larger sizes for a number of exhibition projects. Measuring roughly 50 by 40 inches, Steichen’s mural is charged with the unique energy of the city.
Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon, two of the great portrait photographers of the 20th century, are well represented in the auction. A lifetime print of Arbus’s Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967, is one of the photographer’s best known images and was featured on the cover of Artforum magazine in 1971. Taken at a demonstration on the streets of New York City, Arbus’s incisive portrait shows a young man whose visible support of the Vietnam War was in contrast to the overall ethos of his generation. Avedon’s portrait of Bob Dylan, Singer, New York, New York, 2.10.65, 1965, shows the musician as a cosmopolitan sophisticate posing along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The sale also includes Avedon’s elegant fashion studies, Suzy Parker, Evening dress by Dior, Paris studio, August, 1956, and Carmen, Homage to Munkácsi, Coat by Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris, August, 1957, as well as several other portraits.
Irving Penn’s masterful color work includes his excellent cosmetic still life Four Lipsticks (New York), 1987, as well as Contact Lens, New York, 1981, and Red Lips, New York, 2005, all of which show Penn’s elegant and sometimes mischievous approach to photographing fashion and beauty.
The sale also boasts a strong selection of work from the 1930s and 1940s including Dorothea Lange’s classic The Road West, New Mexico, 1938, depicting the measureless expanse of highway traversed by American migrants as they made the arduous journey from the dustbowl to California. Lange’s Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940, is a penetrating portrait of one such worker, and Mission District Firetrap, San Francisco, 1936, illustrates her ability to create tightly composed images that transcend their documentary purpose. Also featured are several early works by Walker Evans, Alma Lavenson, and Berenice Abbott.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Opticks 161, 2018, grew out of the photographer’s deep interest in the science of light. To make this image, Sugimoto transformed his studio into a camera obscura; as the sun rose and set outside, pure light, in all its infinite colors, was cast from a prism onto a customized mirror and then captured by Sugimoto’s lens, creating the stunningly saturated image offered here. This body of work debuted in 2020, and this is the first print from the project to be offered at auction.
The October auction features a range of work by Robert Mapplethorpe including Hyacinth, 1987, a large-format photogravure on silk that makes elegant use of its materials, as does his Tulips, a platinum print also from 1987. Peter Beard’s Ele Portfolio, published in 2008, contains 15 of the photographer’s most seminal photographs of African elephants, a subject central to his body of work. Laurie Simmons’s Walking Purse, 1989, is one of the definitive images of her career and embodies the conceptual photographer’s multi-layered commentary on consumerism in popular culture.
Significant contemporary offerings include An-My Lê’s Manning the Rail, USS Tortuga, Java Sea, 2010, from the photographer’s extended pictorial investigation into the effects of American’s foreign policy, as well as work by Gillian Wearing, Sohei Nishino, Ryan McGinley, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Erwin Olaf.
HIGH VOLTAGE: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection of Fred and Laura Bidwell
HIGH VOLTAGE: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection of Fred and Laura Bidwell is featured in a dedicated section within our 11 October Photographs auction. The offering includes 40 works showcasing the diversity of contemporary photography with artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Dawoud Bey, Zanele Muholi, Hank Willis Thomas, Andrew Moore, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and many others. Collectors and philanthropists, Fred and Laura Bidwell founded the Transformer Station in the Hingetown neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, that has become a premier exhibition space for contemporary photography and art. HIGH VOLTAGE offers a glimpse into the Bidwells’ collection and exhibition program at the Transformer Station. The Bidwells gifted the Transformer Station to the Cleveland Museum of Art earlier this year. Proceeds from the works in Phillips’ auction will support the Bidwells’ active philanthropic endeavors.
