PARIS.- Paris remains unquestionably the capital of Photography, as reflected by some remarkable exhibitions in 2014 – led by Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Pompidou Centre and Robert Mapplethorpe at the Grand Palais and Musée Rodin. To crown this busy year,
Sotheby’s France will be staging two sales: one on November 15 devoted to Man Ray and, the day before, a sale of Photography featuring an exciting, varied ensemble ranging from 19th century vintage prints to contemporary photographs (November 14) .
The traditional array of 19th century photographs includes important works by Charles Nègre and Gustave Le Gray, along with a large folio album by Edouard-Denis Baldus: Chemin de Fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (1861-63), illustrating French industrial progress under the Second Empire (est. €40,000-60,000 / $51,500-77,000). Two complex and unexpected plates by an anonymous photographer (c.1865-70), subsequently entitled Obsessions , refer to something Sigmund Freud explains in his Interpretation of Dreams : how the dreamer can embody several characters simultaneously, each of them illustrating a separate trait. The subject here seems to dream about crimes, with images of them being carried out… even showing the feet of his murder victim through a half-open door (estimates from €7,000 / $9,000).
The 20th century avant-garde will be showcased with a fine German selection linking Dadaism – Hannah Höch’s Dada-Puppen from 1919 (est. €10,000-15,000 / $12,900 / 19,300) – to Bauhaus, and László Moholy-Nagy’s 1922 Fotogram VIII (est. €30,000-50,000 / $ 38,500-64,500). Other great names of German photography include August Sander, with some characteristically frank, no-nonsense portraits of contemporary society. His totally atypical Industrial Still Life (1951) – a commissioned work – will startle connoisseurs with its elaborate composition of metalware (est. €60,000-80,000 / $77,000 / 103,000). There will also be several abstract photographs by Otto Steinert, a key figure in the ‘Subjective Photography’ movement of the 1950s-1960s. The avant-garde section also features some exceptional Surrealist photographs by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Brassaï and Raoul Ubac, with his 1937 Photomontage IV (est. €25,000-35,000 / $32,100 – 38,500).
Connoisseurs will also have the chance to acquire some iconic 20 th century images in a section devoted to humanist photography, including prints by Henri-Cartier Bresson, Willy Ronis, Robert Doisneau and Edouard Boubat, with a rare vintage print of his superb 1951 Self-Portrait with Lella taken in the mirror (est. €4,000-6,000 / $5,200 – 7,700).
Other masters of 20th century photography to be handsomely represented are Erwin Blumenfeld, Jeanloup Sieff, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, William Klein and Irving Penn, with some powerful portraits and challenging still-lifes imbued with timeless elegance. The style of Irving Penn – with its careful poses, sculptural feel and recherché aesthetics – can be fully admired in the portrait of a Tree Pruner (1951) from his Small Trades series (est. €20,000-30,000 / $25,700 – 38,500). The sale also features various photographs by frontline fashion photographer Horst P. Horst, echoing his current retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
The sale’s rich contemporary section features works signed Hiroshi Sugimoto, Nobuyoshi Araki, Sebastião Salgado, David La Chapelle, William Eggleston, Andrés Serrano and Thomas Ruff, to mention only a few. An exceptional, unpublished Andreas Gursky Untitled (2006) constitutes the sale’s star lot. True to Gursky’s traditional iconography, it shows a series of perfume-bottles reproduced ad infinitum : a dizzying metaphor for seduction reduced to the status of consumer goods (est. €120,000-160,000 / $154,000 – 206,000).
The section’s landscapes, both urban and natural, are headed by a sublime 2011 photograph of Xiaolangdi Dam #4, Yellow River – Henan Province, China by Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer committed to advocating the rights of Nature over Man. This grandiose print shows an apocalyptic landscape, with the browbeaten earth unleashing its fury (est. €30,000-50,000 / $38,500-64,500).
