NEW YORK, NY.- An important and haunting image, Spring Showers-The Street Cleaner, New York, 1900-01 by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is among the highlights of Bonhams next Photographs sale in New York on Tuesday, October 27 at 1 p.m. EDT (simulcast with Bonhams Los Angeles).

Spring Showers is a photogravure – an intaglio printmaking process at which Steiglitz was expert – and was likely intended to form part of the portfolio called Fifty Prints of New York, which was never completed. However, Spring Showers was included in a portfolio of photogravures called The Work of Alfred Stieglitz in 1904. The image is estimated at U.S. $20,000-30,000.

Bonhams Director of Prints and Photographs Judith Eurich said, "Stieglitz believed so strongly in the validity of photogravure printing as an art form that he used the hand-pulled photogravure process for most of the illustrations in his groundbreaking periodicals, Camera Notes (1897-1903) and Camera Work (1903-1917). He personally approved all the photogravures in these journals and was so confident of their quality that he occasionally sent them to be displayed at international exhibitions of artistic photographs."

Other important works in the auction include:

• The rare Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, 1933 by Edward Weston (1886-1958). Although this print is numbered 2 of a projected edition of 50, only five prints were made. It is inscribed “To my beloved Sister/devotedly Brother/Xmas 1935” in pencil on the back and estimated at U. S. $20,000-30,000;

• Cigarette No. 48, 1972 by Irving Penn (1917-2009) one of only 20 prints of this seminal work and estimated at U.S. $30,000-50,000;

• The majestic Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1960 by Ansel Adams (1902-1984), also estimated at US$20,000-30,000.

Photographs will be on preview October 24 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.; October 25 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.; October 26 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and October 27 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.