The photographic collection of veteran Picture Editor John G. Morris

 Toni Frissell
Jackie and the Kennedys, Wedding day in Newport
John G Morris: "Toni Frissell, whose work appeared mostly in Vogue, was the family photographer at the wedding of Jack Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier – "Jackie." She gave me prints for the Magnum story, which I sold to the Ladies’ Home Journal for $100,000. This is perhaps the most rare, as it shows the three Kennedy daughters, Patricia, Eunice and Jean, with the three then surviving sons, Bobby, Ted and Jack. The eldest son, Joseph P Jr, had died as a pilot in World War II"


The Photo Diary of John G. Morris auction takes place on Saturday 30 April 2011 at 3:15pm.



The 230 photographic prints for the sale will be exhibited for three days in Paris at Drouot Montaigne, 15 avenue Montaigne on Thursday and Friday 28-29 April from 11:00 to 18:00 and Saturday 30 April from 10:00 to 13:00. The exhibition is open to the public and a fully illustrated paper catalogue will be available for 30 euros.

In our visual age, photo editors have silently written history behind the scenes. John G. Morris has participated in the greatest photographic chapters of the 20th century. Perhaps best known as Robert Capa’s picture editor for Life magazine on D-Day, Morris’s impact on the visual lexicon spans nearly seventy-five years. While at the Ladies’ Home Journal, he conceived of the series, People are People the World Over, changing the way America viewed the world and inspiring Edward Steichen’s influential Family of Man 1955 exhibition. As the first Executive Editor of Magnum Photos, Morris played a key role in establishing many standards of practice in photojournalism, from story boarding to distribution. At The Washington Post, he balanced images inside the White House with coverage of the conflict in Vietnam. As picture editor for The New York Times he chose the first images of the moon landing published in color.

Morris moved to Paris in 1983 where he worked for nearly a decade as correspondent and editor for National Geographic. In May 2010, John G. Morris was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The ICP, International Center of Photography.

Highlights of the sale include vintage works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour, Elliott
Erwitt, Robert Frank, Toni Frissell, Frank Horvat, Dorothea Lange and award-winning press photographs.

The photographs in this memorable auction are both personal gifts from the artists to John and creative working prints completing the visual diary of John G. Morris. The verso of each print in this collection is inscribed by hand to share the stories behind the images and celebrate John’s enduring friendships with the photographers themselves.

Auction details here.

Download the catalogue here.

Speaking from his home in Paris, where he has lived since the early 1980s, Morris said: "My hope is that this auction will change the outlook on photojournalism in the money markets. I know that's a strange thing to say, but photography auctions in the past have consisted primarily of aesthetically beautiful prints which did not necessarily have much to do with telling the truth about life through the daily newspapers and in magazines. As far as I know, this is the first photojournalism collection to come on to the art market," said Morris. "So in setting minimum prices for the pictures, and estimates, it's been a sort of ballpark thing. We don't know what will sell and what won't." Read more from the Guardian newspaper.


The Guardian newspaper also has an excellent slide show of selected images with commentary from Morris.

"Veteran Life magazine picture editor John G Morris talks us through some of the photographs from his extraordinary personal collection that are to be auctioned in April 2011".

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Military appraisal at Moscow trolley stop, 1954 (Life cover)
John G Morris: "This is the photo I recommended to managing editor Ed Thompson of Life when he asked me, 'What do you see for a cover?' In December I came back from Paris with hundreds of prints of the USSR, I remember the customs officer asking me how much they were worth (in 1954) I replied: 'That’s what I am here to find out'."

APRIL 15: 64TH ANNIVERSAY OF DAY JACKIE ROBINSON BROKE BASEBALL'S COLOR BARRIER

Ralph Morse: Jackie Robinson rounding Third base during the third game of the World series against the Yankees, 1955

Today is Jackie Robinson Day throughout the Majors, marking the 64th anniversary of the day baseball's color barrier was broken. It also commemorates the 64th anniversary of his historic debut in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Almost 14,000 of the 26,623 in attendance at Robinson's first game, which took place at Ebbets Field, were black patrons

The barrier-breaking legend retired from baseball in 1956, and passed away October 24, 1972 at the age of 53.


Major League Baseball: Jackie Robinson Day

The Official Jackie Robinson Site

Related: 55 Years Ago, Jackie Robinson Steals Home Base

Flash of New Talent: Photography Auctions Embrace Some New Stars

 


The New York Observer
By Julia Halperin

Auctions are nothing if not ruthless. Last week, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips held multimillion-dollar spring photography sales of a combined 644 images. The results offered clues, as the art market continues to thaw from the 2008 recession, as to which contemporary photographer's stocks have risen, whose have fallen and whose are holding steady post-crash. In a surprising market move, prices for works by a handful of auction virgins took off; demand for photographs by the rising stars of perhaps 5 or 10 years ago, meanwhile, like Iranian artist Shirin

 

Neshat and Spencer Tunick, famous for staging photos of crowds of nudes, headed in the other direction.

"It's not that the younger clients are purchasing the new photographers—we have stable collectors going after fresh new talent," said Vanessa Kramer, worldwide director of photographs at Phillips. "The price point is more accessible—you can buy a really important photograph for $3,000."

In a shift in taste, the photographers who sold well often seemed to feature either striking, ethereal imagery or wildlife themes. Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf specializes in sleek, lonely interior scenes (think Edward Hopper meets Apple). He sold three of five works for sale—impressive for a basically unknown name. His Grief, Troy, an image of a man leaning against a window in despair, brought in $11,500, well above the high estimate of $7,000. And the price of a single work offered by artist Dash Snow, who died tragically in 2009 of a heroin overdose, also soared.

All told, the three auctioneers sold about four out of every five works offered and raised more than $16 million. (The biggest prices were made by classic photographers; Christie's got $80,500 for a 1950 Irving Penn, for example.) The totals were at least half a million dollars higher than last year at every house, though Philips de Pury, which specializes in more contemporary photography, showed the most improvement.

Wildlife and fashion photographer Peter Beard was a breakout star. Born in 1938, he's far from a newbie, but "he's getting stronger and stronger. This is just the beginning for him," said Phillips' chairman, Simon de Pury. Mr. Beard's works brought in a total of almost $950,000 to the three houses last week.

But British photographer Adam Fuss, who had work added to the collections of the Israel Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art a few years ago, didn't make a splash. One Fuss piece, Woman Weeping From My Ghost, returned to Phillips for the second time since 2009—but now with an estimate $2,000 lower. (It went for $11,250, just above the low estimate.) The New York-based artist and former waiter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art specializes in carefully constructed photograms. Several of his works sold at the low end of their estimates, and two were passed over entirely "We don't have to offer work again—we'll only do it if we think it's important," said Ms. Kramer. German photographer Loretta Lux also didn't sell strongly. The artist, who specializes in dreamlike, creepy images of children, was regularly selling at auction in excess of $30,000 five years ago.

Photographs by Ms. Neshat, known for her provocative images of Muslim women and a superstar within the art world, performed unevenly. Perhaps it was too much of a good thing. Sotheby's sold one Neshat a few thousand dollars over estimate—Rebellious Silence (1994) sold for $18,750—but Phillips, who had several, had mixed results. "One thing that you need to be careful [of] with recent work is having too much of it on the market," said Christopher Mahoney of Sotheby's. "It undermines people's assurance of the specialness of the material."

British filmmaker-turned-wildlife photographer Nick Brandt, relatively new to auctions, saw both of his works up for sale bring well over their high estimates. Mr. Brandt filmed Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" music video in Kenya, and now works in East Africa. His Elephant with Exploding Dust, a majestic black-and-while image, sold for $59,375, well above the presale estimate of $35,000.



editorial@observer.com

PHOTOLUCINDA APRIL 14 -17, 2011

what is photolucida?


Lucida: bright, luminous, suffused with light, the brightest star in a constellation.

Photolucida is an arts non-profit whose mission is to increase the understanding of the world through photography. Our name captures our purpose: To bring light into an art form born of light.

Photolucida does two primary things to support and promote the work of emerging and mid-career photographers:

Portfolio Reviews Festival: Every other April, an international set of photographers and reviewers gather in Portland, Oregon for a five-day celebration of photography that includes lectures, workshops, and exhibition collaborations. Intensive portfolio reviews are at the heart of the Festival. Reviewers are selected for their experience, involvement, and commitment to advancing the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Over the years, many participants have made contacts that have led directly to exhibitions, publications, and sales, in addition to receiving useful critiques.

By providing a venue for in-depth, informed, and supportive dialogue between photographers, gallery owners, curators, publishers, editors, and consultants, Photolucida promotes the culture of photography locally, nationally, and internationally. The next Portfolio Reviews Festival will take place in April, 2011.

Critical Mass is an annual online program geared towards creating connections within the photography community. Photographers at any level, from anywhere in the world, submit portfolios for review. Through a pre-screening process, the field is narrowed to a select group of 175 Finalists who go on to have their work reviewed and voted on by over 200 esteemed international photography professionals. Each year, two or three Finalists are awarded published monographs of their work. Photolucida publishes and distributes the titles, giving copies of the books to all participating photographers and Jurors.

Photolucida is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We award merit-based scholarships to our Reviews to Oregon photographers, and to international photographers in Critical Mass. Dedicated to increasing understanding through photography, Photolucida also donates Critical Mass books to over 30 Oregon art schools, colleges, and libraries.

Photolucida is a member of FESTIVAL OF LIGHT, an international collaboration of more than 20 photography festivals around the world.

Who we are.

Schedule of events.

Spring Auctions Looking Bright

Via Photograph Magazine
Posted April 12, 2011 by Jean Dykstra


The weather still felt a bit wintry, but the spring photography auctions suggested that a new season might be upon us. The sales had lower buy-in rates than we’ve been seeing (under 20 percent for most) and totals surpassing the firms' estimates. Sotheby’s kicked off the season on April 6 with a successful general-owners sale totaling $5,632,187, and a buy-in rate of 18.8 percent. Jaromir Funke’s abstract Composition, 1929, set a record for the artist at auction, selling for $350,500, far above the $70,000 high estimate. Mathew Brady’s portrait of politician John C. Calhoun, from 1849, sold for $338,500, also above the high estimate of $50,000. Two Man Ray images sold in the top ten: Untitled (Photomontage with Nude and Studio Lamp), 1933, was the top lot, bringing a whopping $410,500, and Solarized Male Torso, 1936, sold for $122,500.

On a side note, Sotheby's announced in February that it has made Paris its European center for photographs and decorative arts. Sotheby's won't hold photo sales in London, but the firm will hold bi-annual sales in Paris in May and in November, to coincide with Paris Photo and capitalize on the active market for photography in Paris. The department is headed by Simone Klein, who joined the firm in 2007.

Christie’s had three photography sales in April: Part I of the Consolidated Freightways collection, which focuses on American photography, was sold on April 7; 130 lots were offered, and the buy-in rate was 15 percent. The top lot was Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flag, 1987, which brought $158,500. That same day, a private collection went on the block, in a sale dubbed "The Feminine Ideal;" it brought a total of $942,125, with 18 percent of the 79 lots sold. Given that the sale focused on female beauty, it was no surprise that the top three lots were by Irving Penn, or that two of them should feature Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. Balenciaga Mantle Coat, Paris, 1950, sold for $80,500, and Woman with Umbrella (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1950, brought $60,000. Penn’s photographs, reliable favorites in the marketplace, were also top sellers in the general-owners photographs sale on April 8, with Bee on Lips, New York, September 22, 1995, selling for $182,500. Twentieth-century masters such as Avedon, Eggleston, Penn, and Frank were well represented in the top lots, with Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, New York, May 6, 1957, bringing $482,500, and Eggleston’s iconic Memphis (Tricycle), c. 1969-1970, selling for $266,500

Robert Mapplethorpe, Flag. Courtesy Christie's New York

On April 9, Phillips de Pury and Company held its first photography sale in its new digs at 450 Park Avenue. The sale offered 260 lots, and totaled $5,802,250, with a slim 9.6 percent buy-in rate. Phillips’s chief auctioneer, Simon de Pury, held a Photographs Aficionado Class before the auction, and he conducted the sale as well. The top ten list included such contemporary works as Cindy Sherman’s Oriental-themed Untitled #278, which sold for $242,500. Dutch photographer Desiree Dolron’s Xteriors VI, referencing the history of Flemish portraiture, brought $194,500, well above its high estimate of $60,000. Peter Beard’s Tsavo North on the Athi Tiva, circa 150 lbs, - 160 lbs, side Bull Elephant, February, sold for $120,100. And Florian Maier-Aichen’s contemporary take on the Sublime, Untitled, 2005, brought $104,500.

Desiree Dolron, Xteriors VI. Courtesy Phillips de Pury and Company

Two weeks earlier, photobooks, photographic albums, and historical and 20th-century photographs sold well Swann Galleries on March 24. The total was $1,037,574, with a 20 percent buy-in rate. Adam Clark Vroman’s album Arizona and New Mexico, Volume II, with more than 165 platinum prints of Native Americans, from 1897, sold for $62,400, a record for the photographer at auction and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Children at Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963, printed 1991, brought $48,000, the top price for an individual photograph at the sale.

Steve Schapiro: Memories


Via La Lettre de la Photographie

Steve Schapiro, the photographer of The Godfather and Taxi Driver, is in Paris for his exhibition at the A. Galerie. Christophe Lunn and Paul Barrois met with him for La Lettre in order to evoke some of his memories on the set of these epic movies.

"The Whisper"

Click here for interview.

http://www.a-galerie.fr/

Related: Steve Schapiro exhibition review in Summer 2010 issue of ARTnews.

WITH HEDDA STERNE'S RECENT PASSING, NINA LEEN'S "THE IRACSIBLES" PHOTOGRAPH IS BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT


Nina Leen: Life magazine’s portrait of the Abstract Expressionist artists known as ‘The Irascibles,’ 1951. Front row: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne




Hedda Sterne, an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100.

Read the full New York Times Obituary here.


Sterne's passing has resulted in Nina Leen's photograph being published in numerous articles and obituaries about Sterne. In December, 2010 The New York Review of Books had this long essay by Sarah Boxer explaining her life, art and why she did not have the same career as the others in this famous photograph.


Opening May 6, Monroe Gallery of Photography presents "Composing The Artist". This exhibition of classic photographs portrays iconic Artists and Writer, and will include Nina Leen's historic photograph.

APRIL 12, 1945: FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT DIED

Ida Wyman: Men of the Garment District Read of President Roosevelt's Death, NYC, 1945

On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive  cerebral hemmorrhage. At 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died.

Ed Clark: Navy CPO Graham Jackson Playing "Going Home" as President Roosevelt's Body is Carried, Warm Springs, GA, April 13, 1945

On the morning of April 13, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported back to Hyde Park by train, guarded by four servicemen from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of the Sprinwood Estate, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park on April 15.

Roosevelt's death was met with shock and grief across the U.S. and around the world. His declining health had not been known to the general public. Roosevelt had been president for more than 12 years, longer than any other person, and had led the country through some of its greatest crises to the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and to within sight of the defeat of Japan as well.


Less than a month after his death, on May 8, came the moment Roosevelt fought for: V-E Day.

An editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House."

thewhitehouse.gov: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Preview: Richard C. Miller, Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Via BWGallerist : Black and White Fine Art Photography
April 11, 2011


Preview: Richard C. Miller, Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Richard C. Miller: ”James Dean at Juke Box during the filming of ‘Giant’”

One of the best galleries to find a combination of Black and White masterworks and photographs with a human focus is The Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Currently they are featuring the work of Richard C. Miller :

From 1955 to 1962, Miller was on retainer at Globe Photos, covering the entertainment industry and more than seventy films. After this stint he returned to freelance and became friends with celebrities such as James Dean. Never one for self-promotion, Miller rarely exhibited his work; the work, he figured, should speak for itself. In the spring of 2009, Richard C. Miller’s photographic career was given long overdue recognition with an exhibition at the Getty Museum.

Feb 11 through April 24, 2011

For more information: Monroe Gallery of Photography

APRIL IN HISTORY: THE LIBERATION OF BUCHENWALD

Margaret Bourke-White: Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945 (©Time Inc.)

A detachment of troops belonging to the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, 6th Armored Division of the US Third Army, arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 under the leadership of Captain Frederic Keffer.

Impending victory was sobered by the grim facts of the atrocities which allied troops were uncovering all over Germany. Margaret Bourke-White was with General Patton's third army when they reached Buchenwald on the outskirts of Weimar. Patton was so incensed by what he saw that he ordered his police to get a thousand civilians to make them see with their own eyes what their leaders had done. The MPs were so enraged they brought back 2,000. Bourke-White said, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day... and tattooed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." LIFE published in their May 7, 1945 issue many photographs of these atrocities, saying, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them."

Margaret Bourke-White prepares to take a photo of corpses, April 16, 1945

Photo Credit: USHMM

 The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation