Sotheby’s Photographs Auction; October 2018

Making sure to outpace rival auction houses, Phillips and Christie’s, with the first photography auction of the season, Sotheby’s made last minute announcements to their schedule to host two auctions the day before Phillips and Christies. Photographs will be taking place on Wednesday 3rd October (along with Contemporary Photographs on the same day) with work from artists such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, Ansel Adams (featured), Herb Ritts and Robert Frank with estimates ranging from $1,000 to $500,000.

In a press release Sotheby’s announced:

This season’s Photographs auction features masterpieces of 20th-century European Modernism by Aleksandr Rodchenko and László Moholy-Nagy; iconic American images by Edward Weston, Robert Frank, and Walker Evans; a selection of celebrity portraiture and nude subjects by Herb Ritts; and pioneering color photography by Irving Penn, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, and Saul Leiter. 

The sale is led by Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Girl with a Leica (Devushka S Leikoi) (left, estimate $300/500,000), a signed, exhibition-sized print of one of the photographer’s most enduring images, taken circa1932-34. An adventurous composition of rhythmic lines, abstract patterns, and extreme angles, Girl with a Leica embodies the rigorous photographic Modernism that Rodchenko pioneered. Originally from the collection of the photographer and his wife Varvara Stepanova, it is believed that no other large early print of this image has been offered at auction. 

View lots and register to bid here.