More than 1,000 photographs from the historic Polaroid Collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams and Chuck Close’s gigantic 9-Part Self Portrait, go under the hammer this week at Sotheby’s.
The auction was ordered by a bankruptcy court in Minnesota and proceeds from the sale will go to creditors of the failed company. Polaroid has filed for bankruptcy twice, in 2002 and last year.
The auction will be held tomorrow and Tuesday, following a weeklong exhibition of what are considered the best photographs in the collection — the complete collection numbers about 16,000 pictures — at Sotheby’s Manhattan offices.
PHOTO: AFP
Ranging from classic Polaroid snapshots to rare gelatin silver prints, the collection was amassed by Polaroid company founder and inventor Edwin Land and his technical director and photographer Ansel Adams, 400 of whose snapshots are included.
Land sought to build his collection and allowed Adams to buy at the company’s expense classic examples of photo greats like Harry Callahan and Dorothea Lange, whose famous Migrant Mother (California, 1936) is estimated to be worth between US$60,000 and US$80,000.
“Ansel wanted a larger collection to show creativity in photographs,” Sotheby’s photography department director Denise Bethel said.
Some of Adam’s mural-size photographs are among the collection up for auction, including Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, which it is estimated will sell for between US$300,000 and US$500,000.
Sotheby’s believes the exhibition will bring in US$7.2 million to US$11.1 million.
Included in the collection is a huge, one-of-a-kind, one-by-two-meter Polaroid camera used by Chuck Close for his immense portrait composed of nine, 50cm-by-60cm snapshots. It is expected to fetch between US$40,000 and US$60,000.
“In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Ansel Adams started sending out cameras to artists for feedback. The artists would exchange their prints for the use of Polaroid cameras. In the late ‘60s, this unique situation was called ‘the Artist support program,’” Bethel said.
A favorite of families and tourists, the Polaroid camera also had a following among legendary photographers and painters like Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, some of whose snapshots will go under the hammer.
Other, lesser known artists such as David Levinthal are also included and Sotheby’s hopes interest in the Polaroid collection will boost their worth.
Bethel said this is the first time Sotheby’s has offered a collection centered around a technology rather than a particular theme or artist.
“Polaroid has had influence on the history of photography, aesthetics and contemporary art ... Polaroid raised everyone’s expectations for instant result. It prepared the digital age, it was a psychological step to the digital world,” she said.
Polaroid was bought last year by The Impossible Project group, which is trying to revive the market for the fabled instant camera and has named eccentric pop-singer Lady Gaga its artistic director.
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS