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.
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.
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