Clarence John Laughlin

ferrotyped, mounted to black Crescent board, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the mount, the photographer's '627 Decatur St., New Orleans 16, LA' studio, reproduction rights, and print stamp, numbered '8' in pencil, and with his typed caption on the reverse, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1940

Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago
Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, 1995

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp. 121 and 227 (this print)

The photographer's typed caption on the reverse of the mount reads:'Print No. 8: The Auto-Eroticists - 1940 (Group L: Poems of Desolation) / Prints No. 8 through No. 11 belong to Group L - in which the photographer, by means of a complex integration of carefully selected backgrounds, models and objects - has attempted to create a series of visual symbols which deal with those things in human minds which have made the two great World Wars possible. . .Here, in Print No. 8, is the symbol of those driven into physical love of self (note stress on the hand). Note, too, the disintigrating bed, the bed which is empty and barren of a love partner. . .'This ferrotyped print is in generally excellent condition. As is typical of the ferrotyping process, occasional pitting and irregular surface disturbances are visible in raking light. There are 5 small scattered deposits of original retouching in the lower left quadrant. The black Crescent board is rubbed at its edges and corners. On the reverse of the mount in the upper left and right corners, there are 9-inch and 2-inch abrasions to the top paper-ply. In the lower right corner are the following notations in pencil: '#3613,' 'B+548,' '4/21/61,' '#2' [circled], 'L [circled] 4/61.'When examined under ultraviolet light, this print does not appear to fluoresce.
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