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From Emerging Talent to Well-Known Favourites: Photographs Highlights in Focus

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The Photographs sale in London on 19 May showcases some of the best emerging contemporary talents such as Sohei Nishino and Hiroshi Sugimoto alongside well-known favourites including Albert Watson, Irving Penn and Peter Lindbergh, whose iconic portraits have blurred the distinction between art and fashion photography and remain unceasingly popular in the market. The sale also features a selection of early twentieth century gems including a stunning Paul Outerbridge colour carbro print and a vintage silver print by Constantin Brancusi. Click ahead to see highlights.

Photographs
19 May 2017 | London

From Emerging Talent to Well-Known Favourites: Photographs Highlights in Focus

  • Sohei Nishino, Diorama Map, London, 2010. Estimate £12,000–18,000.
    Sohei Nishino is a modern day flâneur. He wanders the city streets, taking hundreds of photographs from all angles; he prints each one by hand and then painstakingly rearranges them to recreate a panoramic impression of the spaces he has surveyed. To make this diorama map of London , Nishino walked the streets for one month and took over 10,000 photographs.

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  • Peter Beard, Elui, Son Of Nzenge Mkambo From Voi (Tsavo Lowlands), 1962.
    Estimate £70,000–100,000.
    ‘Elui, son of Nzenge Mkambo from Voi’ was taken whilst Peter Beard was working at the Tsavo National Park in Kenya. It would become the cover image for his seminal publication on Africa, The End of the Game (1965), which combines his own photography and writing with historical texts and explores the origins of the wildlife crisis in Africa. This unique colourgraph is representative of Beard’s signature style which incorporates photographs, diary clippings, quotes, found objects, drawings and more.

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  • Irving Penn, Hippie Family (Kelly), San Francisco, 1967. Estimate £10,000–15,000.
    Whilst he is best-known for his fashion photographs, Irving Penn photographed people in all walks of life. In 1967 Penn approached the editors of Look magazine with an idea to photograph the counterculture groups in San Francisco, including the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club and hippie families . Penn attributed the success of the portraits to the neutral space he had created from the barn he had rented with concreate floor and walls.

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  • WestImage - Art Digital Studio
    Pieter Hugo, Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara (The Hyena and Other Men), Lagos, Nigeria, 2007.
    Estimate £20,000–30,000.
    South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s images are undoubtedly provocative. His work demonstrates his fascination with exploring marginalised groups in Africa and confronts head-on issues of race and identity, as well as traditional customs and urban environments.  His desire to explore the social make-up of his homeland resulted in a two-year project to document the Hyena Men of Nigeria, a nomadic group who live on the fringes of society and have acquired an almost mythical status. The powerful images he captured, such as ‘Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara’ , show the imposing and intimidating nature of this group, yet equally demonstrate the level of trust that Hugo built with them during the project.



     

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  • Albert Watson, Kate Moss, Marrakech (Contact), 1993.
    Estimate £18,000–23,000.
    Perhaps his most memorable work, Watson’s series of nude photographs of an 18-year-old Kate Moss , which were shot in Marrakech for German Vogue in 1993, epitomise the cinematic and graphic qualities that distinguish his style. The unique artistic sensibility displayed by Watson in the subtlety of light and tone, and the fine line that Kate draws between vulnerability and an effortless sex appeal, mark important turning points in the careers of both the photographer and his muse.

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  • Thomas Struth, Paradise 17, California, 1999.
    Estimate £40,000–60,000.
    Thomas Struth’s Paradise series confronts viewers with an almost overwhelming quantity of detail. Dense, textured undergrowth and criss-crossing plant forms disorientate, as the depth and scale of the images cannot be determined; yet it is this confusion which, Struth suggests, creates an inner calmness in search of finding a ‘paradise’, Struth left his native Germany and scoured the world for unspoiled locations.

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  • Drtikol František Drtikol, Untitled (Nude Reclining), 1922-28. Estimate £25,000–35,000.
    Drtikol’s avant-garde nudes juxtapose harsh architectural forms and bands of shadow with the soft and supple curves of the female anatomy. His pioneering use of light and movement rank him amongst the great photographers of the early 20th century.

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  • Paul Outerbridge, Beauty, c. 1936.
    Estimate £30,000–50,000.
    Paul Outerbridge made significant contributions to the history of photography, and to colour photography in particular, with his development of the complex tri-colour carbro process. ‘Beauty’ is a rare example of this technique, examples of which do not frequently come to auction. Whilst he enjoyed significant success, with his work featuring in prominent exhibitions, many of his nudes were considered too erotic to be exhibited during his lifetime.

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  • Robert Mapplethorpe, Mum, 1989.
    Estimate £10,000–15,000.
    Mapplethorpe’s photographs dominated the 1980s. The decade marked the peak of his career; he produced numerous powerful and provocative images, the treatment of which garnered international fame. Mapplethorpe was famous for his erotic images, but even his photographs of flowers were shot using the same visual language. Although his early works of flowers suggest erotic elements, later, when he was ill with AIDS, they came to symbolise death, and Mapplethorpe’s own mortality.

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  • Peter Beard, Lion Pride in the Tiva Dry River, Tsavo North, Nr. Kathmula, February 1965.
    Estimate £30,000–50,000.
    “The wilderness is gone and with it much more than we can appreciate or predict. We’ll suffer for it.” Peter Beard’s fascination with photo documentary and his passion for conservation in Africa is evident throughout his unique photo collages. Combining a range of photographs, diary clippings, quotes, found objects, drawings and more, his aim is to capture the nature of the African continent as it slowly but surely succumbs to inevitable industrialisation.

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  • WestImage - Art Digital Studio
    Hiroshi Sugimoto, Seagram Building - Ludwig Mies Van Der Roh, 1997.
    Estimate £50,000–70,000.
    Hiroshi Sugimoto’s surreal and timeless images of recognisable architectural icons, such as the Seagram Building in New York , seem to break all the rules of architectural photography. By photographing iconic buildings from unusual angles and taking them out of focus, he simultaneously decontextualises them and reveals their inner essence.

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  • Constantin Brancusi, The Table of Silence of Târgu-Jiu, c. 1937.
    Estimate £15,000–20,000.
    The Table of Silence is one of three sculptures at Targu Jiu that Brancusi made in his homeland as an homage to the Romanian heroes of the First World War. The circular stone table surrounded by twelve hourglass-seats placed far from the table represent the moment before the soldiers were to enter battle. Brancusi’s photographs of his sculpture evidence how he saw his own work and wanted it to be seen, as well as showing something of his working progress, whilst his explorations of form and light qualify his photographs as art in their own right.

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