|
Curator's Picks: May 13 Depth of Field: Photographs Showcase Auction
|
 |
|
Nigel's Picks
Nigel Russell | Director, Photographs, New York
|
Apple Advancing feels like a quirky little joke, making it
look like the apple is somehow scooting along by itself. Frampton and Faller
take something super ordinary and turn it into a fun experiment about how
motion can be faked through a series of images. It also works as a funny,
slightly sarcastic nod to Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion,
swapping his serious studies of moving bodies for the ridiculous sight of an
apple on the move.
|
|
The whole scene feels loud even without sound-like
the city is flexing how big and bright it can be. It's kind of a wry statement,
with the "Rule the Planet" billboard towering over this messy jumble of glowing
food logos, like capitalism turned into a neon skyline. It's overwhelming but
weirdly hypnotic, like you're caught between laughing at it and totally buying
into it.
|
|
|
Laura's Pick
Laura Paterson | Consignment Director, Photographs, New York
|
I've been an ardent fan of Philip Glass's music for a long
time. He is of course widely regarded as among the most influential composers
of the 20th century and a pioneer of minimalism whose musical scores consist of
repeated musical phrases and subtly shifting tonal layers that define and guide
his soundscapes. Caravaglia's portrait perfectly
captures Glass's artistic sensibility -- he crouches, arms crossed against a
graphic black and white backdrop and stares intently at the camera, his face in
half shadow. Also signed by Glass, the image would have made a superb album
cover!
|
|
|
Holly's Picks
Holly Sherratt | West Coast Director, Photographs
|
Les Krims' PLEASE! (1978) is a portfolio of
11 photographs that uses constructed scenes, deadpan humor, and deliberate
awkwardness to challenge the conventions of documentary photography. Rather
than presenting reality, Krims arranges his subjects-often friends or non-professional
models-in absurd or uncomfortable situations that parody social norms and
expectations of taste. The series reflects his broader concept of "fictions,"
emphasizing that photographs can be invented rather than truthful records. Its
importance lies in its early contribution to conceptual photography, helping
shift the medium toward staged imagery and a more self-aware, critical approach
that influenced later artists.
|
|
Aaron Siskind's Chicago 53 (1952) is a
gelatin silver print depicting a tightly cropped view of a weathered wall,
where torn layers, cracks, and advertising fragments form an abstract
composition. By eliminating context and focusing on surface detail, Siskind
transforms an ordinary wall into an image defined by line, texture, and
contrast. Made in the early 1950s, the photograph marks a break from
documentary tradition and aligns with Abstract Expressionism, echoing its
emphasis on gesture and surface while demonstrating photography's potential as
an expressive, non-representational medium.
|
|
Nicholas Nixon's The Brown Sisters began in
1975 as a portrait of his wife, Bebe Brown Nixon, and her three
sisters-Heather, Mimi, and Laurie-standing in a fixed order that he would
repeat annually for decades. While the composition remains constant, each image
captures subtle shifts in expression, relationship, and the visible effects of
aging. Seen together, the photographs compress time, making change
unmistakable. The 1975 photograph marks the beginning of this long-running
project. What gives the work its emotional force, to me, is its direct
depiction of women aging over time, where beauty is not fixed in youth but
continues to evolve across the series.
|
|
|
Toshiko's Picks
Toshiko Abe | Cataloguer, Photographs
|
|
|
|
Hiroshi Sugimoto, a renowned Japanese photographer, is known
for exploring the passage of time in his work. In his early series Theaters,
begun in 1978, he photographed movie screens inside historic theaters from the
1920s and 1930s. Using very long exposures, he captured entire films in a
single image, leaving the screen glowing white and surrounded by detailed
architecture. Although conceptual, these quiet black-and-white images often
evoke nostalgia and imagination, recalling the golden age of cinema. Sugimoto
shows that while photography captures a moment, it can also suggest a sense of
timelessness.
Another work in this sale, History of History (started
in 2003), features photographs of Sugimoto's own collection of antiquities and
architectural fragments. Each object acts as a time capsule, preserved to
connect the past with the present. Through this series, Sugimoto invites
viewers to reflect on what history means and how it is remembered.
|
|
|
Mya's Picks
Mya Adams | Cataloguer, Photographs
|
John Albok's Backyard Musician is a
beautiful, atmospheric tribute to a love of music. There's something universal
about a moment like this, music as a language anyone can sit with and
understand, even in silence, in a back alley, with or without an audience
I've always been especially drawn to images of musicians
playing alone, just them and their instrument. In photographs like this, the
instrument begins to feel like an extension of the person, and you can sense
the quiet, symbiotic relationship between the two.
|
|
|
|
Nigel Russell
Director,
Photographs, New York
NigelR@HA.com
(212) 486-3659
|
|
|
Laura Paterson
Consignment Director,
Photographs, New York
LauraP@HA.com
(212) 486-3525
|
|
|
Holly Sherratt
West Coast Director,
Photographs
HollyS@HA.com
(415) 548-5921
|
|
|
|
Toshiko Abe
Cataloguer,
Photographs, New York
ToshikoA@HA.com
(212) 486-3523
|
|
|
Mya Adams
Cataloguer,
Photographs, Dallas
MyaA@HA.com
(214) 409-1139
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
