William Eggleston (Credit: Linda Yablonsky)

The diligent Daniel Grant has a valuable backgrounder on photographers edition practices on Huffington Post:

Photographers did not begin limiting editions of their images until the late 1970s, when prices and the market for photography began to increase significantly, as prospective buyers wanted an assurance that there would not be a flood of additional prints that would reduce the value of the works they had purchased. Fourteen states across the country — Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Wisconsin — all enacted print disclosure laws to protect consumers of limited edition graphic and photographic prints (the New York State law also covers sculpture editions). In these laws, the sellers of prints are required to provide buyers with documentation that the artworks they had purchased are part of a limited edition, the number of copies in the edition and that no other editions of the same images exist. Important exceptions, however, are made for earlier limited editions that are of different sizes (a 10″ x 8″ photograph produced in a 5″ x 4″ format), different production techniques (a gelatin silver print produced as a platinum print or a photogravure) or different numbering (Arabic numbers on one edition, Roman numerals on another).

Do New Limited Editions of Older Images Violate the Spirit of Print Disclosure Laws? (Huffington Post)

Phillips de Pury

$6.1m ; 193 out of 267 lots sold for 72% sell-through

SWANN Galleries
PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF SALE 2274, April 4 2012:
Sale total: $1,202,122 with Buyer’s Premium
Hammer total: $1,001,230
Estimates for sale as a whole:  $1,245,350 – $1,834,950
We offered 435 lots; 304 sold  (30% buy-in rate by lot)
Top lots, Prices with buyer’s premium

6 William Eggleston, Untitled (from the series Los Alamos), dye-transfer print, 1970. $60,000 C

347* Ansel Adams, Portfolio #4: What Majestic Word, In Memory of Russell Varian, with15 silver prints, 1963. $54,000 C

183* Camera Work Number 36, illustrated with 16 photogravures, signed & inscribed by Stieglitz, New York, 1911. $26,400 C

168** Portfolio with 90 photographs of a German dignitary’s travels to Asia and the Americas, silver prints, 1930s. $24,000 C

18 Weegee, Love Story & Ice Cream…Aspirin…Soda Pop…Vitamin Pills…Etc, maquette including two silver prints, with Weegee’s notations, circa 1940s. $20,400 D

292* Margaret Bourke-White, DC-4 Flying over New York City, silver print, 1939, printed circa 2000. $20,400 D

470* Sebastiäo Salgado, Kuwait (oil fields), oversize silver print, 1991, printed 2000s. $19,200 C

187 Edward S. Curtis, Chief of the Desert, Navajo, orotone, 1904. $15,600 D

210 Ralph Steiner, Ten Photographs from the Twenties and Thirties & One From the Seventies portfolio, silver prints, 1920s-30s, 1970s, printed 1977. $15,600 C

419 Adams, Holy Cross Church, Santa Cruz, mural-sized silver print, 1960s. $14,400 C

417 Adams, triptych with three color studies: Rusted Metal, Leaves & Red Rock, offered with four color studies, all unique Polaroid SX-70 prints, 1972. $12,000 C

240 Imogen Cunningham, The Bath & Agave, two silver prints, 1925 & 1920, printed 1952-60s. $10,800 C

14 Helen Levitt, New York (boys playing over doorway), silver print, 1942, printed circa 1980. $10,800 C

385 Brett Weston, Guatemala Hills, silver print, 1968, printed 1970s. $10,200 C

4 Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street Facade, oversize silver print, 1966-68, printed 1980s-90s. $10,200 D

467 Salgado, Dinka Cattle Camp, Southern Sudan, oversize silver print, 2006, printed 2011. $10,200 C

39 Ellsworth Kelly, Grape Leaves II, lithograph, 1973-74. $10,200 C

174 Alfred Stieglitz, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies, containing 9 of 12 photogravures, 1894-97, printed 1897. $9,600 D

345 Adams, Lichens and Rock, silver print from a Polaroid Type 55 negative, 1962, printed 1962-63. $9,600 C

3 Henri Cartier-Bresson, Swan Lake, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, silver print, 1954, printed 1980s. $9,000 D

Elena Soboleva works at a gallery in New York. She took some time attend AIPAD this past weekend. This is her report:

Civilized and Art Fair aren’t words one immediately pairs together, since most fairs are means for sales, occasional shock and the attempt to stand out amongst the sea of participants. In the flashy art fair trends, where galleries are forced to battle for attention on the pages of catalogues and rows of exhibit halls, the general equilibrium veers far into a state of frenzy and chaos.  All of which may explain why I found the AIPAD Photography Show last week to be quite refreshing and was left impressed with the relaxed atmosphere and the quality of the work.

This subtlety may have as much to do with the medium, which lends itself to smaller gestures, as it did with the overall fair.  The intimate Francesca Woodman photograph Untitled (Francesca in High School, with Bonnet), 1972-1975 at Robert Klein Gallery ($35,000) immediately caught the eye with its unearthy ephemeral quality and delicate sense of loss. Having received a lot of attention and a current Guggenheim show, her work is no longer under the radar but still remains a rare treat.

Over at Higher Pictures, which just moved to a new location in the Madison Avenue Gagosian Building, Jessica Eaton’s works drew me in.  Made entirely from filters and in-camera effects the color-fields revealed themselves to be much more than simple geometric abstractions but rather feats of filters and film. The works were in the $4,000 price range and were the best deals of the show.  Julie Saul Gallery did not disappoint either, with a great Sarah Anne Johnson piece in the booth, combining photographic elements with watery gouache blurs, teasing out childhood memories in the fantastical tableaux.

Even the Zwirner booth, which ran the risk of conspicuous hype of the solo space dedicated to Philip-Lorca diCorcia, resonated a wonderful subtlety. The set of four Polaroids were especially charming. The works were carefully chosen and the subjects were unlike his typical starkly-glossed images, reflecting restraint and befitting the intimate space of the booth.

Of course some galleries still chose to make a vivid splash and Bryce Wolkowitz and M+B were among those whose palettes swept up the viewers and caused camera-phone traffic.  All in all, the fair was a treat for the photo-lovers and a pleasant respite from some of the entropic art mash-ups that won’t seem to go away.

Barbara Pollack previews AIPAD in Gotham Magazine making the point that the gap between Photography and Fine Art is narrowing as more dealers show the work of artists who use Photographs as their medium. This leaves, Pollack says, a gap between the current values of master photographers and the fine artists who use photography. That’s a point just underscored by Christie’s Eggleston sale.

Though photographers may be breaking into the fine art market, Pollack also points to fine art dealers seeking sales at photography fairs like AIPAD:

This year, for the first time, renowned contemporary art dealer David Zwirner will participate in the fair, with a booth devoted to the work of Philip-Lorca diCorcia, whose prints are priced at up to $45,000. “Photography can be a gateway to collecting on a larger scale,” says Zwirner’s director of sales, Justine Durrett, who underscores that the gallery represents many artists working in photo-based media including Gordon Matta-Clark, Stan Douglas, Thomas Ruff, and Christopher Williams.

That gallerists like Zwirner are coming to AIPAD shows the genre’s dynamism as well as its inconsistencies. For most of the 20th century, photography was considered the stepchild of fine art, largely because multiples were regarded as less significant than unique paintings and sculptures. [...] With almost every contemporary art gallery now representing one or more photo-based artists—Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman, Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks—art photography has seen a great uptick in prices in recent years. But some of the strongest images of the 20th century, by such photographers as Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, or Arbus, frequently sell for a quarter of the price of a Prince or Sherman. Many other well-known photographers— Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Helen Levitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Margaret Bourke-White—are considered masters of the medium, but since they’re not shown at art galleries, their works can be had for well under $100,000. A lot of this makes no sense, but for the collector it provides pockets of opportunity for acquiring underpriced works presented by the traditional photo galleries and dealers you’ll find at AIPAD.

First Look: The AIPAD Photography Show (Gotham Magazine)

The Photo District News points to an interesting element in yesterday’s very successful sale of large-scale Eggleston prints. The prints were meant to attract Contemporary art collectors as opposed to photography collectors. The sale’s success would suggest this was a very smart strategy and raises the question, who will make the next move to further exploit the growing importance of photo-based Contemporary art?

According to Joshua Holdeman, international director of the Christie’s photography department, the point of the sale was to establish a new market for Eggleston’s photography in the contemporary art world. “Eggleston has been kind of stuck in the old school world of the photography collectors for a long time, whose primary concerns are about process, print type, print date, etcetera,” says Holdeman.

Whereas the type of print and the exact date a print was made is “a huge deal” for photography collectors, Holdeman says, “for contemporary art collectors it’s much more about the object itself—they couldn’t care if it’s a dye transfer or a pigment print or whatever, as long as the object itself is totally amazing, that’s what they care about.”

“This is an attempt to start a migration of Eggleston from the quote unquote confines of the photography world into the larger context of the art world,” Holdeman adds. By his account, the market-making auction was a stunning success. “I think it was probably the most important event for Eggleston in a long, long time,” he says.

Eggleston’s First-Ever Large Pigment Prints Earn 5.9 Million at Auction (PDN)

The Telegraph offers a reminder of days when the British Monarchy was embattled and seeking ways to reform its image. Cecil Beaton, the famous fashion photographer of his day, played an important role:

Susanna Brown, the curator of photographs at the V&A, which is staging a major exhibition of Beaton’s royal portraits, describes the importance of the shoot: “After the huge crisis of the abdication, this was about reaffirming the position and continuity of the monarchy. He presents theQueen as an exquisite fairy-tale figure.” That first sitting with the Queen Mother, and the rapport between them, was crucial in establishing Beaton as a favoured royal photographer for the next 40 years. “They had an instant chemistry and she became his champion,” says Brown.

How Cecil Beaton Helped Save the Queen (Telegraph)

The Financial Times has the basics on Eve Arnold:

Eve Arnold, the American photographer who has died aged 99, was one of a small group of pioneering women who in the middle of the last century, following Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White and Lee Miller, ignored the conventions of the time and became photojournalists.

She travelled, often alone, to remote and dangerous parts of the world to bring back stories for magazines such as Life, Picture Post, and, from the 1960s on, Sunday supplements. She was the first woman member of Magnum Photos, the international photo agency founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger in 1947. She joined the agency in New York in 1951, at about the same time that Inge Morath, 10 years her junior, joined it in Paris.

The Telegraph has this great story of her beginnings as a photographer:

Eve Arnold was self-taught, her only tuition being a brief course in 1948 with Alexey Brodovitch, the celebrated art director of Harper’s Bazaar, at the New School for Social Research in New York. The class, which included ambitious professionals such as Richard Avedon, mercilessly criticised Eve Arnold’s amateur efforts.

For the class assignment, however, Arnold ventured into Harlem to record the black fashion shows that took place daily in deconsecrated churches. On seeing her, the hitherto feline star model “Fabulous” Charlotte Stribling began to mince down the catwalk like a white model. “Lesson number one,” recalled Arnold, “pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.” In the next class, Brodovitch singled out her pictures for their freshness.

As no American magazine of the period would publish photographs of black people, Eve Arnold’s husband sent her pictures to Britain — to his friend Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post. The pictures were printed but the text changed, so that its tone was snide. Henceforth, vowed Arnold, everything she wanted to say would be in the photograph.

American Photographer Eve Arnold Dies Aged 99 (Financial Times)

Eve Arnold (Telegraph)