Photographs New York | March 30, 2020 Photographs New York I Monday March 30, 2020, at 2pm EST BONHAMS BIDS INQUIRIES 580 Madison Avenue +1 (212) 644 9001 Laura Paterson New York, New York 10022 +1 (212) 644 9009 fax Head of Photographs bonhams.com [email protected] +1 (917) 206 1653 [email protected] PREVIEW To bid via the internet please visit New York www.bonhams.com/25760 Amelia Wilson Photographs Cataloguer Thursday March 26, 10am to 5pm Please note that bids should be +1 (917) 206 1635 Friday March 27, 10am to 5pm summitted no later than 24 hours [email protected] Saturday March 28, 12pm to 5pm prior to the sale. New Bidders must Sunday March 29, 12pm to 5pm also provide proof of identity when Monday March 30, 10am to 12pm SALE INCLUDING submitting bids. Failure to do this COLLECTIONS OF may result in your bid not being 25760 • The Pritzker Organization, SALE NUMBER: processed. Lots 1 - 176 Chicago • The Collection of James (Jimmy) LIVE ONLINE BIDDING IS Fox CATALOG: $35 AVAILABLE FOR THIS SALE Please email bids.us@bonhams. REGISTRATION ILLUSTRATIONS com with “Live bidding” in the IMPORTANT NOTICE Front cover: lot 37 subject line 48 hours before the Please note that all customers, Inside front cover: lot 23 auction to register for this service. irrespective of any previous activity Session page: lot 24 with Bonhams, are required to Inside back cover: lot 45 Bidding by telephone will only be complete the Bidder Registration Back cover: lot 124 accepted on a lot with a lower Form in advance of the sale. The estimate in excess of $1000 form can be found at the back AUCTIONEER of every catalogue and on our Jacqueline Towers-Perkins Please see pages 176 to 179 website at www.bonhams.com 2068426-DCA for bidder information including and should be returned by email or Conditions of Sale, after-sale post to the specialist department collection and shipment. All NYC DCA Auction House or to the bids department at items listed on page 179, will be License No. 2077070 [email protected] transferred to off-site storage along with all other items To bid live online and / or purchased, if not removed by leave internet bids please go to 5pm Monday April 13. www.bonhams.com/auctions/25760 and click on the Register to bid link at the top left of the page. © 2020 Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers Corp. All rights reserved. NYC DCA Auction House License No. 2077070 Introduction It seems we have become somewhat inured to the relentless bombardment of images we see in the media of mass migration, disease, starvation and exploitation. We console ourselves that as individuals we are powerless to make a difference to these situations borne for the most part of greed, brutality and misery. How can we, by ourselves, possibly halt the inexorable slide towards the total destruction of our planet and its flora and fauna? The first few lots of this sale are devoted to photographers who had no such qualms. At home in the US, Ansel Adams championed the preservation of the American wilderness to great effect with his studies of its vast and unpopulated glories. Adams’ early lobbying efforts, on behalf of the Sierra Club, directly led in 1939 to the creation of Kings Canyon National Park, California, putting half a million acres under irrevocable federal protection. Peter Beard and Nick Brandt’s cameras travelled further afield. Both always intended that their significant talents should be used to expose the egregious and ongoing exploitation of wild animals in Africa. From the 1960s onwards, Beard has documented the systematic destruction of Africa’s wildlife in the National Parks of Kenya’s Tsavo lowlands and Uganda in his highly glamorous and visceral prints. It has been 25 years since the publication of his highly influential book, The End Game, in which he proclaimed, “The deeper the white man went into Africa, the faster the life flowed out of it, off the plains and out of the bush… vanishing in acres of trophies and hides and carcasses.” Nick Brandt’s recent photographs of the (vanishing) inhabitants of the Kenyan national parks of Ambroseli, Serengeti and Masai Mara, however, reflect a deep emotional connection to his sitters. These are quiet, monumental and moving studies of animals who are, as he puts it, “simply in the state of Being.” Brandt has also co-founded, with conservationist Richard Bonham, Big Life Foundation, which employs 300 rangers in an area of almost two million acres in East Africa to co-ordinate anti-poaching patrols. May all three and their successors continue to jolt us out of our complacency and inactivity. 4 | BONHAMS 1 NICK BRANDT (BORN 1966) Elephant with Tattered Ears, Ambroseli, 2008 Archival pigment print, signed, dated and numbered ‘8/15’ in pencil in the margin. 27 3/8 x 32 3/4in (69.5 x 83.2cm) sheet 30 1/2 x 38 1/4in (77.5 x 97.2cm) $25,000 - 35,000 Provenance With Fahey Klein Gallery, Los Angeles Literature Brandt, On This Earth A Shadow Falls, DAP/ Big Life Editions, 2010, p. 163 PHOTOGRAPHS | 5 2 PETER BEARD (BORN 1938) Orphaned Cheetah Cubs/ Mweiga , 1962 Gelatin silver print with applied blue paint handprint, printed later, signed, titled, dated and inscribed in ink on the recto. 8 1/4 x 12 1/2in (21 x 31.7cm) sheet 8 5/8 x 12 7/8in (22 x 32.7cm) mount 14 x 18in (35.5 x 45.6cm) $25,000 - 30,000 6 | BONHAMS 3 W PETER BEARD (BORN 1938) Cows and Calves at Buffalo Springs, Kenya NFD, for “The End of the Game/ Last Word from Paradise”, June 1960 Platinum print with handwork, snapshots/ contact sheet collage featuring portrait of Karen Blixen, other works by Beard and red paint handprint, signed, titled and dated in pencil in the margin; annotations in red ink on a number of the collaged images; blue paint hand print on the external frame glazing. sheet 26 x 40in (66 x 101.6cm) overall; artist’s frame $30,000 - 50,000 Provenance With The Time is Always Now, New York PHOTOGRAPHS | 7 4 NICK BRANDT (BORN 1966) Leopard Staring, Masai Mara, 2010 Archival pigment print, signed, dated and numbered ‘AP 3/3’ in pencil in the margin. 21 3/4 x 27 1/4in (55.2 x 69.2cm) sheet 30 x 40in (76.2 x 101.6cm) $25,000 - 35,000 8 | BONHAMS 5 NICK BRANDT (BORN 1966) Lioness Looking Over Plains, Masai Mara, 2004 Archival pigment print, signed, dated and numbered ‘14/35’ in pencil in the margin. 11 x 14 1/2in (28 x 36.2cm) sheet 13 x 19in (33 x 48.2cm) $5,000 - 7,000 Provenance With Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, acquired 2005 Literature Brandt, On This Earth A Shadow Falls, DAP/ Big Life Editions, 2010, p. 19 PHOTOGRAPHS | 9 The Jacob Collection, The Property of an Important Swiss Collector Lots 6 – 7 6 6 7 ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984) ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984) Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, c. 1941 “Portfolio One: Twelve Photographic Prints by Ansel Gelatin silver print, printed 1973, signed in pencil on the Adams, 1938-1948” mount, titled, dated in ink and ‘Carmel’ credit stamp on San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1948, 12 gelatin the mount verso. silver prints; each signed in pencil on the mount; each 15 1/4in x 19 3/4in (38.7cm x 50 cm) with Portfolio credit stamp, numbered sequentially mount 22 x 28in (56 x 71.1cm) ‘1-12’ from set ‘19’ in red ink on the mount verso; images, varying sizes from approximately 5 x 7in $35,000 - 45,000 (12.7 x 17.7cm) to 8 x 10in (20.2 x 25.4cm) or the reverse; mount, each 14 x 18in (35.5 x 45.7 cm) or the reverse; text inserts, numbered ‘19/75’ in red ink on Provenance list of plates; one from from the edition of seventy-five; Christie’s, New York, April 23, 1996, lot 106 contained in original folding portfolio case. Literature Adams and Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, $50,000 - 70,000 Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1985, p. 274; Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Little, Brown Provenance and Co., New York, 1989, cover, p. 40; Szarkowski, Sotheby’s New York, October 7, 1993, lot 450 Ansel Adams at 100, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art/Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 2001, pl. Literature 96; Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, Szarkowski, The Portfolios of Ansel Adams, Little Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 2007, p. 175 Brown and Company, New York, 1998, n.p. 10 | BONHAMS 7 PHOTOGRAPHS | 11 8 EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958) Provenance Shell, 1927 With Witkin Gallery, acquired c. 1970 Gelatin silver print, printed later by Cole Weston, signed, Edward Weston credit, titled, dated, notation Literature ‘1S’ in pencil by Cole Weston on the mount verso. Edward Weston Photographer, Aperture, New York, 9 3/8 x 7 1/4in (23.8 x 18.4cm) 1965, cover mount 15 x 13in (38 x 33cm) $5,000 - 7,000 12 | BONHAMS 9 ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984) Leaf, Glacier Bay National Monument, Alaska, 1948 Gelatin silver print, printed 1974, signed in pencil on the mount, title, date in ink and ‘Carmel’ credit stamp on the mount verso. 9 3/4 x 12 5/8in (24.8 x 32cm) mount 16 x 20in (40.6 x 50.8cm) $6,000 - 8,000 The photograph is accompanied by a copy of a typed letter on Ansel’s headed notepaper, dated July 23 1982 and signed by him.