More than 1,000 photographs from the historic Polaroid Collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams and Chuck Close’s gigantic 9-Part Self Portrait, go under the hammer this week at Sotheby’s.
The auction was ordered by a bankruptcy court in Minnesota and proceeds from the sale will go to creditors of the failed company. Polaroid has filed for bankruptcy twice, in 2002 and last year.
The auction will be held tomorrow and Tuesday, following a weeklong exhibition of what are considered the best photographs in the collection — the complete collection numbers about 16,000 pictures — at Sotheby’s Manhattan offices.
PHOTO: AFP
Ranging from classic Polaroid snapshots to rare gelatin silver prints, the collection was amassed by Polaroid company founder and inventor Edwin Land and his technical director and photographer Ansel Adams, 400 of whose snapshots are included.
Land sought to build his collection and allowed Adams to buy at the company’s expense classic examples of photo greats like Harry Callahan and Dorothea Lange, whose famous Migrant Mother (California, 1936) is estimated to be worth between US$60,000 and US$80,000.
“Ansel wanted a larger collection to show creativity in photographs,” Sotheby’s photography department director Denise Bethel said.
Some of Adam’s mural-size photographs are among the collection up for auction, including Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, which it is estimated will sell for between US$300,000 and US$500,000.
Sotheby’s believes the exhibition will bring in US$7.2 million to US$11.1 million.
Included in the collection is a huge, one-of-a-kind, one-by-two-meter Polaroid camera used by Chuck Close for his immense portrait composed of nine, 50cm-by-60cm snapshots. It is expected to fetch between US$40,000 and US$60,000.
“In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Ansel Adams started sending out cameras to artists for feedback. The artists would exchange their prints for the use of Polaroid cameras. In the late ‘60s, this unique situation was called ‘the Artist support program,’” Bethel said.
A favorite of families and tourists, the Polaroid camera also had a following among legendary photographers and painters like Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, some of whose snapshots will go under the hammer.
Other, lesser known artists such as David Levinthal are also included and Sotheby’s hopes interest in the Polaroid collection will boost their worth.
Bethel said this is the first time Sotheby’s has offered a collection centered around a technology rather than a particular theme or artist.
“Polaroid has had influence on the history of photography, aesthetics and contemporary art ... Polaroid raised everyone’s expectations for instant result. It prepared the digital age, it was a psychological step to the digital world,” she said.
Polaroid was bought last year by The Impossible Project group, which is trying to revive the market for the fabled instant camera and has named eccentric pop-singer Lady Gaga its artistic director.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS