Classic photography is art painted with a lens

A photo may be worth a thousand words, but it ascends to a far greater value when pursued at auction by collectors who regard it as a classic artform.

Paintings may fetch higher prices than photographs, but it’s always possible that the stability of the fine art market “could taper off,” says Joe Kreauter, director of Photography at Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York. “Photography is a good investment and will continue to rise.”

Kreauter said you can get a fine classic photo for $10,000, noting that the auction firm handles anything from 1900 to the present but strives not to sell anything valued under $5,000, citing the high cost of cataloging and production. In Phillips de Pury’s Oct. 17 auction of photographic art, 189 of the 243 lots offered sold for a total of $4,321,383 (inclusive of 20 per cent buyer’s premium).

He prefers not to use the term “vintage” photography, arguing that “vintage” is more aptly applied to fine wines or anything old, while a good photo has an enduring interest, a recognized importance and the quality to be termed a classic.

The debate persists with respect to whether documentary photography is a craft or a fine art. As evidence to support the latter, many of the top photographers have backgrounds as painters, which assists them in composing their photos.

Take, for example, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. An early proponent of “street photography,” he would later spend three decades on photo assignments for Life and other journals. Cartier-Bresson had roots in fine art that could be traced to his early childhood. At age five, he was introduced to oil painting by his uncle, Louis, a gifted painter. Fourteen years later, at age 19, Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school whose syllabus included trips to The Louvre to study the work of classical artists and to Parisian galleries to absorb the best of contemporary art. His shift of interest from painting to photography was a result of his socializing with Surrealists and seeing a 1931 Martin Munkacsi photo of three naked African boys, caught in near silhouette, as they ran gracefully and freely through the surf.

Cartier-Bresson stopped painting and began earnestly circling the globe in pursuit of his new profession, he said, in order to “trap life.” He chose not to use his full family name in his photo credits, instead opting for the abbreviated “Cartier.” Now one of the most desirable names in classic photography, Cartier-Bresson’s work is a highlight in any specialty sale. In the Phillips de Pury Oct. 17 sale, one of his street scenes in China hit $19,200.

Another photojournalist of prominence was Weegee, the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (1899-1968), known for his stark black and white street photography. His nickname was a phonetic rendering of Ouija, due to his frequent arrival at scenes of fires, crimes and emergencies only minutes after they were reported to authorities.

A self-taught candid news photographer, Weegee worked only at night. In 1938, he was the only New York reporter with a portable police radio permit. He even maintained a complete darkroom in his car trunk to expedite completion of his freelance product for newspapers.

Kreauter said a lot of Weegee’s work has been sold, with steady increases since the 1990s. In the Oct. 17 auction, two of his photos, one of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wearing a fancy hat, and a shot of Coney Island in the morning, brought $3,600 each.

Never acknowledging his real name, multimedia artist Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia. He spent most of his career in Paris and was best known for his avant-garde photography, but he produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter, first and foremost. Asked about the work of Man Ray (1890-1976), Kreauter said the prices haven’t been as good in recent times – that there has been a lot of his work in the marketplace, thereby reducing the photos’ value.

Other ace photographers whose pictures bring top prices are F. Holland Day, Dorothea Lange, Edward H. Weston, and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as contemporary artists Hiroshi Sugimoto, Robert Frank, Irving Penn and Cindy Sherman.

Day (1864-1933) belonged to the pictorialist movement, which regarded photography as fine art. According to the ethic followed by pictorialists, photographers would make only a single print from a negative, using only the platinum process. Day’s work has always been controversial since his subjects were often nude male youths. A 1904 fire burned most of his prints and negatives. A Day photo entered in the Oct. 17 sale at Phillips de Pury with a $250,000-$350,000 estimate was passed after failing to reach its unannounced reserve.

Crippled by polio, Lange (1895-1965) was an influential documentary photographer and photojournalist known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Adopting her mother’s maiden name of Lange, she garnered public attention with her shots of unemployed and homeless people, in particular displaced farm families, migrant workers and sharecroppers. A 1934 Lange photo of a policeman controlling a crowd during a San Francisco workers’ strike earned $48,000 in the recent Phillips de Pury sale.

Renouncing pictorialism in favor of straight photography, Weston (1886-1958) became known as the “pioneer of precise and sharp presentation” with images of natural form, including the human figure, seashells, plants, vegetables and landscapes. In 1937, he was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the first given to a photographer. He took his last photo in 1948 after being stricken with Parkinson’s disease. A Weston photo of a nude in sand, with an estimate of $70,000 to $90,000, failed to reach its unannounced reserve on Oct. 17, but another Weston picture – of Alice-Leone Moats – brought $6,000.

Known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white studio portraits, Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) focused on flowers and male nudes, the latter triggering a controversy about public funding of artworks due to the frank, erotic nature of his work. His Portfolio X series, funded by the National Education Association (NEA), was the catalyst that sparked the outcry. Infected with HIV, Mapplethorpe’s life was cut short at age 43. The prices for his photos rose dramatically in the years just prior to his death; in a 1988 sale, bidders paid $500,000 for Mapplethorpe pictures. In 2006, a Mapplethorpe print of Andy Warhol was auctioned for $643,200, making it the sixth-most-expensive photograph ever sold.

Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948) divides his time between New York City and Tokyo. He uses an 8-by-10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures, rendering a surreal quality to his photos. In the Oct. 17 auction, a floor bidder doled out the day’s top price of $336,000 for a Sugimoto print, surpassing the $120,000-$180,000 presale estimate.

An important figure in American photography and film, Robert Frank (b. 1924 in Switzerland) is best known for his 1958 photographic book titled The Americans. He also received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, in 1955, to travel across the United States and photograph its society at all strata, concentrating on the realities of class and racial differences. Frank deviated from accepted photographic techniques in his use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping. A grouping from The Americans sold on Oct. 17 for $72,000.

A graduate of the Philadelphia Museum School in 1938, Penn (b. 1917) had drawings published in Harper’s Bazaar. He was also a painter and photographer known for his post-World War II glamour shots. He did fashion photography for Vogue for many years, posing subjects against a simple gray or white background.

His works were shown in a 2002 solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the National Gallery of Art in 2005. His photo of the hand of jazz trumpeter/composer Miles Davis was auctioned for $102,000 on Oct. 17.

Sherman (b. 1954) is an American photographer and film director, known for her conceptual self-portraits. She also started out as a painter in college, but switched to photography when she said there was nothing more to say through painting. She is the most successful female photographer of the modern era, according to many art critics.

Her photograph featured in the Oct. 17 Phillips de Pury auction catalog appears to draw from fairy tales and science fiction, and snapped up $300,000.

Depth of field: modern photography

While others question whether or not classic photography is bona fide art, form your own opinion pleasurably by taking in the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. The exhibit Depth of Field: Modern Photography is featured in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall of Modern Photography until March 23, 2008.

The inaugural installation draws from the museum’s collection to trace the varied paths of photography since 1960, highlighting its role in conceptual art, earth art and performance art. “The exhibit surveys some of the key photographs we have acquired over the last 20 years, as well as works that we could not exhibit until now because we did not have a proper space,” said Doug Eklund, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs and its specialist in contemporary photography.

“Under the leadership of Maria Morris Hambourg, the department acquired stunning masterworks by artists such as Sigmar Polke, Cindy Sherman and Thomas Struth,” Eklund continued. He and Hambourg drew up a plan for acquisitions of photography, and since then have acquired key individual photographs and groups of work by Robert Smithson, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Nan Goldin, Jeff Wall, Christopher Williams, and Sharon Lockhart among others. Exhibitions change every six months.