Last Week's Top Lots: Photographs & Photobooks

Last Wednesday's sale saw several auction records, and excellent results overall. The morning session, Property from the Estate of Filmmaker Gary Winick, included important contemporary and vintage photographs, movie memorabilia and posters from all but one of Hitchcock's films. The top lot from the Winick session was also the day's top lot overall: a striking William Eggleston dye-transfer print, 1970, which sold for $60,000. 

William Eggleston, Untitled (from the series Los Alamos), dye-transfer print, 1970.

Among the 19th & 20th Century Photographs & Photobooks, Ansel Adams' Portfolio #4: What majestic Word, In Memory of Russell Varian set a record. The 15 photograph portfolio brought $54,000. Camera Work Number 36 also set a record for that particular issue of Alfred Stieglitz's early photo magazine, selling for $26,400. This copy is signed & inscribed: Stieglitz wrote "I'd like to autograph my photographs for you, dear Friend. But I most dislike to autograph them more often than they are autographed in their "natural state." 

Ansel Adams, from Portfolio #4: What Majestic Word, In Memory of Russell Varian, 1963.

A portfolio of more than 90 professional photographs of a German dignitary's Asian & American travels set a record for a portfolio of vernacular photography. The photographs, mostly of China, Japan, and the U.S., were taken in the 1930s.

From the record-setting portfolio of Asia & the Americas, 1930s.