In the grand scheme of human culture, photography is a relatively young art form. But its practitioners saw its value as an expressive medium mere decades after it gained hold as a recording tool, and its artistic application has been evolving steadily alongside other artistic media ever since. In our Important Fall Auction, to be held on Saturday, September 19th, we are offering seminal photographic works from artists who exemplify the transitioning nature of photography from its earliest artistic application to the near-present, from the early portraiture of Edward Steichen, one of the first pictorialists, to contemporary nudes by Kim Weston, whose grandfather Edward Weston helped spearhead the move away from pictorialism towards modernism after WWI.
Two notable pieces included in The Important Fall Auction are a still life by Imogen Cunningham, and a Complete Portfolio of 15 photographs by Alec Soth, Hank Willis Thomas, and Hiroshi Watanabe from the Durham photography project Bull City Summer.