Polaroid auction at Sothebys

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I was looking what was up for sale at the Polaroid Auction at Sotheby's. Gorgeous stuff, but so sad knowing that the collection is being broken up.

 

[slumry]

I bought the catalog, well worth $50. It is sad that the collection is being broken up; however, to me what is worse is that the type of art that can be done will Polaroid materials will eventually disappear. Contemporary photography has no answer to it. What was striking about the Polaroid images in the catalog is that it was clear that all the images were created by artists, gifted ones at that.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Overall really sad. Since the images are gifts, chances are, the artist won't see a penny from the auction. The ugly part is the folks not producing the art involved with this auction, the auction houses, the bankruptcy lawyers will make a the lion's share of the money.

 

[mwdake]

Perhaps here...

Dead Link Removed

 

[DLM]

I checked the Sotheby's website and saw a couple odd ones. The first was Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, and the second was AA's Moonrise. From seeing the other photos tat were taken there in Nipomo of the family shown in Migrant Mother, it was obvious that the kids were moving around and it seems odd that she would take the time to make a Polaroid before the real exposure. For Moonrise, all of AA's accounts of the day were that he saw that scene, jumped out of the car, and didn't even meter the scene because the light was fading fast. Are these actually just gelatin silver prints that were in Polaroids collection? There's not much of a description on the site, and it's horrid flash design isn't working correctly for me without freezing up firefox, so I don't plan to go over and look at it again.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I think this collection is a corporate collection of various photographic media. Could be Edwin Lands's collection.

 

[slumry]

The flash content on the Sotheby’s website does not do the images justice. The catalog at nearly 500 pages does. It is clear that Sotheby’s took some effort to do a good job with the catalog. I think someone mentioned that only about 70% of the images were Polaroid prints or from Polaroid negatives. The rest were regular prints either purchased by Polaroid or donated by artists. They only thing I don’t understand are Wegman’s dogs.

 

[SuzanneR]

There's a lot of information about this sale and the collection on A.D. Coleman's blog...

http://nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/

 

[mwdake]

Wow, who knew it would be worth that much......

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20100622&id=11617245

 

[slumry]

Now that the results are published Dead Link Removed it is fascinating to see what sold well and what did not. There were many things that did not sell at all that I thought would be snapped up. I am still trying to figure out the Wegman dogs, would someone please explain them to me. Thank you.

 

[mike c]

Its a shame the collection could not stay together and tour the world in museums .A major collaboration between Polaroid and many top notch photographers,a unique and important part in recent modern photography history.