Remember last November’s blow-out of photographic wonders? They’re doing it again tomorrow – that is, Sotheby’s in Paris are once again staging an auction of the greatest names in photography from the medium’s inception to the present day.
That means early exponents like Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugène Atget and Adolph de Meyer; an extraordinary Nadar image of a hermaphrodite (one of the highest estimates), a Pierre-Louis Pierson image of La Castiglione, no less. It continues with Laure-Albin Guillot, Germaine Krull, Pierre Molinier, Raoul Ubac, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson (including the famous image of prostitutes in Mexico), Robert Mapplethorpe, Horst P. Horst, right up to Ed Ruscha and Nan Goldin.
If you go along please say hi to my imaginary self; he often bids heavily at these things.
