Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) Sam Wagstaff asleep. unique Polaroid Type 52 print, 1973-75,3 ½ by 4½ in. (8.9 by 11.4 cm.) Sold 16,250 USD. photo Sotheby's.

NEW YORK, NY.- Tonight at Sotheby’s, bidding began for Photographs from the Polaroid Collection with the opening session bringing a remarkable $7,197,439, well-above expectations (est. $2.9/4.5 million) and with every lot finding a buyer. With more than 300 hundred lots left to sell tomorrow, the running total has already exceeded the low estimate for the entire sale (est. $6.9/10.7 million). Competition was fierce with a full salesroom competing against numerous telephones resulting in as many as ten different bidders vying for certain works. The sale was 100% sold with nearly 87% of the lots achieving prices at or above their estimates. Artist records were set for Ansel Adams and Lucas Samaras, in addition to records for photographs at auction by Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney, among others.

Highlighting the evening session were works by Edwin Land’s great friend and collaborator, Ansel Adams. His iconic mural-sized prints achieved the top five prices of tonight’s offering, led by Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, which sold for $722,500 after a battle between four different bidders. That price was well-above the high estimate and a record for the artist at auction (lot 100, est. $300/500,000). Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold for $518,500 (lot 94, est. $300/500,000); Aspens, Northern New Mexico was the subject of a battle between a bidder in the room and one over the telephone, finally selling to a client on the phone for $494,500 (lot 88, est. $150/250,000); Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California achieved $482,500 (lot 97, est. $300/500,000); The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming sold for $350,500 (lot 91, est. $250/350,000).

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park. photo Sotheby's

mural-sized, flush-mounted, framed, 1938, probably printed in the 1950s or 1960s, 38¾ by 52 in. (98.4 by 132.1 cm.) Est. 300,000—500,000 USD Lot Sold 722,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Andrea G. Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 123

Ansel Adams (Morgan & Morgan, 1972), pl. 71

Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), cover

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1983), p. 102

Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 243

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 46

Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916-1984 (Boston, 1988), p. 369

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Yosemite: Ansel Adams (Boston, 1995), pl. 1

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (Boston, 2001), p. 89

John Szarkowski, The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (Boston, 1977), p. 49

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. photo Sotheby's

mural-sized, flush-mounted, framed, 1941, probably printed in the 1950s or 1960s, 39¼ by 56 in. (99.7 by 142.2 cm.) Est. 300,000—500,000 USD Lot Sold 518,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Andrea G. Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 175

Karen E. Haas and Rebecca A. Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2005, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 37

Ansel Adams (Morgan & Morgan, 1972), pl. 63

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 2002), p. 40

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 96

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: The Grand Canyon and the Southwest (Boston, 2000), frontispiece

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images, (Boston, 1985), pl. 32

Robert Doty, ed., Photography in America (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1974), pp. 130-31

Therese Mulligan and David Wooters, Photography from 1839 to Today, George Eastman House (Köln, 2000), p. 643

Martha A. Sandweiss, Masterworks of American Photography: The Amon Carter Museum Collection (Birmingham, 1982), pl. 125

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Aspens, Northern New Mexico. photo Sotheby's

mural-sized, flush-mounted, framed, 1958, probably printed in the 1960s, 30½ by 38 7/8 in. (77.5 by 98.7 cm.) Est. 150,000—250,000 USD Lot Sold 494,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Andrea G. Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), cover and p. 375

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (Boston, 2001), pp. 104-05

Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916-1984 (Boston, 1988), p. 314

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1983), p. 116

Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 174

Jane Swan Bush, ed., Ansel Adams: Trees (New York and Boston, 2004), p. 9

Andrea G. Stillman, ed., The Grand Canyon and the Southwest (Boston, 2000), p. 85

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California. photo Sotheby's

mural-sized, flush-mounted, framed, Polaroid Collections stamps on the reverse, 1944, probably printed in the 1950s or 1960s, 38¾ by 59¼ in. (98.4 by 150.5 cm.) Est. 300,000—500,000 USD Lot Sold 482,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Andrea G. Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 245

Ansel Adams (Morgan & Morgan, 1972), pl. 77

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 2002), p. 162

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 85

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 38

Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), pl. 99

Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light, Photographs 1923-1963 (San Francisco, 1963, in conjunction with the exhibition originating at the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum), unpaginated

Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 262

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. photo Sotheby's

mural-sized, flush-mounted, framed, 1942, probably printed in the 1950s or 1960s, 39 by 50 7/8 in. (99.1 by 129.2 cm.) Est. 250,000—350,000 USD Lot Sold 350,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Andrea G. Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), cover and p. 205

Andrea G. Stillman and William A. Turnage, eds., Our National Parks (Boston, 1992), cover and p. 31

Ansel Adams (Morgan & Morgan, 1972), pl. 56

Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 192

Peter Wright and John Armor, The Mural Project: Photographs by Ansel Adams (Santa Barbara, 1989), p. 73

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), p. 35

Among the first three lots of the evening’s offering was Chuck Close’s 9-Part Self Portrait, a unique collage of large-format Polapan prints which sold for $250,500, more than four times the high estimate and record for a photograph by the artist at auction (lot 3, est. $40/60,000). The auction record for a photograph by Andy Warhol was broken twice tonight – Self-Portrait (Grimace) a unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print sold for $146,500 (lot 52, est. $10/15,000) and then, with more than seven bidders competing, his Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed) soared past a high estimate of $15,000 to sell for $254,500 (lot 53, est. $10/15,000).

Chuck Close (B. 1940)  '9-Part Self Portrait'. photo Sotheby's

a composition of 9 unique large-format Polaroid Polapan flush-mounted prints, signed, titled, and dated in ink in the lower margins, affixed to a mount, framed, 1987; 70 by 61½ in. (177.8 by 156.2 cm.) Est. 50,000—70,000 USD Lot Sold 290,500 USD

EXHIBITED: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, September - November 2000, and traveling to 3 other venues through 2001 (see Appendix 1)

Boston University Art Gallery, American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection (a continuation of a portion of the original American Perspectives exhibition), November 2002 – January 2003

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: This object:

American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2000), pl. 32

The Polaroid Book (Köln, 2008), p. 283

NOTE: In 1979, the artist Chuck Close was invited by Kathy Halbreich, director of the Hayden Gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to use Polaroid's large-format 20-by-24-inch camera. Photography had always been integral to Close's work, providing the starting point for his painting and work in other media, and his understanding of the medium was considerable. However, photography had never previously served as the end-point for him, but was instead a part of his multi-step artistic process. Working with the Polaroid 20-by-24-inch camera, however, changed his thinking about photography and its place in his work. He commented about this experience that, 'It was the first time I considered myself a photographer . . . From that point on, I began to make photographs that deal with the kind of issues I deal with in my paintings' (Lyons and Storr, Chuck Close, p. 38).

Since the late 1960s, when Close abandoned abstract work, photography has been intrinsic to his process. Instead of preparing for a painting with a preliminary sketch or study, Close took photographs of his subjects. He described his use of photographs this way: 'I wanted something very specific to do where there were rights and wrongs, and so I decided to just use whatever happened in the photograph . . . I was constructing a series of self-imposed limitations that would guarantee that I could no longer make what I had been making' (Grynsztejn and Engberg, Chuck Close: Self Portraits, 1967-2005, p. 118). Since that time, Close's work across all of his chosen media has constituted either an embrace of photographic realism, or a calculated deviation from it.

While the large and unwieldy 20-by-24-inch camera was not easy to use, Close found it liberating. As was his customary working method, Close originally intended to use these Polaroids as the basis for other works, but found instead that the Polaroids possessed sufficient presence to stand on their own as finished works. Close worked with the camera on a number of occasions into the 1980s, primarily in color. The resulting images were sometimes conceived as singular works, while others, like the work offered here and that in Lot 26, were combined into multi-image compositions.

The 9 Part Self Portrait offered here, executed in 1987, shows the rare instance of Close's choice of black-and-white Polapan film as opposed to Polacolor. In its grand scale and black/gray/white palette, it bears a strong resemblance to Close's monochrome work in other media. It is, nonetheless, completely photographic in conception and impact.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Self-Portrait (Grimace). photo Sotheby's

unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, framed, Instant Likeness and Innovation/Imagination exhibition labels and a Polaroid Collection stamp on the reverse, 1979; 24 by 20¾ in. (61 by 52.7 cm.) Est. 10,000—15,000 USD Lot Sold 146,500 USD

EXHIBITED: Washington, D. C., The National Portrait Gallery, The Instant Likeness: Polaroid Portraits, August - December 1988

San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography, May - July 1999, and traveling to 11 other venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: This print:

Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography (The Friends of Photography, 1999), p. 41 and back cover

Constance Sullivan, ed., Legacy of Light (New York, 1987), p. 114

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed). photo Sotheby's

unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, 1979; 24 by 20½ in. (61 by 52.1 cm.) Est. 10,000—15,000 USD Lot Sold 254,500 USD

EXHIBITED: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, September - November 2000, and traveling to 3 other venues through 2001 (see Appendix 1)

Boston University Art Gallery, American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection (a continuation of a portion of the original American Perspectives exhibition), November 2002 – January 2003

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: This print:

The Polaroid Book (Köln, 2008), p. 291

Constance Sullivan, ed., Legacy of Light (New York, 1987), p. 115

American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2000), pl. 1

Likewise, the artist record for Lucas Samaras was also surpassed twice in tonight’s session – first with the cover lot – Untitled (Self-Portrait with Hands), a unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, which sold for $56,250 (lot 2, est. $10/15,000) and then with his Ultra-Large (Hands) a unique mural-sized Polaroid Polacolor print, which sold for $194,500 (lot 24, est. $20/30,000).

Lucas Samaras (B. 1936), Untitled (Self-Portrait with Hands). photo Sotheby's

unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, mounted, framed, a Selections 6 exhibition label on the reverse, 1990; 24 by 20¾ in. (61 by 52.7 cm.) Est. 10,000—15,000 USD Lot Sold 56,250 USD

EXHIBITED: Cologne, Photokina, Selections 6: Works from the Polaroid Collection, September 1992, and traveling to 16 other venues through 1999 (see Appendix 1)

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Unrepentant Ego: The Self-Portraits of Lucas Samaras, November 2003 - February 2004

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Marla Prather, Unrepentant Ego: The Self-Portraits of Lucas Samaras (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003), p. 293 (this print)

NOTE: Throughout his career, the artist Lucas Samaras has found in Polaroid materials ready tools to serve his restless and omnivorous appetite for invention. His first use of Polaroid materials was in 1969, when he acquired a Polaroid 360 camera and began his series of transformational AutoPolaroids. In the early 1970s, the advent of the Polaroid SX-70 allowed him to further push the bounds of transformation. In the 1980s, Samaras was granted use of Polaroid's 20-by-24-inch camera—which at one point in 1980 was loaned to him at his New York apartment—and the massive room-sized 40-by-80-inch Polaroid camera housed in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

The multi-talented Samaras, whose explorations in sculpture, painting, drawing, and film in the 1960s and 1970s marked him as one of the most fundamentally experimental artists of his generation, was untrained as a photographer. The Polaroid camera, with its instant delivery of a finished print, initially allowed him to work alone in his home studio and see the results immediately. The confrontational immediacy of his earliest photographic work persists throughout his career and is very much present in the arresting 20-by-24-inch self-portrait offered here.

Among Samaras's talents is his adept use of lighting to transform his subject. Utilizing colored gels intended for theatrical use, Samaras creates in this image dramatic modulations and saturated passages of color, all enhanced by the Polacolor process. The concentrated impact of his much smaller SX-70s explodes here with an even greater force in the oversized 20-by-24-inch format. As can be seen in the Samaras images present within the pages of this catalogue, he was able to find and exploit the creative leverage offered by all of the Polaroid formats with which he experimented.

Lucas Samaras (B. 1936), Ultra-Large (Hands). photo Sotheby's

unique mural-sized Polaroid Polacolor print, framed, 1983; 72 5/8 by 40 5/8 in. (184.6 by 103.3 cm.) Est. 20,000—30,000 USD
Lot Sold 194,500 USD

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Samaras: The Photographs of Lucas Samaras (New York, 1987), p. 143 (variant)

NOTE: In 1983, Lucas Samaras was among a handful of artists invited by Polaroid to use its immense 40-by-80-inch camera housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The camera essentially comprised its own light-tight room, measuring 12 by 12 feet, and 16 feet in height. Known as the Museum Camera, it was developed initially to make actual-size, highly detailed, full-color photographs of paintings. Like the large-format 20-by-24-inch camera, the Museum Camera used the same Polacolor technology as Polaroid's consumer cameras. The use of the camera required the assistance of a number of technicians, one of whom was positioned inside it to advance the film and operate the shutter. Pre-exposure focus was achieved through the use of powerful lights which illuminated the subject sufficiently to project a pale image through the lens and onto the focal plane of the camera. Exposure required banks of synchronized strobes.

With this camera, Samaras began his aptly-named Ultra-Large series, each image of which was executed with the artist's characteristic inventiveness. In the two Ultra-Large studies by Samaras present in this catalogue, his talent for lighting is evident. In the image offered here, Samaras focuses tightly on his hands, bathing them in hummingbird ruby, green, and yellow. This astonishingly large photograph delivers a great deal of detail, and the artists' hands are rendered in all of their corporeal reality. Yet, through its immense size and inventive use of color, the image transcends the documentary and incorporates, instead, a far more evocative study of an artist's principal tools.

Other images made with the Museum Camera, by Samaras, Chuck Close, and Robert Heinecken, are present in this catalogue as Lots 25, 35, and 37.

Auction records for a photograph were also set for Robert Rauschenberg, whose Japanese Sky I (From The Bleacher Series) brought $242,500 (lot 5, est. $40/60,000) and David Hockney, when his Imogen & Hermione, Pembroke Studios, London, 30th July, a 1982 Unique SX-70 collage sold for $194,500 (lot 6, est. $30/50,000).

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Japanese Sky I (From The Bleacher Series). photo Sotheby's

a composition of 4 unique bleached Polaroid Polapan prints, mounted to aluminum, signed and dated in silver ink on the mount, in a frame designed to the artist's specifications, an Innovation/Imagination exhibition label on the reverse, 1988; 51¾ by 42¼ in. (131.4 by 107.3 cm.) Est. 40,000—60,000 USD Lot Sold 242,500 USD

EXHIBITED: San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography, May - July 1999, and traveling to 11 other venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography (The Friends of Photography, 1999), p. 91 (this object)

NOTE: The critic Jonathan Green observed in the 1980s, 'Perhaps the most important, and least acknowledged, photographer of the past decade is Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg's position in the world of painting has so overshadowed his role as a photographic innovator that he is usually overlooked in discussions of the history of photography. Yet his achievement as a painter is essentially photographic in method. His painting recapitulates the sensibility of the major photographers of the fifties, parallels photography's preoccupations of the sixties, and anticipates the ''mixed-media'' and conceptual work of the 1970s' (American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, p. 131).

The two Rauschenberg works in this catalogue (the present lot, and Lot 195), illustrate the inventiveness with which the artist approached photography, specifically Polaroid photography, and his desire to push past the normal bounds of the camera and combine elements of other media into his work. Rauschenberg had incorporated photographs, many taken from the mass media, into his paintings from the very beginning, as photo-transfers, silk-screens, or photolithographs. Rauschenberg also took his own photographs, and his portraits of his famous colleagues at Black Mountain College, his 1980 Rauschenberg/Photographs portfolio and 1981 Photographs book, show his talent, and appreciation, for the straight photographic approach.

In 1988, Rauschenberg was given the opportunity to work with Polaroid's massive 20-by-24-inch camera, which was brought to him in Florida. The Bleacher series has its genesis in this first encounter with the large format camera. The large sheets of Polapan film Rauschenberg used during these sessions required, like Polaroid's smaller consumer-market black-and-white film, a coating after development that arrested the action of the developing agent and created a hard protective surface for the print. Curious about what would happen if this coating were not applied, or was only selectively applied, Rauschenberg asked Polaroid technician John Reuter what the results would be. Reuter replied that the uncoated areas would become effectively bleached. Rauschenberg subsequently experimented with selectively coating his prints and leaving them in the sun to hasten the effect of his treatment. Frustrated that this did not result in an immediate or sufficient change in the appearance of his photographs, Rauschenberg devised a strategy that was wholly new. Using a paintbrush, he selectively applied bleach to the surface of the prints. This had the effect of altering the appearance of certain areas, creating a multi-layered image that operates as both a literal depiction of its subject and an abstract riff upon it.

The present image, Japanese Sky I, consists of four 20-by-24-inch Polapan prints treated with bleach. They are mounted to aluminum, and placed within the same type of metal frame Rauschenberg used at that time for his paintings.

Sotheby's wishes to thank Peter MacGill for sharing his knowledge about the creation of the Bleacher series.

David Hockney (B. 1937), Imogen & Hermione, Pembroke Studios, London, 30th July. photo Sotheby's

a composition of 63 unique Polaroid SX-70 prints, initialed, titled, and dated in ink across the lower margins, mounted, framed, exhibition labels and Polaroid Collection stamps on the reverse, 1982; 30 by 22½ in. (76.2 by 57.2 cm.) Est. 30,000—50,000 USD Lot Sold 194,500 USD

EXHIBITED: London, Hayward Gallery, Hockney's Photographs, November 1983 – February 1984

Cologne, Photokina, Selections 4, October 1988, and traveling to 7 other venues through 1990 (see Appendix 1)

London, Tate Gallery and the Arts Council of Great Britain, David Hockney: A Retrospective, 1989

San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography, May - July 1999, and traveling to 11 other venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: This composition:

Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography (The Friends of Photography, 1999), p. 73

Lawrence Weschler, David Hockney: Cameraworks (New York, 1984), pl. 49

NOTE: The assemblage offered here is one of a number of compositions comprised of Polaroid SX-70 prints that were taken in David Hockney's Pembroke Studios in London in 1982. The sitters are the daughters of Paul Cornwall-Jones, owner of Petersburg Press, who published many Hockney-related works.

Hockney is one of the most influential contemporary artists to have explored, in practice and in words, the relationship between photography and painting. His long career in painting and the graphic arts has been interspersed at regular intervals with camera-based works, among them a published portfolio of photographs, photographic assemblages of SX-70s, and photographic collages of snapshots. In his writings and his lectures, Hockney has returned again and again to an exploration of the fundamental questions of vision: how one sees through the lens of the eye and through the lens of a camera; and, as a result, how time that is experienced in a painting or drawing differs from time experienced in a photograph.

Hockney's Polaroid SX-70 assemblages were one response to what he felt was the static quality of a single photograph. 'It's hard for me to look at a photograph for more than thirty seconds,' he once wrote. 'You get it very quickly, and when you look at it again it's exactly the same. These Polaroid portraits are different; there are so many relationships created by juxtaposing each photo, and the permutations of these relationships seem so numerous, that you can continue gazing at it, and seeing it in many different ways' (David Hockney Photographs, p. 26). Hockney has aligned his multiply-perceived reality with Cubism, an art which, he has observed, more truthfully reflects one's constantly-shifting perception of the world. In his Polaroid SX-70 compositions, and in his later collages of snapshots made with traditional cameras, the passage of time is created through the multiplicity of viewpoints in the assembled images.

The experience of creating SX-70 portraits in 1982 propelled Hockney into a new realm of thinking about photography and experimenting with cameras in a way that he had not previously. 'The reason I never took photography too seriously,' he wrote in that year, 'is because it was never vivid enough to give a true sense of the experience of reality. But these recent assemblages are so exciting that while I had intended to paint, I instead bought myself twelve thousand dollars worth of Polaroid film; it would be hard to do these without a Polaroid camera, because you must be able to quickly see the result of what you are doing in order to proceed with the picture' (ibid., p. 27).

Each of Hockney's SX-70 assemblages is unique, and rare in the marketplace. Unlike his later snapshot collages, the SX-70 portraits were never produced in multiple editions.

Non-Polaroid works from the “Library Collection,” which where were acquired by Ansel Adams on behalf of the Polaroid Corporation beginning in the mid-1950s, were also among the top sellers of tonight’s session. Harry Callahan’s Chicago (Trees in Snow) more than doubled a high estimate of $100,000 to sell for $254,500 (lot 74, est. $70/100,000) and Dorothea Lange’s equally iconic Peapickers Family (Migrant Mother, Nipomo) achieved $218,500, above a pre-sale estimate of $60/80,000 (lot 80). Imogen Cunningham’s Unmade Bed also soared past the pre-sale high estimate of $25,000 to sell for $146,500 (lot 75, est. $15/25,000).

Harry Callahan (1912-1999), 'Trees and Mist' (Chicago, Trees in Snow). photo Sotheby's

mounted, signed in ink and with a 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation' label, with typed credit and title and accession information in ink, on the reverse, 1950, printed no later than 1958; 7 1/2 by 9 3/8 in. (19.1 by 23.8 cm.) Est. 70,000—100,000 USD Lot Sold 254,500 USD

PROVENANCE: Acquired from the photographer in December 1958 for the Library Collection

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Photographs: Harry Callahan (Santa Barbara: El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964), pl. 84

Harry Callahan (The Museum of Modern Art, 1967), p. 65 and rear cover

Sarah Greenough, Harry Callahan (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1996), p. 73

Katherine Ware, Elemental Landscapes: Photographs by Harry Callahan (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), pl. 4

Britt Salvesen, Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Center for Creative Photography and Yale University, 2006), pl. 21

David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971 (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2002), p. 62

NOTE: The photograph by Harry Callahan offered here was purchased by Ansel Adams on behalf of the Polaroid Corporation for inclusion in a group of photographs that would come to be known within Polaroid as 'the Library Collection.' In the spring of 1956, Adams and Edwin Land began to discuss the idea of expanding Polaroid's growing collection of images beyond those made with Polaroid technology; as Adams wrote in a memo to Land in March of that year,

'I am much pleased that this idea has been brought up . . . I have always felt that Polaroid should interest itself in photography-in-general, thereby associating itself with the art in its entirety and avoiding "compartmentization." The association of fine Polaroid-Land pictures with the best photographs in other media will only enhance the value and importance of the Polaroid process.'

Adams was given approximately $1,200 for the first year's acquisitions, and he proceeded with care and deliberation. The collection would officially be named the 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation,' and the letterpress label placed on the mount of each photograph carries this title. As the prints were originally stored and installed in Polaroid's library, however, the collection came to be known, simply, as the Library Collection.

Callahan was one of a number of contemporary photographers whose work Adams considered exemplary of 'true excellence and achievement.' Others ranked high by Adams, and whose prints he purchased for the Collection, were Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Brett Weston, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, William Garnett, Walter Chappell, and Pirkle Jones, all of whose work is offered in the present catalogue. Paul Strand was among the very first on Adams's initial 'want list,' but, regrettably, Strand's prices, in the context of Adams's budget, turned out to be prohibitive.

In a series of memos from 1956 and 1957 to Land, his assistant Meroë Morse, and Polaroid's librarian Jacquelin Sykes, Adams gives detailed instructions for labeling, handling, displaying, and storing the Library Collection photographs. The superb condition of many of the Library Collection prints is due to Adams's foresight in this regard. Of special interest to photographs collectors and historians is the meticulous recording on each label of the print's title, as well as the month and year the photograph entered the Collection. The titles and printing dates for several of the classic images offered here, including Callahan's Trees in Mist, are the most definitive statement of each photographer's interpretation of the negative at the time the print was acquired by Polaroid.

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Peapickers Family (Migrant Mother, Nipomo). photo Sotheby's

mounted, signed and dated in pencil on the mount, the photographer's 'Dorothea Lange, 1163 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, 8, California' studio label and a 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation' label, with typed credit, title, and process and accession information in ink, on the reverse, 1936, printed no later than 1958;, 12 7/8 by 10 in. (32.7 by 25.4 cm.) Est. 60,000—80,000 USD Lot Sold 218,500 USD

PROVENANCE: Acquired from the photographer in June 1958 for the Library Collection

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

John Szarkowski, Dorothea Lange (The Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 25

Therese Thau Heyman, Celebrating a Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange (The Oakland Museum, 1978), p. 61

Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime (Aperture, 1982), p. 77

Therese Thau Heyman, Sandra S. Phillips, and John Szarkowski, Dorothea Lange: American Photographs (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994), pl. 1

Keith F. Davis, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange (Kansas City, 1995), p. 45

Peter Galassi, American Photography 1890-1965 (The Museum of Modern Art, 1995), p. 148

Dorothea Lange: The Human Face (Aosta, 1998), p. 99

Pierre Borhan, Dorothea Lange: The Heart and Mind of a Photographer (Boston, 2002), p. 133

Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-1950 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), pl. 481

Weston Naef, Photographers of Genius at the Getty (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), pl. 101

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Imogen Cunningham’s Unmade Bed. photo Sotheby's

mounted, signed in ink and with a 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation' label, with typed credit and title, and accession information in ink, on the reverse, 1953, printed no later than 1958;  1/2 by 9 1/2 in. (19.1 by 24.1 cm.) Est. 30,000—50,000 USD Lot Sold 98,500 USD

PROVENANCE: Acquired from the photographer in December 1958 for the Library Collection

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Other prints of this image:

Photographs: Harry Callahan (Santa Barbara: El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964), pl. 5

Harry Callahan (The Museum of Modern Art, 1967), p. 27

Eleanor (Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984), p. 49

Harry Callahan, Aperture Masters of Photography (1999), p. 2

Britt Salvesen, Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Center for Creative Photography and Yale University, 2006), pl. 93

Julian Cox, Eleanor (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2007), pl. 61