DOCUMENTARIANS AND RECORDERS
Often unwavering, confrontational, frank, inquisitive, and revealing, the photograph
has become an essential document in how we perceive and understand the
world. Those photographers who recorded the Great Depression (Walker Evans,
Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White), those who documented wars (Robert
Capa, Bill Brandt), lives and times (Brandt, René Burri, Danny Lyon, Garry
Winogrand, Elliot Erwitt), as well as those who captured change and raw conflict
(Lyon and Josef Koudelka), each used the camera as a key component of a
larger project to show and tell. Though never as democratic as at first appearances,
the camera, and especially the book which provides context, sequence and
structure, allows us to tell stories and make real what in life is transitory and
ephemeral. Bill Brandt’s London, Danny Lyon’s South, Koudelka’s Europe, and
Evans’ American scene, reveal something about ourselves as well as about the
artist behind the lens and the person depicted on the page.
Lot 175 (detail)
