Our Spring Fine Photographs auction is rich in masters of the medium, working in all formats, including nineteenth-century panoramas, photo books, portfolios, and fine art prints. Iconic works such as…
Works in photography, cartography, printmaking, posters, and painting are all represented in Swann’s Artists of the WPA sale, reflecting on how the early twentieth century changed American culture.
In the 2024 Winter-Spring season, Swann Galleries continued to provide high-quality auctions of unusual and rare material. Several single-owner collections were featured, including Illustration Art: Featuring Highlights from the Collection…
Though utilizing a variety of artistic practices and genres, from portraiture, self, and of others to photojournalism and social documentary, the photographers highlighted here have all used the camera to record…
Swann’s May 16 auction of Fine Photographs is headlines by two iconic female photographers.
Swann Galleries opened the winter 2024 season with the fourth iteration of The Artist of the WPA. The timed online auction closed Thursday, January 25, with an 89% sell-through rate…
Highlights from the December 14, 2023 auction of Illustration Art.
2022 was a historic year for Swann in more ways than one. The house celebrated its 80th year of auctions, bringing with it the 70th anniversary of the first photography…
The Thursday, October 20 sale of Fine Photographs at Swann Galleries brought $1.2M with a strong showing for American photography and portfolios. Romana Javitz & Dorothea Lange The top lot…
Romana Javitz was curator of The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection from 1928 to 1968, where she assembled one of the most historically important and artistically significant collections of twentieth-century photographs.
A range of exciting photographs includes a vintage 1936 example of Dorothea Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother from the personal collection of the legendary Romana Javitz, who developed the New York…
As we close out another successful year at Swann we look back at our record-filled sales.
The New Deal not only established a great legacy, but a greater generation of artists whose works defined the American spirit.
Modern & Post-War Art, Fine Photographs & Contemporary Art Auctions of Modern & Post-War Art, Fine Photographs and Contemporary Art at Swann Galleries in late May and early June 2021…
Exploring the thematic and visual diversity of the photographic medium, this auction covers twentieth-century masters as well as contemporary practitioners and items from the visual vernacular: albums, archives, and individual objects.
Our March 11, 2021 sale of Fine Photographs saw strong results across the auction with humanist works and portraits drawing interest from collectors. “We were pleased to see strength across…
Dorothea Lange‘s iconic photographs from her time documenting for the Farm Security Administration, as well as her international travels, resonate through the decades since. Here we provide insight to the…
Fine photographs by Diane Arbus, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robert Frank, Adam Fuss, Dorothea Lange, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Irving Penn, portfolios by Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Eugène Atget, Paul Strand, and more.
The Artists of the WPA were on display in our February 4, 2021, auction. The multi-departmental sale was headed by Harold Porcher, the house’s director of Modern and Post-War Art,…
We’re pleased to present this curated auction of WPA-era artwork, photographs, and related material. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and its related agencies represented an unprecedented investment in art and artists, setting the scene for the twentieth century’s art movements, and establishing the careers of diverse creatives, including women, Black artists, photographers, and muralists.
Highlights for both the new collector and the seasoned auction aficionado include photographs by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Alma Lavenson and Dorothea Lange.
After 15 years with Swann, Deborah Rogal is stepping into the role of Director of our Photographs & Photobooks department. As she transitions into her new position we asked a few questions about her time with the house: how things have changed over the years, the photography market, and what’s to come.
Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother is widely recognized as the most popular social documentary photograph of all time. During the course of her 40-year career, Lange’s style as a photographer proposed…
It was a Who’s Who among American photographers in Classic & Contemporary Photographs on Tuesday, February 25. The auction brought $1M and saw competitive bidding in the room and on the Swann Galleries App.
Photographs by outstanding American artists headline this auction: Berenice Abbott, Dawoud Bey, Margaret Bourke-White, Harry Callahan, Edward Steichen and Minor White.
Swann’s Thursday, October 17 sale of Classic & Contemporary Photographs featured a broad range of photographic material including works by Edward S. Curtis, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and W. Eugene Smith.
A season of firsts. The 2019 spring auction season at Swann Galleries delivered an impressive range of sales, rife with auction premiers and record prices. We started our season off…
Martín Chambi & Images of South America Lead Classic & Contemporary Photographs at Swann Our sale of Classic & Contemporary Photographs on Thursday, April 18 saw active bidding across all categories with early-twentieth-century photography, Humanist portraits and sublime images of nature…
At Auction April 18 Complete Catalogue Our diverse April auction bridges classical and contemporary visual idioms with important work, including Robert Mapplethorpe’s Lisa Lyon, Dorothea Lange’s emotive Korean Child,…
A Record for Malick Sidibé in Swann Photo SaleVernacular albums of nineteenth-century India bring $30k Our sale of Photographs: Art & Visual Culture on February 21, a curated sale celebrating photographs as physical objects, saw success across the board with contemporary, twentieth-century and…
We’re jumping into Women’s History Month to offer a week of #5WomenArtists, inspired by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. We asked some women of Swann to tell…
Our Photographs & Photobooks department has put together a cheat sheet for identifying some of the more common types of photographs we handle. A cyanotype print is made by…
