Ansel Adams - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | Phillips
  • The remarkable selection of photographs offered in this auction as lots 203 through 240 comes from the collection of Peter C. Bunnell (1937-2021), the pioneering curator, teacher, and photographic historian. All of the sale’s proceeds will be distributed to six institutions with whom Bunnell was associated — Rochester Institute of Technology, Ohio University, Yale University, The George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and Princeton University Art Museum — to establish endowments to support the study of photographic history.

     

    Bunnell began his long career in photography as a student of Minor White’s at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1950s, and was recruited by White to work on the seminal periodical of artistic photography, Aperture. He joined the staff of The Museum of Modern Art in 1966 as a collection cataloguer, becoming Associate Curator and then Curator of Photography. At MoMA he curated the noteworthy exhibitions Photography as Printmaking (1968), Photography into Sculpture (1970), and the first retrospective of the work of Clarence H. White (1971). In 1972, he was hired as the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University. 

     

    Bunnell served as Director of the Princeton University Art Museum from 1973 to 1978, and as Acting Director from 1998 to 2000, while also being the Museum’s Curator of Photography throughout the entirety of his tenure. Bunnell built a broad-ranging collection of photographs at the Museum, the firsthand examination of which became a central element of the student experience in his classes and seminars. Bunnell also assembled a personal collection of photography over the course of his long career that reflects his vast and deep understanding of the medium. Begun in the 1950s, before photography galleries and dealers were commonplace, Bunnell’s collection is a deeply personal one, put together with a sense of joy and curiosity that includes both icons and lesser-known gems spanning the history of photography.

    • Provenance

      Gift of the photographer, circa 1981
      Collection of Peter C. Bunnell, Princeton, New Jersey

    • Literature

      Haas and Senf, Ansel Adams: In the Lane Collection (for stamp)
      Alinder and Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images, pl. 18
      Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, pp. 76, 249
      Adams, The Portfolios of Ansel Adams, Portfolio One, pl. 11

A Reverence for Beauty: The Peter C. Bunnell Collection, Part 2

224

Selected Portraits of Alfred Stieglitz at An American Place, New York City

1944
Three gelatin silver prints, printed later.
Varying sizes from 6 1/4 x 4 1/2 in. (15.9 x 11.4 cm) to 9 x 6 5/8 in. (22.9 x 16.8 cm) or the reverse
Two signed and inscribed 'For Peter Bunnell' in pencil on the mount and with Carmel credit stamp (BMFA stamp 11), titled in unidentified hands in ink, on the reverse of the mounts.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $7,620

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 4 April 2023