Edward Weston - 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

      Collection of Peter C. Bunnell, Princeton, New Jersey

    • Literature

      Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, fig. 968
      Mora, Edward Weston: Forms of Passion, cover, p. 223
      Newhall, Edward Weston, Photographer, p. 60
      Wilson, Edward Weston Nudes, pl. 82
      High Museum of Art, Chorus of Light: Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection, p. 118
      Taschen, 20th Century Photography, p. 731

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

231

Lot offered with No Reserve

Nude, Santa Monica

1936
Gelatin silver print, printed later by Cole Weston.
9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. (24.1 x 19.1 cm)
Signed, titled, dated, and annotated 'Negative by Edward Weston,' in pencil by Cole Weston on the reverse of the mount.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$6,000 - 8,000 

Sold for $8,890

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