Edward Weston - Photographs New York Wednesday, October 12, 2022 | Phillips

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  • In 1983, Peter Bunnell edited a compilation of Edward Weston’s writings entitled, Edward Weston on Photography in which he gathered all of Weston’s published writings from a lifetime as a working photographer. One of the last essays included by Bunnell is a 1941 piece called Seeing Photographically in which Weston reflects upon the necessity of both mastering and then moving beyond the technical aspects of photography:


    ‘The photographer must learn from the outset to regard his process as a whole. He should not be concerned with the “right exposure,” the “perfect negative,” etc. Such notions are mere products of advertising mythology. Rather, he must learn the kind of negative necessary to produce a given kind of print, and then the kind of exposure and development necessary to produce that negative. When he knows how these needs are fulfilled for one kind of print, he must learn how to vary the process to produce other kinds of prints. Further he must learn to translate colors into their monochrome values, and learn to judge the strength and quality of light. With practice this kind of knowledge becomes intuitive; the photographer learns to see a scene or object in terms of his finished print without having to give conscious thought to the steps that will be necessary to carry it out’ – Edward Weston, Seeing Photographically, 1943
     

    Peter Bunnell, Edward Weston on Photography (1983)

    The remarkable selection of photographs offered in this auction as lots 143 through 167 all come from the collection of Peter C. Bunnell (1937-2021), the pioneering curator, teacher, and photographic historian. Bunnell began his long career in photography as a student of Minor White’s at the Rochester Institute of Photography 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 1960 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. ‘These photographs are used,’ he said, ‘they don't just sit around in boxes.’ Bunnell published widely on many photographers and photographic subjects. He was the acknowledged authority on the work of both Minor White and Clarence H. White, and it was through him that the archives of these two major photographs now reside at Princeton. As a teacher and a mentor, Bunnell professionalized the study of photographic history, conferring a higher degree of rigor and status to the medium, and inspiring an entire generation of curators and photographers.

     

    Bunnell also built a personal collection of photography over the course of his long career that reflects his vast and deep understanding of photography. Begun in the 1950s, before photography galleries and dealers were commonplace, the collection incorporates some outstanding rarities by Ansel Adams, his teacher and mentor Minor White, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Harry Callahan, Frederick Sommer, his friend Jerry Uelsmann, and many other photographers who touched his life or his sensibility in some important way. It is a deeply personal collection put together with a sense of joy and curiosity that includes both icons and lesser-known gems spanning the history of photography.

This auction’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.

    • Provenance

      Collection of Peter C. Bunnell, Princeton, New Jersey

    • Literature

      Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, fig. 1530

A Reverence for Beauty: The Peter C. Bunnell Collection, Part 1

148

Kelp, China Cove, Point Lobos

1940
Gelatin silver print.
9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. (24.4 x 19.4 cm)
Signed and dated in pencil on the mount; annotated 'Seaweed' and negative number 'PL40-K-4' in pencil on the reverse of the mount.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$15,000 - 25,000 

Sold for $15,120

Contact Specialist

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


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

Photographs

New York Auction 12 October 2022