The items represent my earliest interest in collecting photographs and my decades of interest in early American architecture and decorative arts.
I was introduced to photography and darkroom magic in school and soon aspired to become a magazine photographer. Wilson Hicks, former editor of Life, and David Douglas Duncan were key mentors when I was a teenager. During my last year at the University of Miami in 1972, the Director of National Geographic’s photographic department recruited me for an internship, which morphed into a full-time contract. My assignments for the National Geographic Society over the next nineteen years spanned five continents.
From 2000 to 2003 I was the director of Magnum Photos and managed the transition to primarily digital business operations. My first monograph published in 2013 was Kodachrome Memory: American Pictures 1972 – 1991.
The Briscoe Center at the University of Texas acquired my archive in 2024. Over the past five years, my interest has been focused on curating and licensing pre-digital photographs made by other photographers on assignment for National Geographic.
Eugène Atget. Hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple. 1898.
Vintage albumen silver print toned with gold chloride.
Eugène Atget created an idiosyncratic portrait of Paris on the cusp of the modern era. His declared modest ambition was to provide other reference images as source materials for other artists in categories including monuments, landscapes, and flowers; but the rapid modernization of Paris under the Haussmann plan inspired Atget to focus on the vintage architecture, cobbled streets, and the narrow passages of vieux Paris as medieval neighborhoods were razed.
Despite technical advancements that made the production of high-quality photographic images easier, Atget worked with a cumbersome view camera on tripod and heavy, fragile glass plates. Days before his death in 1927, Berenice Abbott photographed Atget and soon acquired much of his archive of 5,000 vintage prints and 1,000 glass plates. Abbott was Atget’s posthumous champion and his work is widely cited as the true beginning of photography as an art.
Berenice Abbott. Lescaze House. New York WPA Federal Art Project, circa 1936.
Vintage silver print.
Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) is best known for architectural photographs commissioned by the WPA Federal Art Project between 1935 to 1938. Abbott was introduced to fine photography as an assistant to Man Ray in Paris. Influenced by Eugene Atget, Abbott photographed New York City buildings with meticulous discipline. Considered the earliest “International Style” building in New York City, 211 East 48th Street was designed by and home to William Lescaze. The unaltered façade survives on 48th Street.
The Anderson Galleries. Colonial Furniture: The Superb Collection of Mr. Francis Hill Bigelow. New York, 1923.
Album of photographs and printed catalog.
Francis Hill Bigelow (1859-1933) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, collected and wrote about American decorative arts. His furniture auction commenced on January 17th at The Anderson Galleries. The catalog lists 167 lots. This album is the only known collection of vintage prints pasted onto pages as the images.
The walnut chair featured on these pages was made in Philadelphia between 1740 and 1747. Furniture scholar Morrison Hecksher attributes this chair to cabinet- and chairmaker Joseph Armitt, who was born in New Jersey and died in 1747. Described by Hecksher as “The most fully developed Philadelphia roundabout,” this chair was bought at the Bigelow sale by dealer Louis G. Myers for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the chair is currently on display in Gallery 747.
