Arbus’s 1968 photograph of the Tarnopol family, who lived in a bedroom community outside New York City, was originally included in a special issue of the London Sunday Times Magazine devoted to the subject of the modern-day family. More than fifty years after its making, this image remains an insightful summation of suburban ennui.
If any photograph epitomizes Avedon’s early career as a revolutionary force within fashion photography, it is his 1955 image “Dovima with Elephants.” Blending his theatrical sense of design with his love of real-world settings, here he positioned his favorite model, Dovima, in a Dior gown of the latest fashion. Her languid form stands amidst a trio of elephants at the famed Cirque d’Hiver (Winter Circus) in Paris.
Avedon later recounted, “I saw the elephants under an enormous skylight and in a second I knew. I then had to find the right dress and I knew there was a potential here for a kind of dream image.” Since having appeared in the September 1955 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, where Avedon was a staff photographer, this iconic image has been imitated but never surpassed.
Cunningham’s large, early photographs, such as this print of False Hellebore (Glacial Lily), represent her best botanical compositions, which brought her international fame when they were featured in the landmark 1929 exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart. This image was among the works included.
The same artistic vision that made Eakins one of America’s greatest painters also rendered him a superb photographer. His albumen prints infrequently come to market; this photograph is even more rare for capturing a boxing image, one of his signature subjects.
Scientist and professor Harold Edgerton’s mutli-flash photographs — in which several exposures are made on a single negative — revolutionized our understanding of the nuances of motion. Legendary amateur golfer Bobby Jones (1902–1971), captured in this image swinging his driver, is fondly remembered as cofounder of the Masters Tournament and codesigner of the Augusta National Golf Club.
Included in Frank’s influential photobook The Americans (1958), this photograph of a desolate stretch of U.S. 285 in New Mexico captures the strange blend of isolation and adventure that defines the experience of driving through large swathes of open highway in the American Southwest.
Man Ray’s reputation as the preeminent portrait photographer in Paris was already cemented when he created this solarized nude in 1937. He accentuated the form of his sitter with gouache and ink, further enhancing the heightened contrast around the edges of the body produced by the solarization technique. This unique composition portrays the woman as if she emanates an ethereal glow from within.
Penn’s portraits made during a 1970 trip to New Guinea document various types of people, from warriors and mudmen to diverse family groups. This platinum-palladium print of “Cat Woman” captures in exquisite detail the multi-textured layers of her garments and accessories, all of which frame her penetrating stare.
Stieglitz's Camera Work, one of the key documents of 20th-century photography, is rare as a complete set. Published from 1903 to 1917, this sumptuous quarterly showcased the finest examples of modern art, photography, and art criticism. Photogravures by Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Gertrude Käsebier, Heinrich Kühn, Anne Brigman, Clarence White, and many others are included within the fifty volumes.
Paul Strand and Rebecca, his wife, began visiting Santa Fe in 1930. This image — the last he made with a 4x5-inch camera before switching to a larger-format camera mounted on a tripod in 1931 — was frequently printed as a gelatin silver enlargement in the 1950s and ’60s. Early platinum prints of Grazing Horses, such as the one offered here, are exceedingly rare.
South African photographer Zanele Muholi began their portrait series, Faces and Phases, in 2006 to document black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people’s lives in their home country, where each sitter suffered regular discrimination and violence because of their LGBTI identity.
