Barbara Morgan

oversized, mounted to Bainbridge Board, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the mount, signed, titled, dated, copyrighted '1972,' and annotated 'Vintage' in ink and with the photographer's copyright stamp on the reverse, framed, the Buhl Collection label on the reverse, 1938

The family of the photographer

Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, 1994

Curtis L. Carter and William C. Agee, Barbara Morgan: Prints, Drawings, Watercolors & Photographs (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1988), p. 76

Barbara Morgan (Aperture, 1999), p. 73

John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs:  100 Photographs from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (The Museum of Modern Art, 1973), p. 137

This early, warm print, on matte-surface paper, is on a Bainbridge Board Number 80 mount. It is in essentially excellent condition. Faint silvering is visible at the print's periphery, and two thin bands of silvering run across the lower portion and down the right side of the image. Along the right edge of the image are abrasions that have been retouched or inpainted. In high raking light, a few small creases are visible overall, none of which appear to break the emulsion. There is also some edge wear, with resultant minor chipping.The mount is lightly soiled from handling. On the reverse of the mount, the photographer's copyright stamp reads: 'Copyright Photograph / Barbara Morgan / 120 High Point Road / Scarsdale, New York 10583 / When Used In Any Media / Credit Must Be Given / Photograph by Barbara Morgan / No Arbitrary Cropping May Be Done.' Also on the reverse are the following annotations in ink: 'N.A. Vintage' (underlined), 'Not archivally printed - 1938 / Vintage,' and '(with Erick Hawkins)'; and in pencil, 'N.A.' and '#4.'When examined under ultraviolet light, this print does not appear to fluoresce.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Trained as a painter and printmaker, Barbara Morgan was inspired by her husband, the journalist and photographer Willard Morgan, to add a camera to her repertoire.  As she relates in her Aperture memoir, the experience of seeing original silver prints by Edward Weston was a revelation; watching her husband develop photographs in their bathroom-darkroom another.   After the birth of her second son, the uninterrupted hours she needed for painting seemed to evaporate; and so in 1935, she set up her photography studio on East 23^rd Street in New York, overlooking Madison Square.

Spring on Madison Square, one of her defining images, was created by the techniques of photomontage and photogram.  The dancer Eric Hawkins is superimposed above a wintry day in Madison Square, the gestures of his hands paralleled by photograms of flowers.  As Morgan observes in her memoir, her experience with the woodcut, and its overprinting of successive color blocks, gave her expertise in printing from multiple negatives. ‘So when I began to feel the quality of light-projected images on sensitive paper, it seemed quite natural to make multiple-negative compositions through photographic superimposition on the enlarger easel,’ she wrote.  In photomontage, Morgan realized that photography was, in fact, its own medium, distinct from painting: ‘I find photomontage, which is a direct superimposition of negatives, a medium uniquely its own.  The timing of the light beam for different densities and nuances, and the fresh, vibrant overplay, involve no painterly reflexes that I can feel’ (Barbara Morgan, Aperture 11:1, 1964, p. 21, italics hers).

The Buhl Collection print offered here is perhaps the finest print of the image ever to appear at auction.