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Still Life, Street Life
Jean Dykstra
04/01/2004
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Today, Weston
and Arbus are considered modern masters, representing two genres in photography,
both of which bring high valuations at auction and in the private trade.
Weston—along with Walker Evans, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams—is a key figure in
the group of photographers who were active in the decades between the two World
Wars, long considered one of the most important periods in American photography.
Arbus is one of the early street photographers from the 1960s and 1970s
(Friedlander, Winogrand, William Klein and, even earlier, Robert Frank, are
others) whose influence is reflected in the works of any number of younger
contemporary artists.
 | | EDWARD WESTON'S Two Shells, 1927. |
The Arbus exhibition has certainly drawn attention to
this period, but the artistic legacy these photographers have passed on to a
younger generation—a more intimate, personal approach to documentary photography
and a keen attention to the mundane and the ordinary—is becoming clearer. This
growing interest was amply evidenced by the spate of exhibitions in New York
this winter focusing on pioneering photographers of the 1970s. Cheim & Read
Gallery mounted a William Eggleston show that focused on his early black and
white work. His Memphis, an image of a seemingly monster-sized tricycle on a
suburban street, brought $207,500 at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg in
October. The Kennedy Boesky Gallery showed Seventies Color Photography, which
included work by Eggleston, Joel Sternfeld, Richard Misrach and Joel Meyerowitz,
all of whom had solo shows in Manhattan’s Chelsea district this winter.
The
market for these images has grown exponentially since the first photography
auctions were held and the first photography dealers opened their doors in the
1970s. “The pricing has gone haywire,” says Alan Siegel, chairman and CEO of
Siegelgale, a New York-based strategic-branding firm. “The market has changed so
radically that something has to be really extraordinary before I buy
today.”
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