Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography
Live Virtual Auction, 18 September 2024
Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography
About the SessionWays of Seeing: South African and International Photography showcases a collection of works that take a critical approach to photography, layered with themes of personhood, subjectivity and community.
The sale features works from distinct collections by passionate collectors with a discerning eye and deep engagement with art – featuring The Gary Eisenberg Collection, part of the Linda Givon Collection, works from The Photographic Archival and Preservation Association as well as a group of contemporary African artists who have made a significant mark within the medium of photography including, Zanele Muholi, Mary Sibande, Kudzanai Chiurai, Pieter Hugo and Nandipha Mntambo, among others.
With a title that pays homage to a great thinker, John Berger, Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography challenges traditional notions of the gaze, inviting us to engage the human experience through images of nude physical forms, intimate portraits, landscapes and depictions of the environment. The sale is a meditation on the ethics of seeing, often fraught with complexity and contestation.
It highlights the diversity within both local and global photographic traditions through an array of works, with significant contributions from African photographers alongside globally renowned artists such as Bill Brandt (British), Nan Goldin (American), Bettina Rheims (French), Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian), Viviane Sassen (Dutch), Wolfgang Tillmans (German), Joel-Peter Witkin (American), André Kertész (Hungarian), Roman Vishniac (Russian-American), and Youssef Nabil (Egyptian).
A significant portion of Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography is drawn from The Gary Eisenberg Collection following the tragic and untimely passing of Gary earlier this year. This inclusion comes with immense gratitude from Gary’s wife, Dominique Eisenberg.
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About this Item
signed
Notes
The present lot features Bill Brandt's then ten-year old niece, Judith.
“Brandt’s distinctive vision—his ability to present the mundane world as fresh and strange—emerged in London in the 1930s, and drew from his time in the Paris studio of Man Ray. His visual explorations of the society, landscape, and literature of England are indispensable to any understanding of photographic history and, arguably, to our understanding of life in Britain during the middle of the 20th century.”1
Bill Brandt is one of Britain’s preeminent photographers, celebrated for his ability to capture the essence of his time with imagination and compassion. His practice traced the stark realities of the 1930s Depression through the intimate forms of documentary photography, including portraits, nudes and landscapes.
In the present lot, Brandt captures, with distinctive sensibility, the face of a young girl against the backdrop of a domestic setting. The girl’s face frames the foreground of the image, creating a dreamlike, almost surrealist quality that transforms her ordinary face into something else. Captured in 1955, the image has been featured in multiple significant exhibitions globally, including ‘A History of Photography from Chicago Collection’ (1982) at the Art Institute of Chicago as well as ‘Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light’ (2013) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Brandt was at the forefront of embedding photography as a modernist artistic medium, influencing a pantheon of photographic masters globally.
1. Museum of Modern Art (2013) 'Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light’ Exhibition Text, online, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1318, accessed 20 August 2024.
Provenance
The Gary Eisenberg Collection.
Exhibited
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bill Brandt, 15 September to 30 November 1969.
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, A History of Photography from Chicago Collection, 24 April to 6 June 1982.
Art Instituite of Chicago, Chicago, Sights Unseen: Photographs from the Permanent Collection, 16 October to 13 March 1994.
Art Instiute of Chicago, Chicago, Photographs by the Score: Personal visions twenty-some years apart, 7 October 2006 to 14 January 2007.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light, 6 March to 12 August 2013.
Literature
Photography Year Book, Photography Magazine Ltd, 1956, page 21.
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