For much of the past year, in my rounds through gallery shows and art fairs, I have anecdotally heard rumbles about slowing demand for photography, about much of photography being “out” at the moment, and other muted tales of woe, but without looking at the private sales books of gallery owners, it’s difficult to get a feel for just how much of a slowdown was actually occurring, and whether it was driven by broad economic malaise or something more intrinsic to the medium. And as the year passed, in tracking the auction data from sale to sale, I had an ... Read more at Collector Daily.

Over the past decade or two, we have seen many large art collectors decide to make the significant jump to start (and manage) their own smaller museums. Pier 24 Photography, the brainchild of Andy and Mary Pilara, opened in 2010 in one of the empty warehouse locations along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and essentially overnight, it became of the largest exhibition spaces devoted solely to photography anywhere. In the years since, the venue has built a strong reputation for itself, hosting nearly a dozen large scale exhibitions, publishing more than 20 books/catalogs, and slowly gathering a permanent collection of ... Read more at Collector Daily.

The single collector sale of prints by Robert Frank at Sotheby’s last week delivered surprisingly soft results. Not only did the top lot fail to find a buyer, the overall Buy-In rate came in above 50%, with particular weakness in the middle price tier. To make matters worse, there were no positive surprises to balance all those passes, leading to Total Sale Proceeds (of roughly $990K) that fell well below the low end of the aggregate pre-sale estimate range.... Read more at Collector Daily.

A rare vintage print of Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” headlined the recent Fine Photographs sale at Swann in New York, and delivered a frothy $300K outcome to buoy up the results of the sale. The rest of the action was quite a bit more predictable, with an overall Buy-In rate of roughly a third, a cluster of positive surprises, and a tally of the Total Sale Proceeds (of roughly $1.15M) that fell just above the low end of the aggregate pre-sale estimate range.... Read more at Collector Daily.

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of work by 17 artists/photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in a series of interconnected gallery spaces on the ground floor, and then again on the 7th floor. The show was organized by Mark Beasley. The following works are included in the show: Ground floor Janette Beckman: 8 archival pigment prints, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 2003, 2007; vitrine of archival materials, n.d. Robert Frank: 6 gelatin silver prints, 1952, 1957, 1972 Irving Penn: 3 gelatin silver prints, 1967, 1986 Richard Avedon: 2 gelatin silver prints, 1965, ... Read more at Collector Daily.

JTF (just the facts): A total of 110 black and white and color photographs from various photographers, hung against light grey walls in a large, divided gallery space and the entry area on the third floor of the museum. All of the works in the main gallery space were recently donated to the museum by the JGS Foundation; the works in the entry area are other recent acquisitions and donations. The following works are included in the show: Entry Bruce Cratsley: 1 enlarged vinyl, 1983/2022 Máximo Colón: 1 gelatin silver print, 1975/later Annie Ling: 1 archival pigment print, 2011 Jaime ... Read more at Collector Daily.

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of photographic and video works by 40 artists, spread across two floors of the museum. The show was organized by David Campany. The following works are included in the show: 2nd Floor Hannah Höch: 14 spread reproductions from Album (Scrapbook), 1933 John Heartfield: 2 photogravures, 1935 (in vitrine) Ernst Friedrich: 1 photobook/spread, 1925 Franz Roh: 1 collage, 1930 Robert Capa: 1 gelatin silver print, 1934-1935 Barbara Morgan: 3 gelatin silver prints, 1938/1972, 1938-39/c1980, 1965/c1980 Walker Evans: 1 digital inkjet print, 1936/2007 Tomoko Sawada: 1 gelatin silver print, 1998 Manuel Álvarez Bravo: 1 ... Read more at Collector Daily.

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 60 photographs and photobooks by 34 artists, variously framed and matted, and hung against white and yellow walls in a series of rooms on the second floor of the museum. All of the works on view are recent acquisitions/gifts or part of the museum’s permanent collection. The following works are included in the show: Roger Mayne: 1 gelatin silver print, 1956 Saul Steinberg: 1 gelatin silver print with applied media, 1950 John Cohen: 1 gelatin silver print, 1959 Don McCullin: 1 gelatin silver print, 1965 Walker Evans: 1 gelatin ... Read more at Collector Daily.

The 24th Photo Auction at OstLicht in Vienna last week suffered from weak price performance (or overly aggressive estimates). While the sell through was decent (with an overall Buy-In rate less than 30%), only 21% of the lots that sold found buyers in or above their estimate ranges. With no positive surprises to pick up the slack, the Total Sale Proceeds came in at roughly €525K, well below the aggregate pre-sale estimate range.... Read more at Collector Daily.