Henri Cartier-Bresson - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | Phillips

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  • The remarkable selection of photographs offered in this auction as lots 203 through 240 comes from the collection of Peter C. Bunnell (1937-2021), the pioneering curator, teacher, and photographic historian. All of the sale’s proceeds will be distributed to six institutions with whom Bunnell was associated — Rochester Institute of Technology, Ohio University, Yale University, The George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and Princeton University Art Museum — to establish endowments to support the study of photographic history.

     

    Bunnell began his long career in photography as a student of Minor White’s at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1950s, and was recruited by White to work on the seminal periodical of artistic photography, Aperture. He joined the staff of The Museum of Modern Art in 1966 as a collection cataloguer, becoming Associate Curator and then Curator of Photography. At MoMA he curated the noteworthy exhibitions Photography as Printmaking (1968), Photography into Sculpture (1970), and the first retrospective of the work of Clarence H. White (1971). In 1972, he was hired as the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University. 

     

    Bunnell served as Director of the Princeton University Art Museum from 1973 to 1978, and as Acting Director from 1998 to 2000, while also being the Museum’s Curator of Photography throughout the entirety of his tenure. Bunnell built a broad-ranging collection of photographs at the Museum, the firsthand examination of which became a central element of the student experience in his classes and seminars. Bunnell also assembled a personal collection of photography over the course of his long career that reflects his vast and deep understanding of the medium. Begun in the 1950s, before photography galleries and dealers were commonplace, Bunnell’s collection is a deeply personal one, put together with a sense of joy and curiosity that includes both icons and lesser-known gems spanning the history of photography.

    • Provenance

      Collection of Peter C. Bunnell, Princeton, New Jersey

    • Literature

      Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment, pl. 13
      Cartier-Bresson, The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, pl. 9
      Bibliothèque nationale de France, De qui s'agit-il?, p. 102
      Chéroux, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now, pl. 57, fig. 14
      Chéroux, Aperture Masters of Photography: Henri Cartier-Bresson, p. 27
      Chéroux, Discoveries: Henri Cartier-Bresson, p. 32
      Clair, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Europeans, p. 74
      Galassi, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work, p. 108
      Montier, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art, pl. 14
      B. Newhall and Kirstein, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, p. 17
      Steidl, Henri Cartier-Bresson Scrapbook, pls. 16, 59
      Thames & Hudson, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Image and The World, pl. 115
      Thames & Hudson, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, pl. 90

    • Artist Biography

      Henri Cartier-Bresson

      French • 1908 - 2004

      Candidly capturing fleeting moments of beauty among the seemingly ordinary happenings of daily life, Henri Cartier-Bresson's work is intuitive and observational. Initially influenced by the Surrealists' "aimless walks of discovery," he began shooting on his Leica while traveling through Europe in 1932, revealing the hidden drama and idiosyncrasy in the everyday and mundane. The hand-held Leica allowed him ease of movement while attracting minimal notice as he wandered in foreign lands, taking images that matched his bohemian spontaneity with his painterly sense of composition.

      Cartier-Bresson did not plan or arrange his photographs. His practice was to release the shutter at the moment his instincts told him the scene before him was in perfect balance. This he later famously titled "the decisive moment" — a concept that would influence photographers throughout the twentieth century. 

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A Reverence for Beauty: The Peter C. Bunnell Collection, Part 2

214

Lot offered with No Reserve

Seville

1933
Gelatin silver print, printed later.
9 1/2 x 14 in. (24.1 x 35.6 cm)
Signed in ink in the margin.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$5,000 - 7,000 

Sold for $7,620

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 4 April 2023