Imogen Cunningham’s tightly composed study of a garter snake dates to the time when her responsibilities as a mother of three small boys relegated her photography to subject matter near her house. Rather than confining her, this narrowing of focus resulted in some of her great botanical studies, as well as several images of snakes which her sons found in the garden. This example, in which the snake appears against an amorphous whorled background, is perhaps the best-known example from this series.
This photograph is printed on the warm-toned matte-surfaced paper that Cunningham favored in the 1920s. Like the two other early Cunningham photographs in this auction, lots 280 and 281, it is it is rendered here as a contact print. Cunningham laid the negative directly onto the photographic paper in the darkroom, yielding a finished image of exceptional focus and clarity the same size as the original negative. Cunningham was aware of the work of her Modernist counterparts and their propensity for smaller print formats, and this print possesses the same nuance and intimacy of scale as contemporaneous photographs by André Kertész, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Bauhaus photographers, for example. As a contact print, this photograph sets forth a remarkable amount of detail.
Extant prints of this image are scarce in any format. There is a contact print in the collection of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and another in a private collection. Three enlarged versions of the image are known to exist.
Lots 274 to 278 in the present auction come from the collection of pioneering gallerist Brent Sikkema (1948-2024). Sikkema was renowned for championing the work of some of the principal artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Kara Walker, Vik Muniz, Mark Bradford, Deana Lawson, and many others, and for broadening the market for Latin American art.
Mr. Sikkema studied photography and filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. After earning his BFA in 1970 he became director of traveling exhibitions, and later director of exhibitions, at the Visual Studies Workshop, the groundbreaking photographic collective in Rochester, New York. In 1976 he relocated to Boston where he worked for Vision Gallery, handling 19th and 20th century photography, later becoming its owner and maintaining an adventurous curatorial program. He made his first foray into the New York City gallery world in 1989, exhibiting in a temporary space. He opened a permanent gallery in 1991; called Wooster Gardens, it quickly became known as a premiere venue for contemporary art. In 1999, Sikkema moved the gallery to Chelsea, partnering with Michael Jenkins under the name Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Sikkema’s generous support inspired loyalty in the artists in his stable, many of whom chose to remain with the gallery even after receiving invitations from the larger mega-galleries.
Phillips is honored to be handling material from his estate. In addition to the photographs offered here, work from his collection will be featured in upcoming Editions and Design auctions this fall.
