While this is in some ways a lifetime achievement award, it has been spurred specifically by A. D. Coleman’s extraordinary series of blog posts on his website Photocritic International that debunks the myth of Robert Capa’s “melted” D-Day negatives. Along with his collaborators on this series — J. Ross Baughman, Charles Herrick, and Rob McElroy — Coleman has shown how long-form scholarship on the web can be a powerful force for understanding. […]
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At the moment it seems that the attempt to find a permanent home for the remainder of the collection is sincere. One hopes that the success of the auction does not allow greed to start to creep into the thinking of the creditors, or Polaroid’s bankruptcy trustee, John Stoebner. Hopefully they will not be asking for too much in return. There is little chance that another sale of remaining works would generate a fraction of the excitement or prices that this sale did. Not only has the cream of the crop been removed, but as has been shown with numerous second sales of supposedly rare material — like the second de Prangey sale of early daguerreotypes — these sales more often than not fall flat and never live up to expectations. […] As some of the Adams murals were hung in corridors and the cafeteria, some had various marks (one could see small gouges on at least a couple of the murals in Sotheby’s preview) and Lyons remembers doing surface cleaning to remove food from some. But perhaps the most egregious damage was done when cutouts were made in some to make room for electric outlet boxes! At least Polaroid saved the cutout pieces and Lyons was able to replace them. I don’t know if any of those murals were among the ones offered in the sale, but it’s possible. […] It is my considered opinion that Sotheby’s, Singer, and trustee John Stoebner, who had threatened A. D. Coleman with a lawsuit, should instead be sending him a dozen, long-stemmed, red roses; a bottle of Charles Heidsieck 1995 Blanc des Millénaires champagne; and The Farmer’s Market Feast with a 56-piece Every Flavor Box, a 28-piece box of fruit squares, a 12-piece box of dipped apricots, and a 6-piece box of raspberry chocolates from John & Kira’s chocolates. For the very small and inconsequential price of removing a handful of lots from the sale, Sotheby’s gained publicity and notoriety for the auction far in excess of what they could have generated on their own. The idea of the scarcity of these objects and the vague hint that this may be a very fleeting opportunity to obtain them certainly ginned up the bidding enormously. […] |
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Polaroid Collection: They’re Closed
At 5 p.m. CST this afternoon, bidding closed on three separate chunks of the now-dismembered Polaroid Collection. For all intents and purposes, the dispersal of this unique, irreplaceable collection will have run its course by the end of this month.
The first phase of the ill-fated Collection’s distribution in parts took place last June, through […]