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Silver Eye to auction antique, new photos
Wednesday, May 17, 2000 By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic
For several decades, interest in photography -- as an art form and in the auction houses -- has been escalating, and on Saturday local collectors will have a chance to bid on 129 lots that span the history of the medium at the sixth annual Silver Eye Center for Photography Benefit Auction.
For the first time, the auction has a Web site (www.silvereye.org) with reproductions of the works and catalog information, as well as an absentee bid form that may be mailed in, faxed, dropped off or copied into e-mail.
The last auction was held in 1997, and this time both the number of works and overall quality have risen. Executive director Linda Benedict-Jones modestly attributes this to the higher profile the nonprofit organization has been building, but a large part of that is due to her connections in the national photography community, made while she was curator of the famed Polariod Collection in Cambridge, Mass.
For example, one of the most striking works for sale is "Sluices at a Reservoir Near Badulka, Sri Lanka" by nationally known partners Laura McPhee and Virginia Beahan, whom Benedict-Jones gave film and material support to while she was at Polaroid. When she called them to ask for an auction donation, their exhibition had just closed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
"They wanted to do something nice for Pittsburgh ... and I feel extremely privileged," Benedict-Jones says, adding that "artists have to be careful in their responses to requests for donations. [McPhee and Beahan] get calls every week for work -- Duane Michals [another contributor who's a native Pittsburgher] gets them every day -- and it's easy to say no. It's more difficult to say yes because they have to make or find a print, package it and ship it."
Works range from a daguerreotype of a woman with shawl, of about 1850, to an inkjet print of Joni Mitchell made this year (taken in 1969) by Graham Nash of the musical group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Benedict-Jones expects the vast majority of photographs to sell for between $100 and $500, with some going for $50-$100 and the more recognized names selling to $1,000.
Realism, portraits, documentary and fine art, color and black and white are represented. One of New Yorker William Wegman's famed Weimaraners, seen in other series at the Carnegie Museum of Art, poses as a mountain goat. Closer to home, there are several works by the late Pittsburgh photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris.
Photographs seen in recent Silver Eye exhibitions are included too, such as James VanDerZee's "Gypsy Woman" and Elijah Gowin's "Snake Legs." And New Mexican Jim Stone's "Bujur, who has nothing to sell because there is no milk, in his ice-cream stand: Pogradec, Albania" and Post-Gazette Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Martha Rial's "Havana, Cuba" provide a sneak preview of the next show.
Among the many local photographers represented are Sue Abramson, Charlee Brodsky, Pamela Bryan, John Fobes, Aaronel de Roy Gruber, Clyde Hare, Steve Mellon, Annie O'Neill, Mark Perrott, William Real, Donald Robinson, Richard Stoner, Lorraine Vullo and William Wade.
The photographs may be previewed, and bids may be left, at the gallery from noon to 9 p.m. today through Friday. At 7 p.m. tomorrow, a free reception and gallery talk, "What To Buy and Why," will be given by Benedict-Jones, Concept Gallery director and auctioneer Sam Berkovitz and Post-Gazette photographer William Wade.
The auction will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, preceded by champagne mimosas, coffee and pastries at 9:30. Admission is $20, and reservations are recommended as seating is filling quickly. The Silver Eye is at 1015 E. Carson St., South Side. For reservations: 412-431-1810.
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