An album of 32 photographs of Yosemite and the American West. Various places, c. 1890s

This beautiful album contains many splendid views of the scenic wonders of Yosemite. Subjects include the many magnificent falls, the Mariposa Grove of sequoias, and the great geological formations. At least two of the views in this collection were taken by Carleton Watkins. Those for which attribution to Watkins has been confirmed are singled out below, but this collection merits further investigation to identify Watkins photographs.

$12,000

Collection of Ten Photographs from Mooney’s Pioneering Investigations of the Ghost Dance and Other Native American Circle Dances. Various places, c. 1892-93

The rare and important collection documents the famous Ghost Dance and related circle dances soon after Wounded Knee. The collection testifies to the tragic demise of the Native American spiritual and cultural practices during the tumultuous Ghost Dance period. These photographs were taken by James Mooney (1861-1921), an anthropologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology. He left Washington in late 1890 to investigate the potentially incendiary Ghost Dance movement. Mooney’s rare portrait of Wovoka is one highlight of the collection. Mooney’s Ghost Dance photographs are of the greatest rarity in the market. We can trace no others having appeared for sale.

$20,000

Collection of 23 Great Baltimore Fire photographs. Baltimore, 1904

The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 destroyed 1500 buildings and damaged another 1000, bringing property loss from the disaster to an estimated $100 million. It remains the third most devastating fire in the United States history, surprised only by Chicago (1871) and San Francisco (1906). This remarkable series of photographs documents the destruction. In many photographs people stand on the street surveying the destruction, sometimes with water still trained on the smoldering ruins.

$1,800

Coney Island Panorama. Brooklyn, 1907

This is a splendid panorama of Coney Island taken in 1907.

$4,500

Original glass plate interpositive prepared by Curtis for the printing of The North American Indian. Curtis, 1924

This is a splendid original glass plate made for Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian, the greatest photographic work on Native Americans. Curtis, one of the greatest American artists of his era, was the most celebrated photographer of North American Indians.

$35,000

The Matriarch. New York, [1935, printed ca. 1960s]

Steichen made this celebrated photograph for a fundraising campaign for the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies during the first dark days of Nazi Germany.

$25,000

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw. London, 1938, printed 2017

Shaw is pictured in three-quarter view with artful shadow play down the right side of his face. Sternberger was a ‘master of light and shadow’ according to contemporary museum directors.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Sigmund Freud. London, 1938, printed 2017

Sternberger and Freud had known each other for years before they fled Europe with the rise of Nazism. Though Freud was terminally ill and at first hesitant about receiving visitors in 1938, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis said it “makes me feel good to see old-familiar faces again” when Sternberger arrived. This is said to have been Freud’s last portrait session before his death in 1939.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw examining stamps. London, 1938, printed 2017

In this portrait Shaw examines the stamps which Sternberger had designed for the Belgian Royal Family, featuring the Royal children. Shaw was a philatelist, and the offer of the stamps was part of Sternberger’s method to gain access to Shaw.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Basis for the U.S. Dime. Washington, 1939, printed 2017

This photograph was the basis for FDR’s bust on the face of the American dime, first minted in 1946.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300