NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips announced the April 9 Photographs auction in New York, which includes over 230 lots from classic and contemporary masters. The sale will feature works by Peter Beard, Edward Steichen, Rudolf Koppitz, Andreas Gursky, Richard Misrach, and John Baldessari, among other leaders in the field, as well as several important works from prominent private collections.

Vanessa Hallett, Phillips’ Deputy Chairman, Americas, and Worldwide Head of Photographs said, “Following a strong year for the market, Phillips’ April auction brings together some of the most exquisite examples of the medium from the 20th and 21st centuries. From Edward Steichen’s portrait of Gloria Swanson to a stellar Düsseldorf School example by Andreas Gursky, we are delighted to present a truly exceptional selection of works. We are also honoured to have been entrusted with photographs from impressive private collections around the world, including the Collection of Dr. Saul Unter, the Collection of Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Washington, D.C., and a Private European Collection, which focuses on late 20th-century portraiture.”

Leading the auction on 9 April is Peter Beard’s Heart Attack City. While Beard’s photographic documentation of African wildlife is responsible for his early reputation, it is his collages that are among the most significant works in his oeuvre and that link him to artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell. This large and brilliantly complex work combines Beard’s deep interest in the natural world and his fascination with beauty. The juxtaposition of Marilyn Monroe with Beard’s aerial photographs of the elephant carcasses in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park eloquently draws these themes together within an impressive and visually dazzling composition. Beard’s handwritten script appears around the entire periphery of the central images and includes daily memoranda, and statistics and history on the elephant deaths at Tsavo. Drawings by the Hog Ranch Art Department – African artists who often embellish his work – add layers of meaning and provide an injection of bright color as they fill the margins of this impressive work.

Andreas Gursky’s EM, Arena, Amsterdam I is a strong example of the photographer’s own unique style, based on the Düsseldorf School teachings of Bernd Becher. In the early 1990s he began to incorporate digital post-production into his image‐making process. By manipulating his images, Gursky’s goal is not to overtly fictionalize his work but to create hyperreal scenes that transcend any visual, spacial or technical limitations. With its powerful combination of color and monumental scale, EM, Arena, Amsterdam I is one such scene. Shooting from what seems an impossibly elevated vantage point, Gursky captures a scene so distant that viewers are removed from the details of the match unfolding below. He crops the field so as to show only a selection of isolated players and eliminates the crowd populating the stadium.

Also among the highlights of the April auction is Richard Corman’s recently rediscovered set of 66 Polaroids of Madonna from 1983 (2 of 66). A budding photographer who worked as a studio assistant to Richard Avedon, Corman was hired to photograph Madonna for a film treatment. In these photos, the worldwide phenomenon was just on the verge of stardom, at a pivotal point in her career. Just one month following this photoshoot, her self-titled debut album was released. Including the Billboard hits Lucky Star, Borderline, and Holiday, the album would ultimately be certified 5 times platinum for having sold 5 million albums worldwide. Corman, like Andy Warhol and others before him, favored the Polaroid process for the “simplicity” and immediacy that the medium offered. Due to the instantaneous and playful qualities that are inherent to Polaroids, the resulting prints, each unique, capture Madonna’s club-kid-cool style as a rising star.