NEW YORK, NY.- The Beatles top the pantheon of rock and pop stars when it comes to photographs as well as music – as can be seen in
Swann Auction Galleries’ April 20 Images & Objects: Photographs & Photobooks sale.
On offer will be a complete limited edition portfolio of 12 silver prints by Harry Benson from 1964, printed in 2003 under the title The Beatles: 40th Anniversary.
The portfolio includes one of the celebrated images from when The Fab Four met Muhammad Ali – or Cassius Clay, as he was then known – at the 5th Street Gym in Miami on February 18, 1964, just a week before the legendary fight with Sonny Liston that made Clay World Heavyweight Champion.
Clay verbally sparred with John, Paul, George and Ringo, with the band playing up for the press to create a series of iconic images, including the one where all four lay on the canvas at his feet as though they had been knocked out, with the boxer roaring and beating his chest above them.
Beatles images are highly sought after by collectors, but one such as this, caught at the height of their powers, just before they released their hit single Can’t Buy Me Love, and with history’s greatest boxer on the verge of the breakthrough fight of his career, brings every element together to create the perfect image.
Along with the rest of the photographs, the limited edition portfolio is estimated at $8,000 to $12,000.
Other highlights from the auction include the Surreal photograph of Salvador Dalí at his easel, frozen in the moment as he and all around him – painting, chair, cats and water, fly through the air.
Dalí Atomicus, as the image is titled, is the work of Philippe Halsman from 1948. This silver print was completed circa 1951, has an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000.
One of the photographer’s most famous pictures, Weegee’s Coney Island, a silver print from 1940, printed in the late 1950s to early ’60s, captures the seething crowd on a hot July 22, many of them waving at the camera after the photographer danced, screamed and called at them to gain their attention. The estimate is $7,000 to $10,000.
Back on the rock and pop front, Swann will offer approximately 95 silver and chromogenic prints of rock stars on TV screens in the 1970s. The lot carries an estimate of $800 to $1,200.
