NEW YORK, 5 September 2017 – Sotheby’s is pleased to present the inaugural sale of Postwar and Contemporary Photographs on 28 September 2017 in New York. The sale will be led by 49 exceptional works from the distinguished Ames Collection, including masterpieces by Thomas Struth, Matthew Barney, Vik Muniz, and David Hockney, among many others. Alongside the Ames Collection, the sale offers a diverse selection of innovative works by artists including Vito Acconci, Helena Almeida, Shirin Neshat, Chris McCaw and Kohei Yoshiyuki. The New York exhibition will be open to the public from 22 September through 27 September.

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION: IMPORTANT PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE AMES COLLECTION
In November 2016, Sotheby’s was honored to offer The Triumph of Painting: The Steven & Ann Ames Collection, a collection that was formed through decades of study and appreciation for significant paintings by artists such as Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz. The Ames Collection of photographs feature pivotal images from many of the leading American and German photographers of the late 20th and early 21st century. Thomas Struth’s photograph of Gerhard Richter is a keystone of the extensive group (estimate $40/60,000), which also includes works by notable photographers associated with the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, including Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and Elger Esser. United in aesthetic, print quality, and commanding scale, these artists form the core of the Ames photographs collection.

9 Entrancing Photos in the Spirit of the Düsseldorf School
The works from the Ames Collection, with a particular strength in works from the U.S. and Germany, feature pivotal images from each photographer’s career. Rineke Dijkstra’s striking group of pre-teenage girls at the North Sea, Castricum aan Zee, The Netherlands (estimate $30/50,000) is undoubtedly one of the artist’s most acclaimed images, while Thomas Struth’s Mailänder Dom (Fassade), Mailand (estimate $300/500,000) has been included in nearly every major exhibition and publication on the photographer’s work. Cindy Sherman’s unsettling self-portrait as a clown, Untitled #415 (estimate $180/250,000), is exemplary of the artist’s iconic boundary-pushing images made in the aftermath of 11 September, 2001.

The 49 lots from the Ames Collection offered in this sale, created between 1988 and 2010, demonstrate the shared vision of two generations of collectors— that of Mr. Ames and his son Adam. It was to Adam, the talented, multi-disciplinary artist and Parsons School of Design professor, that Mr. Ames shared his collection of photographs.

ADDITIONAL POSTWAR AND CONTEMPORARY HIGHLIGHTS
In addition to the Ames Collection, our inaugural sale of Postwar and Contemporary Photographs offers a selection of important works that show the broad range of photography: from photographs of performance, including seminal works by Helena Almeida, Vito Acconci, Sophie Calle; to documentary featuring Mikhael Subotzky and Edward Burtynsky; to experimental photography by Walead Beshty, Eileen Quinlan, and Barbara Kasten.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s A Storybook Life (The Complete Series), a collection of 76 photographs, spanning nearly three decades of the artist’s career, builds upon a fable-like narrative (estimate $250/350,000). Here, diCorcia strayed from using strangers or hired actors as models, and instead employed his friends and family, in turn, adding a deeper personal meaning to the work.

Postwar and Contemporary Photographs also features works from the distinguished collection of Dale & Doug Anderson, who after years of extensively collecting Native American and glass art, became enamored with contemporary photography - focusing primarily on non-American artists working at the turn of the 20th century. Sotheby’s is delighted to offer 14 works from their photography collection, including Ilit Azoulay’s panoramic photomontage Red (from the series Panic in Lack of Event) (estimate $18/22,000), marking the first time this work will appear at auction.