The Expert Eye

In 1930 three people, Edward Weston, Lincoln Steffens, and Jack Black (not THAT Jack Black) have some life-changing experiences and their stories intersect with a woman named Ginny Williams who buys a portrait 60 years later.

In the early 2000s Alan Pflieger, a photographer in Huntington, Indiana (and my dad), acquired a huge archive of negatives from the Rickert Studio, which had been in operation from 1912 to 1986. He saved the negatives from being destroyed. My parents stored these negatives in their house for years until, through a funny series of events, they ended up making their way to the Huntington County Historical Society.  A few years before and several states south, Mike Disfarmer was documenting the rural community of Heber Springs, Arkansas. When he died, his negatives were in danger of being lost forever.

Emily Bierman, SVP and Global Head of Sotheby’s Photographs, chats with Aimee about the April 13, 2022 Photographs auction.  Covered: estimate “Smack Down” sessions, photograph obsessions, missed opportunities, and the health of the market from two people who should know.

Lee Marks, a photography dealer and consultant, heads Lee Marks Fine Art, established in New York City in 1981 and now located in Shelbyville, Indiana.  Lee has served in many roles in the photographic field, including gallery employee, writer, curator, President of the non-profit organization AIPAD, and business owner.  This talk was conducted by Zoom in January 2022.

In 1914, Mary Wigman created a dance that would shatter the rules about what dance was supposed to look like.  A trio of images by Charlotte Rudolph of Wigman came through the Photography department at Sotheby’s recently. Aimee gets to the bottom of what these images had to do with the Suspiria remake and why everyone was so upset about modern dance.

In this episode Aimee gives you the secret five-step process for looking at Ansel Adams prints, providing lots of detail on Adams’ signature (and unique) style, how to narrow down print dates, analyze paper, stamps, and more.

In the second half of my interview with Deborah Bell, we talk about Deborah's experiences as a private dealer, auction house specialist, gallery owner, and educator.

After 13 years as a private dealer, Deborah Bell opened her first public gallery at 511 West 25th Street in Chelsea and remained there for 10 years (2001-2011). In 2011 Bell closed the gallery in order to join Christie’s New York, where she was Head of the Photographs Department for 2-1/2 years. In 2014 she re-established Deborah Bell Photographs, and in April 2015 moved to the gallery’s present location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  This is the first half of an interview conducted November 2021.

What if you could send from your brain straight to a camera?  In the 1960s, a man named Ted Serios and a psychiatrist named Dr. Jule Eisenbud set out to prove to the world that it could be done.

In this episode, Steven Shainberg, director of 'Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus' joins me to discuss hero worship, hairy actors, and make-believe.