Providing the impetus to the new focus is the consignment of a collection of photographs by important 20th century American and European photographers. The 30 prints were amassed by an American gentleman based in Cambridgeshire during the last decade.
The single-owner collection comprises works by some of the best-known photographers of the past century including Americans Ansel Adams (1902-84), Imogen Cunningham (1883-1984) and Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958), and French masters Dora Maar (1907-97), Robert Doisneau (1912-94) and Édouard Boubat (1923-99). Many of the works betray an interest in photo journalism and in particular the sensitive images of deprivation and social inequality in the US and Europe that proved so influential in the years before and after the Second World War.
Concentrating on the issue of migratory labourers hired to pick fruit and vegetables in the wartime US is this silver gelatin prints of Adams’ Trailer Camp Children, Richmond, California, 1944, pictured above.
Printed in 1974 and signed in pencil, it has an estimate of £2000-3000 at the auction in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.
