Additional Images

Provenance:

Deja Vue Gallery, Toronto, ON

Note:

With a program centred on photography, the Deja Vue Gallery was one of the first spaces in Toronto to champion the medium. The diversity of the Gallery’s collection includes Canadian artists Richard Harrington and Yousuf Karsh. Harrington, known for his work in the Canadian Arctic, recorded the vanishing nomadic lifestyle of the Inuit. In his later book, “The Face of the Arctic”, he wrote that “in the midst of this misery, I took photographs. These pictures would, I hope, show the outside world what real suffering was. They would also show the strength, endurance, courage and ingenuity of an almost exhausted people.” (1)

In contrast, Karsh believed that a portrait should be more than just a representation of the physical appearance of a person, and should also convey their inner spirit and character. Thanks to a variety of light techniques, each portrait included in this auction – “Georges Braque”, 1941, “Joan Baez”, 1970, “George Bernard Shaw”, 1943 – are distinctly represented, each existing within their own world.

American masters are also represented by the Deja Vue collection, with offerings by Edward Weston and his Western landscapes. “Rancho Sonoma,” 1937, “Point Lobos,” 1929, “Kelp”, 1930, and “Wing of Pelican”, 1931 all represent quintessential parts of the artist’s oeuvre. Part of the Group f/64 along with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke and Imogen Cunningham, Weston focused on precise studies, and his work greatly influenced the aesthetics of American photography.

The final images made by the artist were taken in Point Lobos in 1948, before Parkinson's disease made his work no longer possible. His legacy is carefully maintained by his sons Brett and Cole, who have produced prints using the original negatives per the instructions of their father for approximately 40 years.

(1) https://www.waddingtons.ca/richard-harrington-arctic-photographs-from-the-collection-of-lorraine-monk/