Never Before Seen Contact Sheet of David Bowie At Auction

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A never before seen Contact Sheet of David Bowie — shot by Helmut Newton in 1983 at the very peak of his widespread success — is expected to sell for $20,000 to $30,000 in Heritage Auctions‘ April 17 Photographs Auction in New York. Only two of the 36 frames on the sheet have ever appeared at auction outside of Newton’s studio, said Nigel Russell, Director of Photography at Heritage. The photographs were shot in Monte Carlo for Vogue magazine and has remained in a single-owner collection since 1984. Newton himself preserved the unedited sheet and enlarged it to 48 1/4 by 53 3/4 inches. “Curiously, it is signed and numbered 1/15, but we know of no others that have ever appeared at auction so we wonder if the edition was ever finished,” Russell said. The April 17 auction’s rich diversity of photograph artworks includes an unusually large group of photographs by the masters of photography, including 17 examples by Alfred Eisenstaedt, including his classic Children at a Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963 (est. $20,000-$30,000); 13 works by Edward Weston; and eight photographs taken by Bernice Abbott, among others. A rare offering of 15 examples by Ansel Adams includes the collector-coveted Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, (est. $30,000-$50,000). The owners acquired the work in the late 1970s and later worked directly with Adams to have the piece re-mounted and personally signed at that time. Additional artworks by Adams on offer is Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada from Manzanar, California, 1944, (est. $15,000-$25,000); El Capitan, Sunrise, Winter, Yosemite, pl. 10 (from Portfolio VII), 1968 , (est. $15,000-$20,000); and Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958 (est. $15,000-$20,000).