[Leica] Harry Lunn and Adams

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>>>>>>
Yes, prints that have been seen. Alinder's book talked about how many
photos he WANTED to print, but he just never got to because he died way
too
soon after he stopped printing the famous photos for sale. It took five
or
more years to catch up with the orders that came in after he announced
he
was calling it quits (taking orders).

>that were great. great to him? yes. because it was his vision that made
them
>great. Did he print all that he wanted to of his great prints from
negatives
>that are unknown? dunno. I hope so.

Nope, not even close. There are probably hundreds of photos that he
wanted
to print he never got to, according to Alinder.
<<<<<<<


All the evidence points to Eric being right about this. He was being
represented by Harry Lunn of Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, a
"pioneering photo dealer" who died just recently (and who was described
to me when I met him as "the man who made Ansel Adams a
millionaire"...never mind that you could probably switch that around and
have it be just as true). Print orders were becoming onerous, and Adams
wanted to be free to do his own thing, so to speak, so Adams announced
to Lunn that he would no longer take orders after a certain date, above
Lunn's voiciferous objections. So Lunn put the word out, and the orders
that poured in prior to the deadline far exceeded Lunn's or Adams's
expectations. Naturally, all of these orders were for prints of pictures
that were already known. During the period in which he was fulfilling
all of these orders, he also conceived and printed the so-called "Museum
Set," a master set of his best pictures that he either presented or
offered for sale to museums all over the country and the world, intended
by him to solidify his _ouvre_ and symbolize his accomplishment.
Unfortunately, the "museum set" prints are among the worst prints he
made in his life. I saw one set at Harry Lunn's in D.C. and Howard Bond
has seen the Detroit Museum's set, and we're both agreed on its quality.

At the same time, he was working on his _Autobiography_, partially
ghostwritten by Mary Alinder, his nurse/secretary/assistant/friend.
Pretty busy guy for an octagenarian--he was probably working as hard in
the years up to his death as he had worked his entire life.

If an historian were interested in another perspective on this, Kathy
Ewing, who is now President of AIPAD (Association of International
Photography Art Dealers) and a gallery owner in D.C., was a protegé of
Lunn's in and around this period. In fact, her first gallery was his old
gallery, taken over from him when he gave up having a streetside gallery
to go into "private practice" so to speak.

The evidence suggests that one thing Adams wanted to be free to do was
to print new negatives from his archives. As Eric says, he had just
gotten around to this when he died. John Sexton, who was his last
assistant, tells stories of his last days, when he was printing
negatives he had made fifty years earlier.

Sorry if this discussion of history offends anybody who is more
interested in continued discussion of Ted's underpants. I do find this
kind of thing more pertinent to photography. And since we have already
determined that Adams was in fact primarily a Leica photographer, it's
not in any way OT.    ;-)

- --Mike