Harry Lunn, Rockwood, Maine, July 17,1998
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In 1979 I found a number of vintage prints in Berenice Abbott’s attic that had been misfiled with some large envelopes containing scientific exhibition prints from her Smithsonian Show in the early 1960s. One of them was a very old print of the side view of Eugène Atget. It wasn’t exactly vintage but it was very old, probably from the early 1930s and though I didn’t know it at the time, it was the oldest one anyone had turned up in a long time. I brought the Atget portrait, along with the others to Berenice and showed her what I’d found. She was unconcerned, she’d seen them before and didn’t even know they were lost. I said I’d like to buy them from her. She said she couldn’t sell them; her contract with Marlborough and Graphics International, Harry Lunn’s company, stipulated she couldn’t sell vintage prints or give them away. I asked to see the contract and she was absolutely correct, but I reminded her the contract said nothing about trading pictures. When I said this, Berenice’s eyes lit up and I said, “What do you want, what do you need?” She said, “I need a new enlarging lens for the big Durst.” I knew this would cost about $1500, in those years a fair price for the pictures and I said, “Done.” I bought a new lens from Lens & Repro and had them ship it to Berenice; I already had the pictures. Fast forward. A few years later the International Center for Photography scheduled an Atget show. They needed an old print of the Atget portrait and Cornell Capa asked if he could borrow mine. The print was exhibited in the show and the next thing I know Harry Lunn is on the telephone saying he’s never seen such a beautiful Atget portrait and he just had to have it. I told Harry that I also liked it and I wasn’t in the photo business, and that I didn’t want to sell it. But Harry really wanted it and nagged and nagged and finally he bothered me so much I relented and said I still want to sell it but I’d consider a trade. He couldn’t wait and it turned out I was scheduled to be in the Washington, D.C. area at the end of November 1982 for the Manassas Jazz Festival. On November 27 I went to his gallery and gave him the photograph, still in the frame from the ICP show. He said, “What are you interested in?” I replied, “Walker Evans and Robert Frank.” Harry pulled down some boxes and set them on the big George Gershwin dining table that dominated the balcony of his gallery. He opened the museum boxes and I started looking at what he had. I asked, “How many can I have?” He said, “You start picking and I’ll tell you when to stop.” He stopped me at four by Robert Frank and five Walker Evans’ plus an Evans book I didn’t have. One of the Evans has tuned out to be a print no one else has and another is extremely rare. The Robert Frank of Billie Holiday at the St. Nicholas Arena is equally scarce as it the Jack Kerouac and the Exile on Main Street fun house image. I was pretty sure I was going to do OK, I just didn’t know how OK. When I goy back to New York I telephoned Berenice and told her what I’d done. She thought it was terrific and she said I shouldn’t worry, that she would sell me another Atget print, an 11”x14,” and it was better than the 8”x10” older print. I didn’t think that would be possible because the negative had deteriorated and it took about an hour or so to clean up all the imperfections. But I was wrong. The next time I was in Maine she pulled out an older 11”x14” from the 1940s that had been printed before the deterioration had set in. This one still hangs in the hallway and all the pictures by Evans and Frank do as well. |
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