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Alma Lavenson (1897-1989); Self-Portrait; image 1
Alma Lavenson (1897-1989); Self-Portrait; image 2
Lot 9

Alma Lavenson
(1897-1989)
Self-Portrait

25 March – 3 April 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, New York

Sold for US$5,888 inc. premium

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Alma Lavenson (1897-1989)

Self-Portrait, 1932
Gelatin silver print, printed later; signed in ink in the margin.
6 1/2 x 8 3/4 in. (16.5 x 22.2 cm.)
sheet 7 3/8 x 9 1/2 in. (18.7 x 24.1 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Private Collection, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Literature
Susan Ehrens, Alma Lavenson: Photographs (Berkeley, 1990), cover and p. 87
Andrea Nelson and Mia Fineman, The New Woman Behind the Camera (National Gallery of Art, 2021), cover and p. 20

Note
In the introduction to the monumental exhibition catalogue The New Woman Behind the Camera (2021), curator Andrea Nelson discusses Alma Lavenson's well-known 1932 photograph, titled Self-Portrait:

"Alma Lavenson's captivating self-portrait originally titled Photographer at Work is distinctly modern in conception. Rather than convey her identity through facial features and expression, Lavenson gives prominence to the act of taking a picture. The closely cropped image reveals only her poised hands - one adjusts settings on the lens while the other cradles the large-format camera secured to a tripod. It is the camera lens, centered boldly within the frame, that dispassionately returns our gaze with faint reflections of the photographer and her surroundings visible on its highly polished surface." (p. 21)

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