Feb 27, 2014 - Sale 2340

Sale 2340 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 9,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 4,500
(ENGINEERING/CONSTRUCTON)
Album with more than 100 photographs of large-scale construction projects, including the Potomac Electric Power Co. Buzzard Point Plant (90 prints) and the Johns-Manville Products Corp. of Virginia (14 prints); with six 2-part panoramas. The pictures feature detailed exterior views of the first surveys of the Potomac site, to the screen wall and intake tunnel, to excavation of coal hndling structures and handling equipment, to the car dump pit, to the green coke bin, rolling kiln, to the completed building, as well as interior scenes of the pressure sterilizers, and the nurses work room; the Manville scenes are largely panoramics. The photographers were the Leet Brothers, who were associated with the Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation. Silver prints, 7 1/2x9 1/2 inches (19.1x24.1 cm.), most with detailed information regarding the name of the site, the activity depicted, location, an inventory number, date, and more in the plate. Oblong 4to, gilt-lettered leatherette with screw binding. 1938-1940

Additional Details

The rise of industrial photography and its influence on a host of artists and photographers -- most notably German photographers of the New Objectivity Movement -- is an underappreciated genre of collecting and study. This album is a meticulous visual chronicle, and depicts the sites from various angles (including a few bird's-eye views), that occasionally include automobiles and trucks, which not only supply compositional scale but a particular feel for the period.