?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Winifred Hall. Portrait of a bride and groom. Photograph, 14 x 11 inches, signed in ink with her "189 W. 135th St. N.Y.C." studio address; minor wear, backdrop retouched by the photographer. New York, circa 1930s
Winifred Hall emigrated from Jamaica at age 18, attended the New York Institute of Photography, and became a female Harlem contemporary of James Van Der Zee. Her husband Fred Allen later assisted her in the business. She was never featured in exhibitions as a fine art photographer, and gave up photography for nursing circa 1950. She is mainly remembered through 26 of her photographs which were featured in Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe's 1986 book "Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers" (pages 60-71). Afterward, her personal archive of original prints and negatives was destroyed. We trace only one other photograph at auction, sold as part of the archives of the Mwalimu School in 2003.
