BRODOVITCH ALEXEY (1898 1971) From the Ballet series Septièm

Sale 2374 - Lot 113A

Price Realized: $ 5,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000

BRODOVITCH, ALEXEY (1898-1971)
From the Ballet series "Septième Symphonie." Silver copy print, 8x10 inches (20.3x25.4 cm.), with the partial plate number 110, in the negative; Brodovitch's inscription, "To Patty qith Thanks Alexey," in ink, and his Design Consultant hand stamp, on verso. 1935-37; printed 1950s-early 60s

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Additional Details

From the photographer; to Patty Kravitt Ellis in 1967.
Ellis was an art student when her photography instructor introduced her to Brodovitch, who became her mentor and friend. Before moving to France, in 1967, Brodovitch presented her with four inscribed photographs and the book Ballet. She writes: "He was a great friend. A great mentor. An inspiration. A presenter of bold ideas. He enhanced my life."

Alexey Brodovitch's first encounter with ballet came soon after his arrival in Paris in 1920. He was 22 and a recent emigrant from Russia and the Bolsevik Revolution of 1917. An aspiring painter, Brodovitch began painting sets at the Ballets Russes after a chance meeting with the troupe's impresario Sergei Diaghilev. He fell in love with the medium and later, after moving to New York, began photographing visiting ballet companies for what he termed 'souvenir purposes.' Between 1935 and 1937 Brodovitch created one on the most influential bodies of work of the period.

Just as Brodovitch's radical design would revolutionize publishing and magazine production, his photographs dramatically deviated from the typically more formal and neatly focused photographs of the period. His early images, perhaps fortuitous accidents, compelled Brodovitch to push the medium as far as it could go. He used a 35mm Contax camera with no flash and set the shutter speed at one-fifth of a second, tracing the dancers's moments with his lens and allowing the stage lights and music to dictate his images. Indeed the images (and even more emphatically, the layout of his book) seem dictated by and humming with the score itself. In the darkroom Brodovitch manipulated his images further, enlarging tiny details to exaggerate the grain and distortion, bleaching areas of the negative to highlight the glaring footlights and even covering the lens of the enlarger with cellophane to produce a faded effect at the edges of the image. His photographs are nostalgic, evoking Brodovitch's own history with the ballet troupes, but also suspenseful, brilliantly evoking the momentous, purposeful inhale of dance itself.

Ballet, 110.