Details
ANDRE ADOLPHE EUGENE DISDERI (1819–1889)
Atelier of G. Tedeschi, 1867
printing out albumen paper, mounted on board
credited, titled and dated on affixed exhibition label (frame backing board)
image/sheet: 714 x 914 in. (18.4 x 23.5 cm.)
Provenance
Lunn, Ltd., New York;
acquired from the above by the present owner, 1995.
Literature
W.M. Hunt, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, Aperture, New York, 2011, p. 63.
Exhibited
Lausanne, Musée de l'Élysée; Amsterdam, FOAM Fotogafiemuseum, Sans Regard or No Eyes: Photographs from W.M. Hunt / Collection Dancing Bear, 2006-2007.
Rochester, George Eastman House, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection, October 1, 2011–February 19, 2012.
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Lot Essay

'Eugène Disdéri was the creator of carte de visite photographs – the business-card size portraits that were used as calling cards in the nineteenth century. It is difficult to imagine what this uncut sheet of macabre and handsome death mask cards might have been intended for – perhaps some sort of memorial for a child. There is a striking contrast between the cool, graphic simplicity of the ghostly face and the elaborate carved chairback framing it. The result is disturbing, affecting and beautiful.
I was a very unhappy child, full of melancholy and depression, full of dread and sadness. I was capable of great good humour and generosity, socially skilled, but I was fraught with anxiety and feelings of loss. Collecting offered me insight into so much of this. All the photographs in these pages are metaphors. It is like the notion that you are all the characters in your dreams. The photographs in the collection are like that.' – W.M. Hunt

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The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection
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