User:Jnestorius/A Box of Ten Photographs

A Box of Ten Photographs is a 1970–1973 limited edition printing in gelatin silver of a portfolio of ten monochrome photographs taken by Diane Arbus between 1962 and 1970, each set presented in a Plexiglas box. The portfolio was important in recognition of photography as an art form.

Arbus herself printed between eight and twelve sets before her death in 1971, of which four had been numbered and sold. The edition of 50 was completed in 1973 by Neil Selkirk, whose sets were made with Arbus' equipment and process. Selkirk set number 15 sold for $1,008,000 in 2023; lifetime Arbus prints sell for much more than posthumous Selkirk ones.

Background
Arbus began her career in 1946 by assisting her husband, Allan Arbus, in fashion and magazine photography. In 1956 she began working independently, doing portrait and magazine work on commission and documentary work on spec, using 35 mm single-lens reflex and rangefinder cameras. In 1962–1963, she switched to higher-definition 120 film taking square-format (6×6 [cm] or 2¼ [inch]) negatives using twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras: initially a wide-angle Rolleiflex, later also a Mamiyaflex with flash. Interest in Arbus's work among critics and, to a lesser extent, collectors was fanned in the spring of 1967 by New Documents 1967, a joint exhibition with Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In 1968 she started planning to take pictures for a longterm "Family Album" project. In 1970 she sought ways to raise the money to purchase a Pentax 6×7 camera.

The photographs
The idea of selling a portfolio was suggested to Arbus by Marvin Israel in the fall of 1969. All the ten pictures Arbus selected had been taken with a TLR camera in the New York metropolitan area. Some had been previously exhibited or published, including at New Documents 1967 or the London Sunday Times magazine of 10 November 1968.

Some critics have compared the collection to a family album. However, the 2003–2004 Family Albums exhibition, focused on Arbus's pictures of Gay and Konrad Matthaei's 1969 family gathering, discusses her desire to create a "family album" without alluding to the Box.

The most notable picture omitted from the set is Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park. The prints were on Agfa paper measuring 16 x, with a square image measuring about 15 x. The film carrier of Arbus' darkroom enlarger had a square opening, around the edges of which she placed torn cardboard strips to create a thin fuzzy border for the projected image. Descriptions are handwritten on the back of each print, and on sheets of vellum interleaved between the prints. The descriptions are fuller in some sets than others. Each set is presented in a Plexiglas box designed by Israel with technical help from Richard Avedon's assistant Gideon Lewin. Arbus described the box as "nearly invisible" and "almost like ice". As well as secure storage, it could be used as a frame for the topmost image. Similar simple frame designs became common in photography galleries in the 1970s. Arbus' asking price was $1,000, a "somewhat outrageous amount" at the time. She also offered individual prints at $150.

'Arbus didn’t intend for her “box of ten photographs” to be a quintessential set. ... her key motivations were income and to establish a stable stylistic identity.'

Mario Naves calls the images a "veritable greatest hits of [Arbus's] imagery and motifs". "The titles of Diane Arbus’s photographs read like short stories."

"The Artforum photographs are notable for the titles she gives them. They are more descriptive and sympathetic to the individuals photographed than the titles given to the same photographs in the 1972 Diane Arbus monograph."

Include the two 11th photos here as well as in the list of sets.

The box sets
Henry Geldzahler, curator at MoMA, convinced Philip Leider to view Arbus's box. Leider was so impressed that he made Arbus the first photographer discussed in Artforum, where "Five Photographs by Diane Arbus" was the cover article in May 1971. Leider initially wanted to include all ten images, eventually settling for six: Pro-war demonstrator as the cover; and Twins, Giant, Xmas Tree, Family walking, Dwarf, each on a separate page with caption; the five preceded by a page with 'Arbus’s "poetic and gnomic" text—five short standalone paragraphs'. The article omitted to mention the portfolio's availability for sale, and in recompense Leider gave Arbus a free full-page advertisement in the next issue. The portfolio was the subject of an article in the 31 May 1971 issue of New York magazine (one reproduction) and another in the October 1972 edition of Ms. (seven reproductions).

Before she died Arbus had sold four sets and printed four more, which her daughter and executor Doon Arbus posthumously redesignated artist's proofs. The proof sets lack the vellum overlays of the sold copies. In 1973 Arbus' family authorized Neil Selkirk to print 46 more sets to bring the edition up to the intended number of fifty. "Vintage" or "lifetime" prints made by Arbus sell for significantly more than Selkirk's posthumous prints.

"At least fifteen of the portfolios have been broken up and sold separately".

Since lifetime sales were numbered 1, 2, 5, and 6, I wonder if numbers 3 and 4 were redesignated proofs, in which case maybe Selkirk skipped those numbers, in which case maybe there are only 48 numbered and 4 proofs in the edition. But if there really are two numbered 5, the maybe there are also two numbered 6: if Doon Arbus and Neil Selkirk mistakenly assumed that Feitler's and Johns' were numbered 3 and 4 and thus Selkirk's numbers started from 5. A note in a 2006 Sotheby's auction catalogue says Selkirk made 45 prints.

Revelations says:
 * Diane Arbus completed the prints for eleven or twelve sets of the portfolio but did not sign them or prepare the individual title sheets until the sets had been sold. After her death, the remaining sets were designated by The Estate of Diane Arbus, on the advice of Marvin Israel and others, as artist's proofs. One was given by Doon and Amy Arbus to Allan Arbus as Diane had intended. One was purchased by the Fogg Art Museum in 1972. It remains unclear what happened to the two sets that would have been numbered 3/50 and 4/50. The probability is that they were set aside in anticipation of sales to specific purchasers that subsequently fell through and are included among the sets of artist’s proofs.

But "eleven or twelve sets" total implies 7 or 8 artist's proofs, whereas other source (which?) said eight total, four proofs. Maybe the difference is the one side misinterpreted whether eight is the total printed or total unsold.

WestLicht 2014:
 * It is known that Arbus printed eleven or twelve of the limited-edition boxes herself shortly before she died in 1971. However, she only sold a handful of the boxes during her lifetime, some of them to renowned collectors: 1/50 and 2/50 to Richard Avedon (one of them acquired as a present for his friend Mike Nichols), 6/50 to Jasper Johns, 5/50 to Bea Feitler, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, while 3/50 and 4/50 are considered "lost" but sold (cf. Diane Arbus, Revelations, p. 220). After Arbus's death, the sets printed by her so far were kept as artist's proofs. Neil Selkirk completed the edition of 50 — or rather, after Arbus's death and with his prints, the numbering was started anew at 1/50.

Reference to p. 220 suggests the author had not read the notes, so the idea that Selkirk started anew at 1 needs more evidence. Also, p. 220 suggests that Avedon gave no. 1 to Nichols and kept no. 2 whereas [one of?] my refs show the opposite. Hopefully Arbus and Jacob 2018 can settle the question.

"At Sotheby's, the top lot was a Diane Arbus portfolio, one of only six printed by Arbus herself before her death" (possibly based on number 1,2,5,6?). ArtNews 2005 days 12 lifetime [ref Revelations), had other good info. Recent sources have 8 total. Christie's 1999 auction of set 22 says "Number 22 from the limited edition of 50, plus five uneditioned artist's proofs".

An example of the handwritten titles under the printed image, and the boilerplate and sequence information on the verso of the print, is on the American Art Collaborative website (using the Senior Citizens Dance print from set 39). Another, from the 2014 5/50 sale, is at luminous-lint.com.

Ersatz sets

 * Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles acquired all 10 (posthumous) in 1995 among 60 Arbus prints in a $1.1m 2,100-print purchase from Robert Freidus; They are not all from a single Box set: MOCA's Xmas Tree is from set 26, but Brooklyn family from set 26 was sold by Doyle's in 2023.
 * LUMA Arles had a 2021–2022 exhibition "The Hidden Side of the Archive", including Diane Arbus; A box of ten photographs, 1970, suggesting it has a set in its archive. (I think the sentence "In parallel, LUMA is honoured to host the personal and obsessive archives of Hans-Ulrich Obrist in the context of an inspiring and moving presentation dedicated to Édouard Glissant" suggests Obrist lent Glissant material, but had nothing to do with the Arbus material.) But "In 2011 LUMA acquired [Neil] Selkirk’s set of printer’s proofs" so maybe it constructed an artificial set from those? "No less than 454 prints, made from 1945 to 1971 ... At the center of the exhibition, her “Box of Ten”".
 * Metropolitan Museum of Art New York catalog does not have a box set, but has prints of all ten images, plus one copy of the promotional flyer (which has two strips of the same five images instead of showing all ten). The last three prints of the ten were among 20 Arbus prints purchased in 2007 at the same time as Doon and Amy donated their mother's archives to the Met. Some of the prints have the black border instead of the Box's fuzzy border. At In the Beginning in the Met Breuer the nine prints other than Xmas Tree were combined with "Title Sheet for the Portfolio ... in original acrylic portfolio box" (a "promised gift") to simulate a set. When In the Beginning went to the Hayward Gallery, the adjacent box of ten was the V&A set, not the MoMA ersatz set of the Met Breuer show. At MALBA it was the SFMOMA set; presumably also true at SFMOMA; it certainly included some set. (Those were the only four venues for the show. )

Possible other sets

 * Probably:


 * Possibly:
 * Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University Bloomington seems to have acquired  A Family on Their Lawn from a box set in 1981. Possibly they have the full set but the rest is not in their online list.
 * International Center of Photography, New York City, had 10 Arbus photographs in 1982. Possibly one box set? The online catalog has only one of box of ten, which is also only one with pre-1982 accession year (1974).
 * Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, purchased 522 prints in 2017 via the Fraenkel Gallery; may have an ersatz set.

Those listed in various places as having significant Arbus collections, but whose catalogs show no evidence of a box set, or contrary evidence (e.g. some prints, of smaller size)
 * Probably not:
 * A 2018 Christie's catalog suggests that a complete set is owned by Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum. No other evidence found. Maybe confused with Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, though that has only a few and from varying sets.
 * MoMA catalog shows nothing at all!? but 'MoMA first showed three of Arbus’ portraits in 1965, as part of a “Recent Acquisitions” show. Two of the photos were of female impersonators, one was of a nudist family.' And sold a vintage print of Identical Twins in 1994.
 * National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, seem to have purchased 2 lifetime 14×14 in 1970 and 1974, and 7 posthumous 15x15 in 1977.
 * National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
 * Bibliothèque nationale de France has some earlier printings
 * none in Texas in 1987
 * Moderna Museet Stockholm acquired 10 prints in 1978 but none were Box images.
 * Art Institute of Chicago
 * Fotomuseum Winterthur
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Whitney Museum, New York City
 * National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; acquired 36 prints, including 7 of the 10 from the Box, in 1980 via Robert Miller; Xmas Tree is smaller size, all apparently lifetime prints.
 * Lee D. Witkin lent Patricia Bosworth a set for her 1984 biography of Arbus.

Afterlife
Doon Arbus lent a proof set to Walter Hopps for the 36th Venice Biennale in 1972; Hilton Kramer said the "portfolio of 10 enormous photographs" was "the overwhelming sensation of the American Pavilion". Later in 1972, John Szarkowski curated a 125-print Arbus retrospective, which opened at MoMA before touring North America until 1975; it did not feature the Box as such but did include a print of each of the 10 pictures. The 1972 Aperture monograph Diane Arbus includes all ten Box images among those reproduced, and the brief biography says "In 1970, she made a portfolio of ten of her photographs which was to be the first of a series of limited editions of her work."

Doon Arbus has kept right control of her mothers legacy, limiting prints and reproductions, and access to unpublished works. Posthumous prints by Selkirk are sold by the estate to dealer-galleries (Harry Lunn; Lee Witkin; ...?) and by them via aftermarket to museums and private collectors. The posthumous sets were all sold by 1979, the year Fraenkel Gallery opened, which has handled many subsequent transactions.

Jewish Giant and young Brooklyn family were included in a 75-image Arbus exhibit at Venezia 79 la fotografia and Twelve Photographs, 1961–1971, a 1978 limited edition of 1000 photogravure reproductions by Electa Editions, sized about 10 by, with profits to UNESCO.

'Because she died while making the boxes, [curator John] Jacob says, the images it contained are among her most iconic. “It’s the way the world got to know her first,” Jacob says.'

Revelations, SFMOMA's 2003–6 Arbus retrospective, gave pride of place to the box and its contents. The Smithsonian American Art Museum devoted a 2018 exhibition to its lifetime set (number 5 of 50, including a bonus eleventh photograph) in conjunction with which a reproduction was published for general sale. With over 1.6 million visitors, it was by far the best attended photography exhibition in the world that year. In the Beginning, a 2016–19 Met Breuer show focused on Arbus's 1956–1962 work, including Xmas tree, with the other nine images from the Box of Ten displayed in an adjacent space as an epilogue.

Homage/parody versions of Arbus images by Emily Peacock (series You, Me and Diane ) and Sandro Miller include some from the Box, but not all and others not. Peacock's are from Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph.

Sales
A 1979 summary:
 * p. 73 Arbus made few prints from each negative, and often she left them unsigned, so her own signed prints are priced extremely high. Estate prints made by Neil Selkirk are available through galleries; moderate. (The back of these prints carries identification of printer, title, and signature by Arbus's daughter Doon. Images from the photographer's ten-print Portfolio (on 16x20 paper) are available individually from the estate and through galleries on 11x14 paper only; moderate.
 * p. 279 Portfolio. ... Of the projected edition of 50, only a few were printed and signed by Arbus before her death in 1971. ... 10 prints, to 14x14 on 20x16 photographic paper, unmounted, issued in a Lucite box of the same dimensions. Price at issuance: $1,500. Current value: $5,000.

Another, also 1979: "a fine original Arbus might go as high as $2,000 to $2,500, while a Selkirk portfolio print would bring $400 to $500 and other Selkirk prints only $200."

Posthumous prints of Arbus are relatively valuable compared with other artists, because of rationing by the estate. "Obviously vintage refers to a print that was made close to the time that the image was created. The only question that remains is: How close?"

A promotional flyer for the box, given by Arbus to Ruth Ansel, and made of two contact sheets fixed to a typewritten description, sold at Phillips for $35,000 in 2016. Flyers sold Swann Auction Galleries 14 Feb 2005 for $17,250 and 9 Oct 1997 Christies ("Dear VK ... regards to Miriam and Paul").

A copy of her Artforum (cover price $2) in a custom box has been offered for sale in 2022 for $1,900.

for review

 * ?t=4533 time=1h 16m 13s : synopsis of eight lifetime sets
 * Jasper Johns is on panel
 * ?t=4533 time=1h 16m 13s : synopsis of eight lifetime sets
 * Jasper Johns is on panel
 * ?t=4533 time=1h 16m 13s : synopsis of eight lifetime sets
 * Jasper Johns is on panel
 * Jasper Johns is on panel