Photojournalism treasures for sale

Gypsy Wedding, Slovakia 1947, by Robert Capa. Photo / Supplied

A rare photograph by celebrated war photographer Robert Capa is to be sold at auction as part of one of the greatest private collections of historic news images - a treasure trove from the heyday of photojournalism.

The Capa photograph of a Gypsy wedding in Slovakia in 1947 could be the rarest surviving image by the Magnum agency photographer, who was killed covering the conflict in Indochina in 1954.

The photo survives only as a single print, with the negative thought to have been lost in the 1950s, and is expected to fetch up to €10,000 ($18,200) in Paris on April 30.

The collection of photographs from the 1930s to the 1970s was amassed over 70 years by the veteran magazine photo editor John G Morris, a colleague and close friend of many of the 20th century's greatest newspaper and magazine photographers.

The collection includes photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, Dorothea Lange, George Rodger, Eugene Smith, Willy Ronis, Rene Burri, Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth, Marc Riboud, Lisa Larsen, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Philip Jones Griffiths.

Morris, 94, was the London picture editor of Life magazine during World War II. At its peak, Life regularly sold millions of copies a week.

It was the primary showcase for the world's leading documentary photographers, with socially concerned picture-based stories focused on ordinary life.

Capa had already been hailed as the world's greatest war photographer for his Spanish Civil War images, including the famous Falling Soldier shot, when Morris worked with him on the story that led to the most famous series of photographs of all time - the surviving Magnificent 11 shots of United States troops landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day. The sale includes a rare early print of one of those 11 shots.

Also included in the auction are several hitherto unseen photographs taken by Morris in France soon after D-Day, while he was working with his staff photographers on the frontline.

Of great interest to photo-historians is a rare shot of Capa at work. Other rarities include informal photographs of the Kennedy clan in the 1950s.

After Life magazine, Morris was the first executive editor of the celebrated Magnum photo agency. He went on to run the photo desks of the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Speaking from his home in Paris, where he has lived since the early 1980s, Morris said:

"My hope is that this auction will change the outlook on photojournalism in the money markets. I know that's a strange thing to say, but photography auctions in the past have consisted primarily of aesthetically beautiful prints which did not necessarily have much to do with telling the truth about life through the daily newspapers and in magazines.

"Art photographs have been attracting enormous prices at auctions, but in the coming auction many of the prints have been used by newspapers and magazines, many of them with marks on, crop marks, publication marks, etc. It remains to be seen how these kind of photographs will go at auction."

Getty Images is understood to be taking a close interest in the John Morris collection.

Art photography has become a target market for dealers and investors.

In 2006 a 1904 photograph of a moonlit pond by Edward Steichen sold for just under $3 million at Sotheby's in New York.

Last November Richard Avedon's 1955 shot, Dovima with Elephants, sold for $1.2 million in Paris.

Prices for pictures in the Morris collection start at £18 ($37), with the Capa shot of the Gypsy wedding an estimated €8000 to €10,000 ($14,000 to $18,000).

"My personal favourite is the Capa shot of the Gypsies," said Morris. "That picture seems to touch people ... I love it. Capa's humanity was special; he had a feeling for people, an instant rapport with almost anybody.

"I remember in Normandy in the war, we arrived in a Jeep one afternoon at Mont St Michel with Ernest Hemingway and Time journalist Bill Walton. We took a walk up the street and Capa just stopped and joined a game of cribbage that some fishermen were playing, and next there would be a girl, and he joked 'Where's your boyfriend?' He just charmed the entire place in one walk.

"Henri [Cartier-Bresson] I respected for totally different reasons. He scarcely ever talked to the people he was photographing. He was a passionate person, but his passion emerged in curious ways. He would get angry, pull out a penknife and threaten you. He had a temper."

"I have mixed feelings about selling the pictures," Morris said.

"But on the other hand, at my age, what the hell am I going to do with them? I'm not going to be around for ever."

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