THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702070110
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 105 lines
EDWARD S. CURTIS and Henri Cartier-Bresson are among the renowned photographers whose works are included in a large show and sale of photography opening today in a Norfolk shop.
The display of more than 1,000 vintage and art photographs at G. Carr Ltd. Art & Antiques in Ghent places big names such as Alfred Stieglitz and Sally Mann alongside unknown early makers of snapshots, class pictures and expedition photos.
The range is boggling, from a stack of anonymous old photos of peculiar and nostalgic subjects marked at a dollar each, to a $20,000 Stieglitz picture of a kitchen door. About 100 of the photographs are by renowned photographers whose works have sold through the all-important international auction houses - Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips.
``For six years, I've been telling everybody that I was going to do a photography show,'' said Geraldine Carr, the shop's owner. ``I just finally got around to it.''
Last week, Carr sat in her cavernous shop holding a list of objects destined for her long-planned show.
Seated in her French Deco club chair, Carr was checking the list against several hundred framed photographs that surrounded her. She and her staff had just taken down 242 paintings from the walls and replaced them with the mostly black-and-white photos. Dozens more were propped on easels.
There was a 1932 Cartier-Bresson photograph of a Parisian man hopping over a puddle that was included in a 1947 Museum of Modern Art exhibit. Carr would tag the Bresson at $2,200.
And there were Stieglitz photographs from the 1930s that were part of a 1995 MOMA show. Stieglitz's 1934 ``Door to Kitchen,'' displayed on Carr's wall, was the catalog cover. It was listed at $20,000, her top price among this hand-picked collection.
She had a 1984 Francesco Scavullo portrait of the rocker Sting, priced at $1,200. And she had two color portraits of Marilyn Monroe, shot in 1953 by Milton Greene, that would sell for $1,800.
And the Kennedys. An intimate family scene of Jackie, toddler Caroline and dad, shot by Kennedy photographer Jacques Lowe, was set at $4,950.
She also possessed one of steam train photographer O. Winston Link's best-known pictures, taken of teen-agers at a drive-in watching an airplane on the screen with a real steam engine puffing in the background. Price: $3,300.
Meanwhile, Carr was awaiting the arrival, from a local frame shop, of hundreds more pictures by lesser-known or anonymous shooters.
Carr believes hers is the first commercial shop in the region to compile such a large and diverse photo collection for show and sale.
Her claim is likely true. Brooks Johnson, curator of photography for The Chrysler Museum of Art, is among this area's most active followers of the photography market. In the two decades since he began acquiring photographs for the Norfolk museum, Johnson has never encountered a major show and sale in Hampton Roads of significant art photography from various periods in the medium's history, he said.
Generally, Washington, D.C., is the closest site he would expect to find galleries or shops handling important photographs, Johnson said. Though he has purchased more than 3,000 photos since 1978, ``I have never bought locally. I've never seen anything locally.''
Carr said she is ``personally backing all of the photographs. I always back all of my inventory,'' she said.
With all the big-name photographs, ``the pieces are stamped and signed,'' she said.
``It's a mess right now,'' she said, surveying her shop. Much of the art was yet to be installed, and the label information and paperwork for each piece still were being collected. ``But when the show opens, everything will be in place. You won't believe it.
``I like stress,'' she said, grinning. ``That's my family. We're hectic.''
Carr was raised in northern England and spent much of her childhood hanging around her uncle's auction house. For several summers as a teen-ager, her family sent her to Sotheby's in London for workshops that developed her connoisseurship of the fine and decorative arts.
Twenty-six years ago, she opened an art and auction shop at Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. In 1987, she opened a second shop in Norfolk after buying a farmhouse on the Eastern Shore. She also owns an English Tudor apartment house on Mowbray Arch in Ghent.
She's had several shop locations in Norfolk. In late 1994, she moved to her current site on West 20th Street.
``What does this shop do?'' she asked. ``It does nothing common.''
``It does no revivals. I only do things true to the period. Nothing messed with. I've always done high-end Arts and Crafts. Look, there's a German 18th century commode. But then I've got Frank Lloyd Wright furniture from the Unitarian Church in Madison, Wis., made in 1947.
``I like really good primitives. And jewelry. I have a lot of top-name Mexican jewelry.''
And in art? ``Everything from Andy Warhol to Old Masters.''
So now she's adding photography to her cultivated mix.
``I'm not a photographer. I just like photographs. I've always collected them.''
She admitted to a favorite in the show.
``It's probably a $5 photograph. This woman is lying in bed, and you can tell she's been there forever. And the only thing alive really is this bird in a cage.''
But there are probably 100 framed pictures on the wall of that invalid's room. There's barely an inch between the images. Presumably, these are the faces of her friends and family.
The picture haunts Carr: ``Her whole life,'' she said, ``is on that wall.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Tamara Voninski/The Virginian-Pilot
Henri Cartier-Bresson's Behind Gare St. Lazare, Paris"(1932), above,
is part of the show organized by Geraldine Carr, right.
Graphic
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