Americana Exchange

Auction Details

Auction House Sothebys
Website www.sothebys.com/
Auction Name Photographs
Sale Number N08841
Auction Date Apr 03, 2012 - Apr 03, 2012

Lot Details : Sothebys

Lot Number 74     
Author MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE 1904-1971
Title THE LIVING DEAD AT BUCHENWALD
Year Published 1945
Description large-format, ferrotyped, mounted, annotations in ink on the reverse, framed, 1945 (Portrait of Myself, pp. 268-9; Callahan, pp. 152-153; Goldberg, pl. 45; Retrospective, p. 93; Best of Life, p. 20) 15 5/8 by 19 3/8 in. (39.7 by 49.3 cm.)
Lot Note Bourke-White accompanied General George Patton and his Third Army troops into the concentration camp at Buchenwald on the morning of April 11, 1945. German troops and SS administrators had abandoned the camp just two hours before. This was the first liberation of any of the German concentration camps, and no one was prepared for what was there. As Bourke-White recounted in her 1963 autobiography, Portrait of Myself, 'I saw and photographed the files of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day because they had had to wait too long for deliverance, the pieces of tattooed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in LOT 136
Provenance Originally from the collection of Margaret Bourke-White
Estimated Price USD 30,000.00 - 50,000.00
Actual Price USD 116,500.00