A blockbuster sale in New York next month will feature the work of the greatest names in American photography and some of the most famous images of the 20th century.
It will also offer the work of a less celebrated group of photographers: police officers. The auction will feature 264 mugshots taken by the Scranton police department in Pennsylvania between 1916 and 1951.
Listed as by an “unknown photographer”, they are expected to sell for up to $15,000 when they are offered at Sotheby’s in a single lot alongside portraits of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, taken by Richard Avedon, and Dorothea Lange’s iconic 1936 dust bowl image, Migrant Mother, which is offered for up to $300,000.
Migrant Mother, taken in Nipomo, California, in 1936, became a defining image of the Great Depression
DOROTHEA LANGE
The images are part of
