Josef Lebovic Gallery - Heide Smith Photographer
About the Josef Lebovic Gallery Catalogue.
This week the Josef Lebovic Gallery published a catalogue of photographs (Collectors List No 188 ), taken over a sixty year period by Heide Smith. The catalogue contains 48 vintage photographs, a vintage folio, and 3 Limited Edition folios. The images will be exhibited at the Josef Lebovic Gallery at 103a Anzac Parade, Kensington Sydney until 8 July 2017, and can also be seen on the Josef Lebovic Gallery website.
The catalogue was compiled by Josef and Jeanne Lebovic, Dimity Kasz and Lenka Miklos, and is a tribute to their dedication and professional skill. They were a pleasure to work with over the couple of months it took to prepare the content for the printer. But the story of the catalogue actually began almost two years earlier, when Heide had an idea.
A catalogue is born!
On 7 August 2015 Heide sent the Lebovic Gallery an email, it read;
re " my collection of vintage prints" Dear Josef, Would you be interested in my collection of Australian Photographers 1984-85 of approx 30 B+W silver halogen prints, average image size 20x28cm etc ...... ". Josef agreed that it was a good idea, but said that we should look at a catalogue, probably in March 2016.
Back at Heide Smith Photographer, we thought that it would be a good idea to find out exactly how many vintage prints we really had, and maybe sort them out, put them in some sort of order, and list them all. A single collection of 30 prints is one thing, but a catalogue! That would probably have to include all sorts of subjects, like portraits, landscapes, and documentary. But first we had to find them!
An archive is born!
We have always been fairly well organised. As an ex army logistician, that's how I think, and Heide had always carefully stored everything away, and everything we found was always in good nick. And the more stuff we found, and we kept on finding more and more, the more we realised that our existing records were just not good enough. The fact is, that an image can be linked to a negative and a digital file, a vintage print and a limited edition print, and it can be a single print and/or part of a collection, or two. I think that means you need cross referencing, doesn't it? And, Vintage Photographs are particularly difficult.
Vintage Photographs are so finicky!
First you have to determine whether it actually is a vintage print. When was it photographed? When was it printed? The experts generally say that the gap between shooting and printing should be no more than two years, but some (including Ansel Adams say five!). How was it printed, and on what sort of paper. What size is the image, and if it has a border, what size is the print. What condition is it in, although to be honest we left that to Josef, who is really finicky. Which is great for collectors, because they know they can trust his description. We also relied on Josef for guidance on pricing, which can get pretty complicated. You can read more about how we define Vintage Photographs on our website, where we even have a Buyers Guide
Speaking of websites!
A new Heide Smith website is born!
By early 2016 I had just finished completely rebuilding our website, because Google had sent me an email, saying that if our site was not Responsive, they would hammer it off every page 1 on the internet. But it became clear after talking to Josef that I needed to simplify the site. For example, we had three different sizes for limited editions photographs, 7, 25 and 50. Now we have only one, which is 25. We have reduced the images down to under 1500, and the galleries down to under 50. It's easy to believe that less is more, but it is also human not to want to leave anything out! So I guess you have to compromise, prioritise, use lots of internal links and pray that you have got it right.
Stories behind the images in the catalogue
There is a full description of each print in the catalogue, which can also be seen on the Josef Lebovic Gallery website. . Over the next few months we will be featuring images from the catalogue on this blog; Heide has promised to write a ditty about each of the vintage prints, so watch this space....!
To Purchase images from the Catalogue.
Please contact the Josef Lebovic Gallery on 0296634848, or email josef@joseflebovicgallery.com