Local photographer in next Christie's Photography Auction:

Several vintage photographs by legendary photographer Lida Moser,
represented by us, will be offered at the next Christie's New York auction on Feb. 17, 2004.

In 2002, Moser's photos sold as high as $4,000 at Christie's.

Lida Moser, who currently lives in Rockville, Maryland and is in her late 80s, has a distinguised career that started as a student in 1947 in Berenice Abbott's studio. She then worked for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Look and many other magazines. She has also authored and been part of many books and publications on and about photography in the New York Times, New York Sunday Times, Amphoto Guide to Special Effects, Fun in Photography, Career Photography, Women See Men, Women of Vision, This Was the Photo League, and others. She also wrote a series of "Camera View" articles on photography for The New York Times between 1974-81.

In 1950 Vogue (and subsequently Look) assigned Lida Moser to carry out an illustrated report on Canada, from one ocean to another. When she arrived at the Windsor station in Montreal, in June of that same year, she met by chance, Paul Gouin, then a Cultural Advisor to the Duplessis government. This chance meeting leads the young woman to change her all-Canada assignment for one centered around Quebec.

Armed with her camera and guided by the research done by the Abbot Felix-Antoine Savard, the folklorist Luc Lacourcière and accompanied by Paul Gouin, Lida Moser then discovers and photographs a traditional Quebec, which was still little touched by modern civilization and the coming urbanization of the region.

A portrait of Lida Moser, by Alice Neel, currently hangs in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Several portraits of Alice Neel by Lida Moser are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Her work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide and is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the National Archives, Ottawa, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Portait Gallery, Washington, DC, the Library of Congress, Les Archives Nationales du Quebec, and many others. Moser was a member of the Photo League and the New York School.

The Photo League was the seminal birth of American documentary photography. It was a group that was at times school, an association, and even a social photography club. Founded in 1936 and disbanded in 1951, the Photo League promoted photojournalism with an aesthetic consciousness and a social conscience that reaches photojournalism and street photography to this day.

Works by Moser can be seen online here. Buy Lida Moser now.