GUEST: These have been in my family for about, oh, over 50 years. My father was an attorney in Southern California. His client, Warren Newcombe, who was an Academy Award-winning special effects artist, left them in his estate to my father. And so they've been in the family ever since.
APPRAISER: Okay. Have you ever had them appraised or do you know anything about them at all?
GUEST: No, we haven't. We just heard stories along the way of his popularity, that he was probably a cohort of Ansel Adams, and we've never really done any research or anything. We just brought them today.
APPRAISER: Weston, he was a very well-known American modern photographer. Someone once said that he was quintessentially American and specially Californian. And I think that you can tell from these photos. These are four different examples of things that he was working on in the '30s. But they're all very different, and they're all very modern in terms of photography. There weren't a lot of other photographers that were choosing to take pictures of dirty boots.
GUEST: (chuckles) Right.
APPRAISER: Or choosing to frame their subjects the way this one's being framed. And did you do any research about Warren Newcombe?
GUEST: No. You know, I just know that he was a two-time Academy Award winner for special effects and that he had worked on over 200 films.
APPRAISER: In 1939, Warren Newcombe allowed Weston to come on the set and shoot various scenes around the MGM lot.
GUEST: Oh, that's very interesting.
APPRAISER: So those are pieces that are being stored, and then the piece here, 1939. It's called Rubbish and Lily. It's probably more what he's known for. The light and the shadow and the framing and the composition. And the most well known would be the piece here, which is Nude on a Dune.
GUEST: We had heard that that was his wife, Weston's wife.
APPRAISER: Well, when she was shot here she was not his wife. They met in 1934 at a concert. This was done in 1936, and then they were married in 1939.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: The story about the dune photos is really interesting because they're some of his most well-known images. But it's said that they were caught while she was rolling down the hill. So wherever she landed, then he would do these shots. So it's, again, a very modern concept for the time. I would think that because they're vintage prints that were taken around the mid-'30s and then probably printed shortly thereafter, they're going to be more valuable than the reprinted ones that you see so often.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So I would put an auction estimate on the MGM at $40,000 to $60,000.
GUEST: (chuckling): Wow, really? (chuckling) A little surprising.
APPRAISER: The boots, because it's not as well-known a subject, and maybe not as collectible, again I would probably say about $40,000 to $60,000 for that.
GUEST: Wow. Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER: The piece here, because it's a more recognizable Weston subject, I would probably say $50,000 to $70,000 at auction.
GUEST: (exhaling) Okay. (chuckling)
APPRAISER: And this piece, you know, I have some good news and some bad news with this.
GUEST: Yeah, I know.
APPRAISER: As you can see here...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: We have some emulsion loss, and then right here, we have some indentations in the emulsion as well, which may be something from the back side of the photo that's creasing it. At auction I would probably say $50,000 to $70,00 for that piece.
GUEST: Okay, wow.
APPRAISER: If it were pristine, then that's probably about $100,000 to $150,000 on a good day. (chuckles) So all four of the pieces together, if you were to put those at auction, that's $180,000 to $260,000 for the collection.
GUEST: (exhaling) Okay. Well, that's very good news, and maybe we'll consider hanging them on the wall now.
APPRAISER: Yeah. (chuckles)
