signed and editioned '2/6' and with title, copyright, and Retrospective stamps on the reverse, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1947, printed in 1994

Lumina Fine Photography + Art, New York, 1994

New York, Thread Waxing Space, Collection in Context: Selected Contemporary Photographs of Hands from the Collection of Henry M. Buhl, September - October 1996, and 8 other national and international venues through 1999 (see Appendix 1)

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

Palm Beach Photographic Centre, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, March 2011

Middletown, Delaware, Warner Gallery at St. Andrew's School, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, October - November 2011

Marianne Courville, Collection in Context: Selected Contemporary Photographs of Hands from the Collection of Henry M. Buhl (New York, 1996), pl. 4 (this print)

Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp.130 and 201 (this print)

Richard Avedon: Evidence, 1944-1994(New York, 1994), p. 130

Richard Avedon: An Autobiography (New York, 1993), pl. 254

Richard Avedon: Performance (New York, 2008), p. 27

This photograph is in generally excellent condition. In high raking light, a few tiny deposits of original retouching are visible.On the reverse of the print, the copyright stamp is dated '94' in pencil. Also on the reverse, the number '16-' is in an unidentified hand in pencil. The Retrospective stamp on the reverse reads: 'Limited Edition print made at the time of RICHARD AVEDON RETROSPECTIVE 1944-1994 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, March 18 - June 26, 1994.'
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Avedon made this image in Italy in 1947, when he was just 24 years of age.  While different in many ways from the fashion and portrait photography for which he is renowned, it anticipates stylistic elements that would become hallmarks of Avedon's later work—namely, the focus on a singular, expressive object or person; the intense white of the background that eliminates much of the context of the locale; and the sense of movement emblematic of his fashion photography.

As Jane Livingston writes in Richard Avedon: Evidence, 1944-1994,

'While these pictures often portend the finely balanced stasis of the later portraiture, more often they express a sort of craving for motility; above all, they combine an ethereal sense of light with an illusion of physical lightness, or buoyancy.  Many of his best images from Italy convey a fluid, electrifying sense of drama, a narrative evolution that draws us into its field of force in the same way we are drawn into the visual atmosphere of certain films. Indeed, the quality of both light and composition in these early images, both the Italian and the New York street scenes, seems now more influenced by cinema than by the still photography of other artists. . .' (p. 65).