UNTITLED GELATIN SILVER PRINT

Vintage gelatin silver photograph 7 3/8 x 9 3/16 inches [18.54 x 23.34 cm.] The verso bears the printed label of the Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, which reads, " Walter Chapel Photograph/ Please return the Print to Gallery." Written in the photographer's distinctive hand, " Return to Walter Chappell, For one-time Repro only, 1958." A fine print. Walter Chappell (1925 - 2000) was affiliated with a long list of noted American photographers: Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Caponigro, Carl Chiarenza, et al. His association with Minor White, as a student, coworker at the George Eastman House, and with Aperture Magazine was one of his most enduring. He was represented by the Carl Siembab Gallery, one of the first galleries devoted solely to photography. In the early 1960s, the home he shared with his wife, the painter, Nancy Barrett Dickinson, was destroyed by fire, taking most of his negatives and prints. Photographs made prior to the fire are rare. This photograph was reproduced as plate XXXVI, the final image in, UNDER THE SUN: The Abstract Art of Camera Vision, By Nathan Lyons, Syl Labrot, Walter Chappell. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1960. "Chappell's Plate XXXVI suggests a galaxy in colliding upsweep. Whatever the photographic source, he has swirled a majestic rhythm of purest spontaneity." Barbara Morgan, 5 REVIEWS OF "UNDER THE SUN", Aperture, Volume 8, N0. 4, 1960.…