* UPDATE *
August 22, 2015
The Cowboy Kate maquette is no longer available from the estate. It will be auctioned at Christie’s in London in May 2016 to coincide with Photo-London.
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Original Post: July 2015
The Sam Haskins Estate is making available for sale the last remaining copies of Sam’s maquettes from two of his legendary photo books of the sixties. First up is the last remaining maquette of Cowboy Kate. Sam only made four copies in 1963. This is an extraordinary photographic object. Constructed of silver prints all produced my Sam.
For a complete list of specs please download the PDF “Sam Haskins Maquettes”
Cowboy Kate Maquette from Ludwig Haskins on Vimeo.
Extremely rare, one of only four constructed in 1963. Photography, printing, retouching, book design and maquette construction by Sam Haskins.
Note: Book is on a viewing stand to protect the binding.
We are also selling the last remaining copy of Five Girls (1962) maquette constructed by Sam in 1961. Although Cowboy Kate’s enormous immediate popularity went on to become a lasting icon of the sixties and a legendary point of reference for many image makers and designers, the book that preceded Kate, Five Girls, is in many ways historically more important. Five Girls was a milestone in freeing nude photography from cliché and an immediate inspiration to many other leading photographers of the time, including Jeanloup Sieff, Wingate Paine and Helmut Newton.
The maquettes are the creative mother lode of Sam’s sixties books. Meticulously designed, printed and constructed, the physical prints are still sparkling after more than half a century. These maquettes are not just an amazing photographic experience each time they are viewed, they are in effect an entire photographic exhibition of vintage silver prints, in a single object.
Speaking of exhibitions, for a variety of time pressure reasons and shifting priorities which coincided with Sam’s move to London in 1968, none of Sam’s sixties books has ever had an exhibition, until now. The next ten years is going to see the first exhibitions, of Sam’s sixties work along with reprints and new titles. In other words these maquettes will see an investment return leveraged by the estate’s work now that the archives have been released to us.
Five Girls Maquette from Ludwig Haskins on Vimeo.
Extremely rare, one of only three constructed in 1961. Photography, printing, retouching, book design and maquette construction by Sam Haskins.
Note: Book is on a viewing stand to protect the binding.
Later projects never resulted in objects of this kind, not least of all because Sam never did a pure black and white book again after ‘November Girl’ and ‘African Image’ both published in 1967. But Sam’s thinking remained most at home in an analogue space. With his last book, Fashion Etcetera (2009), although the production was all in Adobe InDesign the pages were still sequenced by Sam on the big library table of his home in Bowral using small A5 prints.
Parties interested in discussing the purchase of the maquettes should please contact me directly on: