Date: Fri 04-Sep-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Harry-Lunn-Photographer-Obit

Full Text:

Harry Lunn, Jr., Photography Dealer

PARIS, FRANCE -- Harry H. Lunn, Jr, died at his Paris home on August 21 after

suffering a heart attack a week earlier. The pioneering dealer in vintage

photography was 65. In addition to his home in Paris, he had residences in New

York and Normandy.

Born in Detroit in 1933, Mr Lunn studied economics at the University of

Michigan in Ann Arbor. Following college, he joined the Central Intelligence

Agency. He dealt privately in etching and lithographs in the early 1960s while

stationed at the United States Embassy in Paris.

Mr Lunn resigned from the CIA in 1967 and a year later opened a gallery in

Washington, D.C. He closed the gallery in 1983 to become a private dealer.

The specialist turned to photography in 1970 when the market was still in its

infancy. Before the 1970s, only a handful of fine arts dealers exhibited

photography: Alfred Stieglitz at his gallery 291 in the first decades of the

century; Julien Levy at his New York gallery in the 1930s and 1940s; Helen Gee

at her Greenwich Village coffee house, Limelight, in the 1950s; and Lee

Witkin, who opened a photography gallery in Manhattan in 1969. Sotheby's

instituted sales of photography in London in 1970 and in New York in 1975, and

Christie's followed thereafter.

In 1971, Mr Lunn exhibited Ansel Adams prints at his Washington gallery. Sales

totaled $10,000, and a 16-by-20-inch print brought $150. Earlier this year, a

16 by 20 inch print of Ansel Adams' "Moonlight Over Hernandez" achieved

$20,700 at Sotheby's.

The dealer helped create the market for Adams, as well as for Walker Evans,

Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, and Heinrich Kuhn. A student of Nineteenth Century

French photography, he was also interested in contemporary work by Robert

Mapplethorpe, Adres Serrano, Joe-Peter Witkin, and MerDermott and McGough.

Mr Lunn is survived by his wife, Myriam; two daughters, Alexandra and

Florence; and a son, Christophe, all of Paris.