Lot 78 email save

STUNNING ARCHIVE, AMERICA BOMBS EUROPE WWII

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104 original gelatin silver prints, mostly 10" x 10", some slightly smaller. These were taken looking down from the open bays of American bombers as the bombs dropped on targets in Europe. They are original contact prints of the film frames, often showing the film edges. The negatives have hand-written notations of the target, with exact location and coordinates. In some we see bombs falling. Others show the clouds and craters from previous bomb strikes. Some of the cities are Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest, Verona and others. These are bird’s eye views of cities and landscapes just seconds before their pre-war topography was destroyed. But they also have a kind of abstract beauty. There are 104 in all, 39 of Italian targets, 14 Austrian, 19 Romanian, 16 Hungarian, 2 Bulgarian, 2 Czech, 7 others. Several have small old staples. Most have tack holes with imprints—these were hung up for military use. Other minor signs of use give these a much more vital original character than pristine later prints would have. [D3]

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