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Lucas Samaras (1936-2024); Photo-Transformation (Eye); image 1
Lucas Samaras (1936-2024); Photo-Transformation (Eye); image 2
Lot 6

Lucas Samaras
(1936-2024)
Photo-Transformation (Eye)

1 – 10 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, New York

Sold for US$48,640 inc. premium

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Lucas Samaras (1936-2024)

Photo-Transformation (Eye), 1973
Unique manipulated Polaroid SX-70 print; dated '11/3/73' in ink on the reverse, framed, PaceWildenstein Gallery and Pace Gallery labels on the reverse.
3 1/8 x 3 1/8 in. (7.9 x 7.9 cm.)
sheet 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (11.4 x 8.9 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Pace Gallery, New York
Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009

Literature
cf. Lucas Samaras: Photo-Transformations (New York, 2018), pl. 15 and endpapers (variant)

Note
The debut of the Polaroid SX-70 camera in 1972 signaled a new photographic system that eliminated the mess and intense labor of the darkroom. For Lucas Samaras, however, the SX-70 presented an opportunity for pushing the boundaries of analog photography. Once the pre-packaged film unit was ejected from the camera, Samaras would rub, smear, and shift the latent emulsion layers—using either his hand or a stylus—before the composition was fully set. As seen in Lots 6 and 7, the resulting images often distort his own body by creating colorful, swirling matrices and hallucinatory compositions.

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