Friday, January 16, 2009

Nude Madonna Photo Goes on Auction Block

People
A full-frontal photograph of Madonna taken in 1979 without any material on the Material Girl and then later published in Playboy is going public – for a price.

Christie's auction house in New York, which will hold its sale Feb. 12, expects the picture to go for $10,000, at the very least, the Associated Press reports.

Matthieu Humery, head of Christie's photography department, says Madonna was a financially strapped 20-year-old dancer when she responded to photographer Lee Friedlander's newspaper ad seeking a nude model. Her fee: $25.

Playboy published six photos from the shoot in 1985, though the one going on sale is "maybe the most explicit one," says Humery. – Stephen M. Silverman
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You know, with the bush she was sporting back then, we doubt it would be too explicit.
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Yahoo!:

"There's not a hint of glamorizing," he added. "That's what makes it powerful."

He said he knows of no other prints of the black-and-white photo.

Friedlander has said of the photo session that Madonna "seemed very confident, a street-wise girl. She told me she was putting a band together but half the kids that age are doing that. She was a good professional model."

The other five pictures from the Playboy spread were sold together in 2003 for $7,170.

Another, later photo of Madonna, by Helmut Newton, is in the auction and is also expected to fetch $10,000 to $15,000. In that shot, also sold to Playboy, Madonna is wearing lingerie, curly blond hair and a seductive expression. A man kneels beside her.

The Madonna photos are among 150 images by some of the biggest names in photography that are being sold from the collection of Leon and Michaela Constantiner.

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