Award-winning photo-journalist Stephanie P. Ledgin has announced that her entire photo exhibition, From Every Stage: Images of America’s Roots Music, is for sale by auction. This once-in-a-lifetime, winner-takes-all auction will reap the winning bidder 40 select custom prints from her book of the same title. This acclaimed exhibition debuted with 12 prints in 2005 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, continued at Lincoln Center, where the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts expanded it to its current 40 panels and was then placed for a year’s showing in Owensboro, Kentucky, at the International Bluegrass Music Museum, where it will close June 15.
The exhibition showcases 24 colour images and 16 black-and-white prints; the original twelve are housed in custom museum-quality frames, while nearly all the remaining photographs are matted, ready for framing. All prints are signed by Ledgin.
Twenty percent of the winning bid will be donated by Ledgin to the International Bluegrass Music Museum. The minimum bid for the complete set is $12,000. The winner will also receive a personalized copy of the companion book. Bidding closes midnight Eastern time, Sunday, June 16 and the winner will be notified via email by Tuesday, June 18.
Bids on individual prints will be accepted simultaneously but will be awarded only in the event the entire 40-image collection fails to meet the minimum. Minimum bid on framed photos is $700; unframed $500.
Thumbnails and descriptions of the prints and full details about the auction may be viewed on Ledgin’s web site.
Ms Ledgin had this to say when I asked her about the auction …….
“After three years of the photo exhibition being ‘on the road,’ I did not want to see the collection just sitting crated up in my home. Of course, while this is one of the aspects of how I earn my living, because the bluegrass world has been so kind and generous to me, I wanted to give back to ‘my’ community in some way. Hence, the decision to donate 20% of the sale to IBMM. What I think would be exceptional would be for someone, a company or perhaps a pool of people, to purchase the exhibition from me, then turn around and donate it either in its entirety or piecemeal to IBMM and/or to other appropriate exhibition spaces.”
Among the bluegrass bands/personalities pictured are the Nashville Bluegrass Band, with The Fairfield Four; the “King of Bluegrass” Jimmy Martin (photographed with two members of his band, August 1986); New Grass Revival (June 9, 1988); The Johnson Mountain Boys; Peter Rowan; The John Cowan Band; Jens Kr?ºger; Audie Blaylock; Hot Rize; Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys; and James Reams and the Barnstormers. Others of interest include Mike Seeger (alone and with half-brother Pete Seeger); Minnie Pearl; Jim Lauderdale; and the Green Grass Cloggers.
Stephanie P. Ledgin, the 2005 International Bluegrass Music Print Media Person of the Year, came from a diversified music background when she was hired in 1975 as an editor of the seminal bluegrass magazine Pickin’. Since then, her work has appeared around the world in magazines, books, recordings and museums.
Her first book, Homegrown Music: Discovering Bluegrass, was nominated for the Belmont Curb Music Industry Country Music Book of the Year. In May 2007, the International Country Music Conference and Belmont University presented her with the Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism for her distinguished career.
Ledgin serves on the Board of Directors of the International Bluegrass Music Association, is a member of the European Bluegrass Music Association and is a founding member of the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance. From 1994-2003, as adjunct faculty at Rutgers University, Ledgin was director of the New Jersey Folk Festival.
Her next book, Discovering Folk Music (Praeger), is expected to be published towards the end of this year.
