The Expert Eye

Daile Kaplan is a true champion of photography.  As Director of the Photographs Department at Swann Galleries she introduced dedicated sales of vernacular photographs and photobooks, setting numerous world auction records along the way. In addition to her work at Swann, she's an author, curator, and was a featured appraiser on PBS' Antiques Roadshow for over 20 years.  Listen on to hear Daile's first-hand experiences during a time that the photo market seemed to be evolving at lightning speed. 

A trip to Istanbul in 2011 revealed several mysteries, including a portrait of a dark-eyed, scantily clad woman whose true identity has been elusive for over 100 years. Who is Kaloma and why is she in so many antique stores throughout the world?

In the summer of 2025, Aimee participated in the 30th season of PBS’ beloved program, Antiques Roadshow. As a volunteer appraiser, it’s always exciting to see what viewers bring to the show. This time, however, a guest brought some photographs that blew her away… it was a huge collection of portraits of dogs smoking pipes, collected over a period of 20 years. It was the perfect chance to play photo detective yet again.

In my continuing series of conversations with people who have shaped the Photographs market, I move back to focusing on the auction world.  I sat down with Rick Wester, who, in addition to being a private dealer, consultant, and gallery owner, he has headed up the Photographs departments of 2 of 3 major auction houses, and has put together some of the most memorable sales of the last 40 years.  I sat down to find out what it was like to be working in the wild west of the auction world during the 1990s and 2000s, and what lessons he learned during the ride.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s series of photographs featuring his family in unexpected places and costumes are hard to describe but entirely captivating. He found inspiration for a series of photographs from a book published in 1911 by Ambrose Bierce called ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ After handling one of Meatyard’s prints at Sotheby’s, Aimee gets to the bottom of what these two things have in common, while discovering what demons were hard at work in old printing workshops.

In 1853, photographer Platt Babbitt made a chilling daguerreotype of a man named Joseph Avery, who had been stuck on a tree branch in the middle of the rushing rapids near the edge of Niagara Falls for over 10 hours. Babbitt had unknowingly created the first “action” shot in photojournalism. In this episode, Aimee tells the unbelievable true story of a daring rescue attempt on the Niagara River, a photographer who fought tooth and nail to defend his turf, and the beginning of photojournalism as we know it.

In the second half of my conversation with curator, educator, and photographer Leland Rice, he talks about two major exhibitions that he worked on for two photographers whose work he greatly admired-Frederick Sommer and Herbert Bayer. We also talk about the important connections, or “linkages” that have existed in his life.

Despite a raging head cold, Aimee barrels through to give you want you want: a discussion with Emily Bierman that covers the stellar results of the sale of Ansel Adams, A Legacy: Photographs from the Meredith Collection. This auction smashed records and exceeded expectations overall. We discuss white-glove auctions, the Ansel Adams market, estimates, auction development, research, and I ask Emily to define some of the quirky words we use in the department while cataloguing. Tune in for some major inside-ball information on how we do what we do!

In this long awaited second interview with former Chairman of Sotheby’s Photographs, Denise Bethel, she and Aimee talk about her long career at Sotheby’s and the many treasures she handled, challenges she faced, and things she learned.

This is the first part of a conversation between Aimee Pflieger and Leland Rice on May 19, 2024. Here, he details his first exposure to photography, his experiences both as a student and as an instructor, and finally the genesis and execution of the first major American exhibition of László Moholy-Nagy’s photographic work. This groundbreaking exhibition and accompanying catalogue of gathers around 75 of the artist’s photographs and photograms and traveled to 21 venues in 4 years, through the summer of 1979.