Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," mural sized, est. $300K-$500K, sold for $722,500. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s conducted the first part of a two-day sale of images from the Polaroid Collection last night. The first session included 99 lots and was front-loaded with some of the collection’s best material. Not surprisingly all 99 lots sold. The estimates were pegged extremely low estimates and, one imagines, so were reserves.

The sale came on the heels of protest and hand-wringing from some members of the photography community who objected to the dispersal of the historic collection.

The session totaled $7.2 million, topping the $4.5 million pre-sale high estimate.

Today Sotheby’s will sell the remaining 473 lots. The auction is by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota. Sale proceeds benefit creditors of PBE Corp., formerly Polaroid, which filed for bankruptcy twice in the previous decade. (My earlier Bloomberg story about the sale here).

Landscapes by Ansel Adams fetched some of the biggest prices. New York collector Sunil Hirani was among the successful bidders for Adams large format images.

“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire some of the most iconic American photography by the best and most well known photographer in the world,” said Hirani in an interview with Art Market Views.  Adams was a friend of Polaroid founder Edwin Land and helped curate the Polaroid Collection, which came to include many works by Adams himself.

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, a serene mist cloaked valley, sold for $722,500, above a $500,000 estimate. Adams took the image in 1938. The rare four-foot wide mural-sized print, which adorned the walls of a Polaroid office, was printed in the 1950s or 1960s.

Contemporary works also drew heated bidding. Andy Warhol’s unique large format Polaroid, the unglamorous, humanizing 1979 Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed) fetched $254,500, above the $15,000 high estimate. I counted at least four phone bidders vying for it.

Works by Chuck Close, who had previously spoken out against the auction, stirred competition. His 9-Part Self Portrait, a collage of large-format Polapan prints sold for $250,500, skipping over the $60,000 high estimate.

Other strong performers included David Hockney, Lucas Samaras, as well as non-Polaroid format classic works by Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Harry Callahan.

Prior to the sale, nine lots were withdrawn from sale to be “reunited with the balance of the Polaroid Collection currently housed in Somerville, MA and will further enhance its appeal,” according a statement provided by Sotheby’s. “The Trustee will be working with Sotheby’s and a representative of certain of the artists in the Polaroid Collection to try and find an institutional home for the remaining approximately 10,000 works in the Polaroid Collection.”

Artists with works removed from the sale include Mary Ellen Mark, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Laurie Simmons, Joel Meyerowitz, Aaron Siskind, William Wegman and Danny Lyons.