Michael Joseph (1941-) - The six month cast, Vietnam 1964
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Current bid
€ 78
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Selected by Kai Brückner
Over 35 years' experience; former gallery owner and Museum Folkwang curator.
Estimate € 850 - € 1,050
 | €78 | |
|---|---|---|
 | €75 | |
| €50 | |
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Michael Joseph’s The six month cast, Vietnam 1964 is a limited edition C‑Print, dated 1964, hand signed and numbered 1/20, measuring 30 × 40 cm, in extremely fine condition and sold direct from the artist.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
The Six-Month Cast - Vietnam, 1964
Michael Joseph (b. 1941)
Black & white photographic print
Original photograph: South Vietnam, October 1964
Signed and dated by Michael Joseph
Limited Edition: 1/20
A deeply human and unsettling photograph from Michael Joseph’s Vietnam archive, taken in South Vietnam in October 1964, when the photographer was just 23 years old.
Inside a hospital, Joseph encountered this young woman lying almost completely immobilised within an enormous plaster body cast. She had been shot, the bullet striking her in the spine. Joseph recalled being told by the doctor treating her that she would have to remain in the cast for six months.
The photograph is extraordinary for its intimacy. The vast white cast dominates the composition, encasing her torso and extending around her body, while her face emerges at its edge. A doctor or medical attendant stands beside her, apparently examining or adjusting the cast.
Yet despite the severity of what had happened to her, Joseph does not turn the woman into a spectacle. Her face is quiet, almost contemplative, and it is this contrast - between the violence of her injury and the stillness of the hospital room - that gives the image its emotional force.
Photographed in 1964, before the major escalation of American ground involvement the following year, the image reveals another side of Joseph’s Vietnam archive. Alongside helicopters, soldiers and military operations, he turned his camera towards the people living with the physical consequences of the conflict.
Joseph was only 23. Rather than photographing war solely through its machinery and combatants, he also recorded what happened afterwards - in hospitals, villages and among ordinary people caught within it.
This contemporary black & white photographic print has been personally signed and inscribed “Vietnam 1964” by Michael Joseph and will additionally be numbered 1/20, making it the first print in an official limited edition of only twenty.
More than sixty years later, the photograph remains remarkably powerful: one woman, one terrible injury, and six months of her life enclosed in plaster - quietly witnessed by a young photographer passing through Vietnam in 1964.
#MichaelJoseph #Vietnam1964 #VietnamPhotography #VietnamWar #WarPhotography #DocumentaryPhotography #HospitalPhotography #Photojournalism #HumanityInWar #1960sPhotography #BlackAndWhitePhotography #LimitedEditionPhotography #HistoricalPhotography #PhotographicArchive #CollectiblePhotography
Seller's Story
My father, Michael Joseph, was a London-based advertising photographer, active from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, and best known for his photographs for the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet gatefold.
My continuing mission is to share what we affectionately call “the other photographs”: the lesser-known treasures from his extraordinary archive — original darkroom prints, test prints, alternative frames from major shoots, his celebrated group compositions, and more intimate, personal images.
For this special Solo Seller Auction, I am particularly excited to include a selection from Michael’s 1964 Vietnam archive — photographs that have never previously been seen or offered for sale. These remarkable images reveal a very different side of his work, made when he was just 23 years old.
Alongside Michael’s authentic vintage darkroom prints, I am also presenting a new generation of works: striking prints on aluminium and my own handmade cyanotypes, created from his original negatives and transparencies in the Dordogne sunshine. Some are made on vintage photographic paper retrieved from Michael’s own working library, bringing the archive quite literally into a new generation.
Together, the collection brings photographic history and contemporary experimentation side by side — from unique vintage prints made by Michael himself to bold new interpretations of his remarkable archive.
I hope you enjoy discovering these photographs as much as I enjoy bringing them to light — sometimes preserved exactly as Michael made them, sometimes given an entirely new life.
All works are carefully protected and packed with the attention appropriate to collectible photographic artworks.
For US buyers: customs duties and applicable import charges are paid at source and included in the shipping cost. No additional charges should normally be payable on delivery, subject to any change in regulations.
Translated by Google TranslateThe Six-Month Cast - Vietnam, 1964
Michael Joseph (b. 1941)
Black & white photographic print
Original photograph: South Vietnam, October 1964
Signed and dated by Michael Joseph
Limited Edition: 1/20
A deeply human and unsettling photograph from Michael Joseph’s Vietnam archive, taken in South Vietnam in October 1964, when the photographer was just 23 years old.
Inside a hospital, Joseph encountered this young woman lying almost completely immobilised within an enormous plaster body cast. She had been shot, the bullet striking her in the spine. Joseph recalled being told by the doctor treating her that she would have to remain in the cast for six months.
The photograph is extraordinary for its intimacy. The vast white cast dominates the composition, encasing her torso and extending around her body, while her face emerges at its edge. A doctor or medical attendant stands beside her, apparently examining or adjusting the cast.
Yet despite the severity of what had happened to her, Joseph does not turn the woman into a spectacle. Her face is quiet, almost contemplative, and it is this contrast - between the violence of her injury and the stillness of the hospital room - that gives the image its emotional force.
Photographed in 1964, before the major escalation of American ground involvement the following year, the image reveals another side of Joseph’s Vietnam archive. Alongside helicopters, soldiers and military operations, he turned his camera towards the people living with the physical consequences of the conflict.
Joseph was only 23. Rather than photographing war solely through its machinery and combatants, he also recorded what happened afterwards - in hospitals, villages and among ordinary people caught within it.
This contemporary black & white photographic print has been personally signed and inscribed “Vietnam 1964” by Michael Joseph and will additionally be numbered 1/20, making it the first print in an official limited edition of only twenty.
More than sixty years later, the photograph remains remarkably powerful: one woman, one terrible injury, and six months of her life enclosed in plaster - quietly witnessed by a young photographer passing through Vietnam in 1964.
#MichaelJoseph #Vietnam1964 #VietnamPhotography #VietnamWar #WarPhotography #DocumentaryPhotography #HospitalPhotography #Photojournalism #HumanityInWar #1960sPhotography #BlackAndWhitePhotography #LimitedEditionPhotography #HistoricalPhotography #PhotographicArchive #CollectiblePhotography
Seller's Story
My father, Michael Joseph, was a London-based advertising photographer, active from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, and best known for his photographs for the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet gatefold.
My continuing mission is to share what we affectionately call “the other photographs”: the lesser-known treasures from his extraordinary archive — original darkroom prints, test prints, alternative frames from major shoots, his celebrated group compositions, and more intimate, personal images.
For this special Solo Seller Auction, I am particularly excited to include a selection from Michael’s 1964 Vietnam archive — photographs that have never previously been seen or offered for sale. These remarkable images reveal a very different side of his work, made when he was just 23 years old.
Alongside Michael’s authentic vintage darkroom prints, I am also presenting a new generation of works: striking prints on aluminium and my own handmade cyanotypes, created from his original negatives and transparencies in the Dordogne sunshine. Some are made on vintage photographic paper retrieved from Michael’s own working library, bringing the archive quite literally into a new generation.
Together, the collection brings photographic history and contemporary experimentation side by side — from unique vintage prints made by Michael himself to bold new interpretations of his remarkable archive.
I hope you enjoy discovering these photographs as much as I enjoy bringing them to light — sometimes preserved exactly as Michael made them, sometimes given an entirely new life.
All works are carefully protected and packed with the attention appropriate to collectible photographic artworks.
For US buyers: customs duties and applicable import charges are paid at source and included in the shipping cost. No additional charges should normally be payable on delivery, subject to any change in regulations.
Translated by Google TranslateDetails
Date of print
1964
Artist
Michael Joseph (1941-)
Sold by
Direct from the artist
Title of artwork
The six month cast, Vietnam 1964
Condition
Extremely fine
Technique
C-Print
Height
30 cm
Edition
Limited Edition C-type print, signed by the artist
Width
40 cm
Signature
Hand signed
Genre
Military and war
Sold by
