NPR previews Sotheby’s forthcoming Polaroid sale via audio feed, online summary and slideshow.  This collection of photographs is voluminous and high quality enough to merit a two-pronged evening-to-day-sale structure (which is extremely rare in the photography category): The 1,200-plus lot auction will begin at Sotheby’s tomorrow at 5 p.m. and continue in a 10 a.m. session on Tuesday.

Despite judicial sanctification of the sale, its imminent dispersal of a museum-quality collection is still very controversial, especially among the artists whose works comprise the collection.  John Reuter, a photographer with many pieces in the collection, albeit none that will be included in the approaching Sotheby’s sessions, laments the sale, and its circumstances in NPR’s story:

“Having been through the dissolution of the company,” he says, “not only is my work in the collection and I can’t get it, and a lot of it was my best work, at certain periods of my life, but I also saw people who were incredible people who made this film and made Polaroid a great company, lose their jobs for no good reason really. So the auction is almost the funeral in a way, because it is the last act in the dissolution of Polaroid.”

What’s A Picture Worth? Polaroid Auctions Photos (NPR)