Episode 37: A Conversation with Daile Kaplan

At the beginning of March 2026, I sat down for a conversation with auction veteran Daile Kaplan. Daile had an extraordinary career at Swann, but a lot of people do not know about other aspects of her career, such as her research on photographer Lewis Hine, her collection of vernacular photographs, and the fact that she seems to know everyone in this business!

Daguerreian portrait of Daile Kapln by Jerry Spagnoli

Daile made history for Swann Galleries when she sold the top lot in the house’s history: the complete set of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian. It sold for $1,440,000 in October 2012. She made history with works by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Julia Margaret Cameron, Sally Mann, Imogen Cunningham, and many many other photographers.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait of Kate Keown, circular albumen print, 1866, sold at Swann, 25 October 2016, $106,250

Daile’s eye-opening book, Pop Photographica: Photography's Objects in Everyday Life 1842-1969, shows the impact that photography plays in our collective cultural experience.

Published by the Art Gallery of Ontario, 2003

At the end of world War II, the Red Cross deposited its photograph collection--some 50,000 pictures--in the Library of Congress, where Hine's work was effectively "lost" due to an eccentric filing code that baffled historians for nearly forty years. Daile was was able to break the code, identify Hine's photographs, and reintroduce to the world the best of this master's "lost" photographs--an event that not only brings to light a completely new body of Hine's work but gives him his due, at last, as a true pioneer of photojournalism.

Abbeville Press, 1988

The Brooklyn Museum acquired over 300 vernacular photographs from Daile and her partner Donna Henes in 2019.

Here is a presentation that Daile and Donna presented on photographs of extraordinary women at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on February 22, 2009. Video courtesy Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation.

Daile Kaplan’s full biography:

Daile Kaplan is a champion of photography. She’s president of DK Appraisals & Advisory, which she

founded after a 30-year long career as V.P. and Director of Photographs at Swann Auction Galleries,

NYC. At Swann she introduced dedicated sales to vernacular photography and photobooks, setting

numerous world auction records for fine art photographs and photographic literature. For the past

several years she been appraising photographer’s archives and private collections. She has also

worked with numerous American and Canadian fine art museums on special projects.

Kaplan began her career as a scholar and curator of social documentary photography, notably the

work of Lewis W. Hine. She’s the author of Lewis Hine in Europe, The ‘Lost’ Photographs (New

York: Abbeville Press) and editor of Photo Story: Selected Letters and Photographs of Lewis W.

Hine (New York and London: Smithsonian Institution Press). She was curator at Alice Austen House,

NYC, and her monograph about Albert Arthur Allen, a Roaring ’20s photographer, was published by

Twin Palms Press.

In the early 1990s she began collecting 3-dimensional decorative and functional objects highlighted

with photographs, for which she coined the term “pop photographica.” Selections from her collection

have been exhibited most recently at the Rijksmuseum’s “American Photography” blockbuster

exhibition as well as Minneapolis Institute of Art; Les Rencontres d’Arles; the Morgan Library and

Museum; the Museum of Art & Design; the Art Gallery of Ontario; and the Parrish Art Museum. She

has written extensively about pop photographica’s relationship with other fine art genres and

academic disciplines, including Marvin Heiferman’s compilation, Photography Changes Everything

(Aperture).

With her partner Donna Henes (1945-2024) she co-curated “The Better Half,” a vernacular

photography collection representing active women, comprising 3,000 single photographs and more

than 100 photo albums. The photographs span from the Victorian age, 1840s, to the period known

as “second wave feminism,” the 1970s-80s. The Brooklyn Museum acquired the collection in 2019.

She has delivered numerous lectures about 19 th through 20th-century photographs, photobooks and

vernacular photographs at the Fine Art Institute at NYU, Harvard University Collectors Group, the

NYC chapter of the Junior League, American Museum of Folk Art, Grolier Club, the Ephemera

Society, New York University, Boston University, Maine Media Workshop and College, the New

School, and Fotofusion at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre as well as the Appraisers

Association of America, American Society of Appraisers, International Society of Appraisers. Under

the auspices of the New York State Council for the Humanities, she also taught visual studies

programs in NYC’s public schools, As a volunteer, she pioneered an adult visual literacy program at

the Centers for Reading and Writing, in NYC. With Maren Stange, she co-taught “Photographs as

Primary Source Material” in NYU’s Graduate History Program – the first course of its kind.

Kaplan was the Photographs specialist on PBS’ popular television program, Antiques Roadshow for

20 plus years. She’s also shot segments about photography for the History Channel, HG-TV, Plum

TV and City TV. A certified member of the Appraisers Association of America, she served on its

board of directors for 10 years.