The personal collection of Sam Haskins — one of the photographers who helped define the look of the Swinging Sixties — comes to auction at Sloane Street Auctions on 24 September. Consigned by his son Ludwig, it comprises 78 original prints from the three photobooks that made Haskins’s name, and for anyone with an interest in figure photography or the history of the medium it is a rare chance to own work that shaped a decade. Live online bidding is available via Sloane Street Auctions.
Who Sam Haskins was
Haskins (1926-2009) was a British photographer, born in South Africa, who made his name in the 1960s with a trilogy of figure photography books: Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate & Other Stories (1964) and November Girl (1967). What makes his story unusual is that he did it far from the fashion capitals, working out of a commercial studio in Johannesburg, and yet became a defining influence on the visual language of the era.
The detail that stands out, and that carries a lesson for photographers now, is how he worked. While his contemporaries used celebrity models, professional set builders and make-up artists, Haskins had none of that — model agencies barely existed. He found his subjects among friends, family, colleagues and people off the street, built his own sets, printed his own work, and for November Girl even did the make-up himself. As Norman Hall, then picture editor at the Times, put it, his studio came alive at night, filled with the smell of pine sawdust and paint.
He had arrived in London in 1949 to study photography, finding inspiration in a post-war city still under food rationing but energised by the Festival of Britain, before returning permanently in 1968 to open a Chelsea studio that became part of the city’s cultural landscape through the 1970s.
What is in the sale
The 78 prints span all three books, and the catalogue detail will interest collectors: many are the only known copies, or come from tiny editions of three to six. Highlights include the cover image from Five Girls (a silver gelatin print from an edition of three), the front cover of Cowboy Kate (from an edition of six), and several images described as the sole surviving print at their scale.
The estimates are the striking part. Almost every lot carries an estimate of £300-500 — which, for original silver gelatin prints by a genuinely influential twentieth-century photographer, many of them unique, is remarkably accessible. This is not a sale pitched at institutions alone; it is one where a working photographer or collector could realistically acquire an important print.
Why it matters
Auctions of this kind have become rarer. As the sale’s own team notes, the closure of Christie’s South Kensington removed one of the main venues where photographic collections like this once appeared — and Sloane Street Auctions has positioned itself to fill that gap, with former Christie’s South Kensington chairman Hugh Edmeades as its auctioneer.
For our readers, the appeal is twofold. There is the collecting opportunity, at prices that put original prints within genuine reach. But there is also the value of simply looking at the work: Haskins built a body of images that shaped a decade using nothing more than the people around him and sets he made himself, at a time when he had none of the infrastructure a modern shoot takes for granted. That is worth studying quite apart from whether you bid.
Sam Haskins auction: the details
Sale: the personal collection of Sam Haskins (1926-2009), consigned by his son Ludwig Haskins. Auction house: Sloane Street Auctions, with auctioneer Hugh Edmeades (former chairman of Christie’s South Kensington). Date: 24 September 2026. Contents: 78 original prints from Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate & Other Stories (1964) and November Girl (1967), many being the only known copies or from editions of three to six. Estimates: predominantly £300-500 per lot. Bidding: live online via the Sloane Street Auctions website.
