New York.- Swann Galleries’ auction of Important Photographs & Photobooks on Thursday, December 9 offers some extraordinary works ranging from early photographic albums of exotic locales, to edgy contemporary works that challenge the viewer. Early highlights include issues 12-21 and 38 of Camera Work, the photograph magazine created by Alfred Stieglitz, containing images by Edward Steichen, Stieglitz and Alvin Langdon Coburn among others, New York, 1905-08 and 1912 ($25,000 to $35,000); the Stieglitz photogravure The Hand of Man, an image of a locomotive spewing black exhaust, circa 1902 ($20,000 to $30,000); and albums with images of China, Hawaii, Japan and the Middle East. There are also many Native American portraits by Edward S. Curtis, as well as Alexander Gardner’s Lakota and Oglalla tribesmen Lone Horn, Pipe, Grass and Young Elk from the Laramie series, albumen print, 1868 ($7,000 to $10,000).