Celebrities

Photog’s signed celebrity Polaroids for sale

He always got the big pictures — and the little ones.

But now photographer Tim Boxer is letting them all go, auctioning off his cherished collection of 212 autographed Polaroids of the hottest celebrities from the ’70s and ’80s.

For work, Boxer would snap every imaginable celeb — Meryl Streep, Henry Kissinger, Brooke Shields, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro, to name a few — with his Nikon F.

When he was done getting the professional-quality shot, he’d bring out his Polaroid SX-80 instant camera — which provided the immediate gratification of producing a developed photograph.

But he’d take the ritual one step further than Warhol, who was also known to snap Polaroids of stars.

“I’d ask them to autograph the pictures — no one else did that,” Boxer said. “I thought it was more personal.”

Brooke Shields, April 26, 1978. The 12-year-old actress was being interviewed by Post gossip columnist Earl Wilson at Mont St. Michel restaurant on West 57th Street. She was starring in the movie “Tilt,” in which she played a wholesome pinball whiz—following her role as the daughter of a prostitute in “Pretty Baby.”

He was never turned down. The closest he came to rejection was being threatened by the famously pugnacious scribe Norman Mailer, who took exception to Boxer’s Nikon. “He didn’t like the flash,” said Boxer, who got his start in journalism in 1960 as a police reporter in Chicago. “He said, ‘If you ever take a picture of me with your flash again, I’ll have the boys after you.’ ”

The entire collection is estimated to fetch $20,000 to $30,000 and will be auctioned by Doyle New York on Nov. 25.

Jaqueline Onassis, Nov. 3, 1976. Gallagher’s Steak House, where she was attending a pre-rehearsal party for the Josephine Baker tribute at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Andy Warhol, June 25, 1981. Eastern Airlines Flight No. 572, Atlanta to NYC, following the previous day’s opening of the Limelight disco—where a live tiger prowled under a translucent dance floor.