collecting photography

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LOEWS MAGAZINE 46 COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY If you don’t think photographs are worth collecting, you’re missing the big picture. BY GEOFF WILLIAMS © TIME INC., COURTESY OF THE MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

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Page 1: Collecting Photography

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collectingphotographyIf you don’t

think photographs are worth collecting, you’re missing the big picture.by geoff williams

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E.J. Kritz didn’t set out to collect

photographs. He just wanted a cool picture

for his dorm room.

But unlike most college freshman,

instead of buying a few posters, E.J.

plunked down $150 at an art gallery and

purchased an original Rob Arra, who is well-

known for his photos of sporting crowds in

stadiums. And while stadium crowds may

not sound like collectibles, with an imaginative eye and careful

lighting, Arra manages to make a night game at Fenway Park

a work of art. Ten years later, E.J. is now an Arra disciple. “If

I could fast forward 60 years and learn that I had never once

purchased a painting, I wouldn’t be shocked,” says E.J. “But

if someone told me I had spent thousands and thousands of

dollars on photography, I wouldn’t be shocked either.”

Collecting photography as a pastime is relatively new and

the medium itself didn’t begin to be embraced as an art form

until the 1970s. That said, there are probably more collectors

out there than you would think.

Who and What to Collect

Sid Monroe, owner of the Monroe Gallery of Photography

in Santa Fe, could be speaking for every museum curator

and every experienced collector when he says: “You need to

develop your own subjective way that you look at photography.

Ultimately, what you live and surround yourself with says

something about you, that you derive some satisfaction and

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pleasure in viewing those images. So go to museums, go to

galleries, read books of photo collections and get a sense of

what is attractive to you, and from there, you start to seek out

what’s appealing.”

Beyond your personal preferences, as with any form of

collecting, price is an additional key consideration. On the

whole, photography is less expensive to collect than other art

forms. While a Jackson Pollock painting sold for $140 million in

2006, the most expensive photograph ever sold was 99 Cent II

Diptychon by Andreas Gursky, which went for $3.3 million

in 2007.

To get started, here are some of the major categories that

you might consider collecting.

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Generally, it’s agreed that this term refers to a photo that helps

complete a photographer’s artistic vision.

To begin exploring these works, you might start with

a place like the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago or

the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City. His roster

includes fine art photographers such as

Eikoh Hosoe, who came to prominence

after World War II for his dark, sometimes

erotic topics, and William Klein, a painter and

documentary filmmaker who is also known

for producing landmark still photos of New

York City streets in the 1950s.

Edelman’s gallery highlights many

fine art photographers, including Ron van

Dongen and Tom Baril, both of whom use

flowers as subjects. “What’s special about

van Dongen’s work is that he actually

grows the flowers that he’s photographing,”

observes Edelman. “Van Dongen nurtures

the flowers, clips them and brings them into

his house, and shoots them very simply and

is very respectful of the flower.”

Baril, on the other hand, specializes

in flowers that are past their prime. “He

purposefully buys flowers that are decaying, and then he finds

their inner beauty,” says Edelman. “He intentionally forces you

to look at the parts of the flower that you normally don’t. He’s

unique and produces really beautiful pieces.”

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

You can’t discuss landscape

photography without discussing

Ansel Adams, probably the

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5th Avenue, New York, 1955, by William Klein

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most famous of photographers, thanks in part to the numerous

books, calendars and T-shirts depicting his images. So

masterful is his work that Adams’ mass appeal hasn’t hurt

his standing among collectors at all—a print of Adams’ famed

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold in 2006 for $609,600.

Michael Kenna is another landscape master, an extremely

patient photographer when it comes to getting just the right

lighting for his shots. “He compares his work to that moment

when you’re at the theater, and the lights go out and the music

comes on. He wants each viewer to have the same anticipation

and approach his work as if they’re the only ones appreciating

the landscape,” says Edelman.

Rolfe Horn, a one-time Kenna

assistant, is another highly admired

landscape photographer. “He is one

of the best out there,” says Eric Keller,

owner of Soulcatcher Studio in Santa

Fe. “He just draws you in, and I think

that’s what successful about any

photographer’s work. Their images

keep your attention for a certain

amount of time, make an impression

and stick in your mind.”

Josef Hoflehner—whose main

representation is the Bonni Benrubi

Gallery in New York—is an Australian

photographer with a varied portfolio from around the world.

He often shoots in black and white with an approach that can

make his subjects appear mythical, not quite real, almost like

visual poetry.

And Robert Adams—no relation to Ansel—is known as

one of the most talented photographers to ever pick up a

camera. “I think Robert Adams and a number of people in his

generation re-approached how they used the landscape as

their subject,” says Joshua Chuang, who oversees Adams’

archives at the Yale University Art Gallery. “Ansel Adams’

photographs present a very dramatic view of what are mostly

pristine, natural phenomena, and his pictures by and large

heightened the drama. Robert Adams took a very different

approach—you look at his photos at first, and they seem dry.

There’s no apparent drama to the pictures, but when you look

at the pictures, they’re still beautiful, but in a different way.”

PHOTOJOURNALISM

“Alfred Eisenstaedt was a pioneer in his field, one of the

earliest practitioners of photojournalism, before there was even

a name for photojournalism,” says Monroe. You may know

Eisenstaedt’s work even if you don’t know his name: a long-

time photographer for LIFE magazine, Eisenstaedt took the

iconic photograph of a Navy sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day.

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“He covered many historic moments and took many photos

of world leaders like Winston Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini, but

it was often the quieter photographs that really showcase his

art. He wouldn’t say, but I think he felt some of his best photos

were of nature. He did some amazing nature photography,

beautiful still lifes of winter trees and snow,” says Monroe.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photojournalist right

around the same time and considered a master of candid

photography. Ted Croner, while not as significant a figure as

Eisenstaedt or Cartier-Bresson, is intriguing for a series of

photographs that he took in the late 1940s, says Monroe.

“Ted Croner took a very different approach to photography.

He wanted his images to be as realistic as possible, but he

also had this modern view—his pictures were almost like jazz,

showing a lot of motion, music and excitement. They were very

reflective of the time of the late 1940s.” One of his best known

works, says Monroe, was Taxi, New York. “It’s a blur of an old

taxi going through the city at night, and it’s just a very exciting

photograph—a really pure example of just reflecting that

moment. That’s clearly his best-known image, but there are

several others, and I don’t think any casual viewer can come

across those images and not really stop and look.”

Margaret Bourke-White is yet another important

photojournalist turned fine art photographer. “She was truly a

groundbreaker in every sense of the word, not the least being

a woman doing what she did,” points out Monroe. She worked

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More Fashion Mileage per Dress, Barbara Vaughn, New York,1956, by Lillian Bassman

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steadily for Fortune and LIFE magazines,

capturing images of the Dust Bowl

in the 1930s and, shortly before his

assassination, Mahatma Gandhi.

Monroe sums up her work in one word:

“Astounding.”

PORTRAITURE

If you’re more into portraits of

people—especially celebrities—this

style may be worth exploring. Some

Hollywood photographers and fashion

photographers have also made their way into the

realm of fine art. George Harrell, says Keller, “was the best-

known of the Hollywood era portrait makers. He came right up

through the studio system, starting at MGM Studios and really

became sort of a star maker in his own right with the beautiful

images he was able to make.” Some of Harrell’s most famous

shots include Jane Russell lying on a haystack and Jean

Harlow on a bear skin rug, each of them intensely lit to suggest

their respective star power. What Keller finds interesting about

Harrell’s work is that he hadn’t set out to create art, he was

just promoting stars. However, the superb aesthetic quality of

his shots is unmistakable and has attracted a large number of

collectors over the years.

The same thing happened to Georges Dambier. Taking

photos of celebrities like Rita Hayworth after World War II and

shooting for the fashion magazine ELLE may not sound like

a path to fine art, but these days Dambier’s work is highly

sought-after. Horst P. Horst, often just known as Horst, is a

fashion photographer whose work appeals to contemporary

collectors. He was a photographer for Vogue and is recognized

as “a magician with light and shadows,” explains Etheleen

Staley of the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York City. “He’s

considered one of the old masters,” she says.

Staley cites Patrick Demarchelier and Lillian Bassman as

examples of major magazine photographers whose work is

particularly collectible. Bassman is 92 and a good portion of

her work was taken from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. By

the 1970s, not thinking her work all that special, she got rid of

many photographs. However, in the 1990s she came across

a bag of her old negatives. Always interested in manipulating

images, Bassman, says Staley, “went into the dark room,

worked on the negatives, bleached and smudged and really

transformed her existing photographs into something special.”

Photo Fine Points

To begin collecting photography, there are several key

questions to ask that should help you get a sense of a

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particular work’s value and whether it’s worth acquiring.

Is it a vintage print? This is a term that came about in

the 1970s, when collecting photographs became mainstream.

A photo is considered vintage if it’s a print made by or under

supervision of the photographer within about a year of the

negative’s creation. If this becomes important to you, then as

Staley says, you are “hardcore.”

Is this an original? Some photographers will make

copies of a photo years after the fact, and so while it may not

be considered vintage, it is still an original. One way to look at

it—an original photograph has been printed and held by the

photographer during his or her lifetime.

Is it a limited edition? It’s important to

determine if there is a specific, certain and finite

number of prints that a photographer agreed to

make, since this clearly increases the rarity of the

photograph and its worth.

Is the photo signed? That little difference,

depending on the photographer and photo, of

course, can make a picture’s worth go thousands

of dollars up in value.

The photographer? Um, dead or alive?

It’s morbid, yes, but just as with paintings, a

photographer’s work is worth even more once

they’re gone, since their life’s work is now finite.

Following Your Passion

While the diagnostic queries are key to making a good photo

purchase, whether you like the photo could well be the most

important question to ask yourself. Because while it’s certainly

possible to buy photography as an investment, it’s risky if

making money is all you care about. As such, why not like

what you’re buying? After all, this is what makes so many

photographs worth something special—that mysterious, hard-

to-describe quality that attracts people to the picture in the

first place.

“The great thing about photography is that there are

photographs related to everything on earth that people

collect,” says Pablo Solomon, a prominent artist and sculptor

in Austin, Texas, who also has a passion for collecting

photography. “Photographs give people a way to remember

good times and document bad times. Photographs capture

moments shared by an entire generation or a special moment

between two lovers.” That’s certainly part of why E.J. Kritz

became a collector. “I think it’s in the details for me,” says

E.J. “There’s something crisp and pure and real about

photography. The camera can capture things that the brush

can’t, and that’s not to sleight an artist. When I’m looking at a

photo, I know that what I’m looking at was really what it was

like on that day at that moment for that person.”

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The Outlaw, 1949-50, by Ted Croner

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