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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
MargaretBourke-WhiteWorkingatoptheChryslerBuilding,1934,
byOscarGraubner
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Rosa‘GracedeMonaco,’2002,byRonvanDongen
PineTrees,Wolcheon,SouthKorea,2007,byMichaelKenna
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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Creek,Study2Izumo,Japan2004byRolfeHorn
Taxi,NewYorkNight,1947-48byTedCroner
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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WomanBicyclist,Circus,OldMadisonSquareGarden,1947-48,byTedCroner
“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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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.”
BehindtheGareSaint-Lazare,Paris,1932,byHenriCartier-Bresson
ManandWoman#8,1960,byEikohHosoe
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