The TOP 10

Photo CollectorsB Y M I LT O N E S T E R O W

84 March 2011 ARTnews

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David DechmanNew York

WEALTH MANAGEMENT20th century

Randi and Bob FisherSan FranciscoAPPAREL (GAP INC.)20th century; contemporary

Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-FallaNew York

INHERITANCE; REAL-ESTATE DEVELOPMENT20th century; contemporary

Daniel Greenberg and Susan SteinhauserLos Angeles

ELECTRONICS EQUIPMENT20th century

Michael JesselsonNew YorkWEALTH MANAGEMENT20th century

Elton JohnLondon; Atlanta

ENTERTAINMENT20th century; contemporary

Andrew PilaraSan Francisco

INVESTMENT BANKING20th century; contemporary

Lisa and John PritzkerSan FranciscoHOTELS AND INVESTMENTS20th century; contemporary

Thomas WaltherZurichINHERITANCE (MACHINE-TOOL MANUFACTURING)19th century; 20th century

Michael WilsonLondon

FILM19th century; 20th century

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Milton Esterow is editor andpublisher of ARTnews.

on who you talk to,” a promi-nent curator of photography toldme when I asked him to namethe world’s top ten photographycollectors.He was right. I asked 20

prominent dealers, auctioneers,collectors, museum directors,and curators. No one had thesame list. A further survey pro-duced a consensus, as well ascomments on other major topicsin the photography world.“I have not seen anything like

it,” Sandra Phillips, curator ofphotography at the San Fran-cisco Museum of Modern Art,told a reporter recently. She wastalking about Pier 24, a 28,000-square-foot gallery that was cre-ated last year by Andrew Pilara,a San Francisco investmentbanker, in an old warehouse inSan Francisco that displays thecollection of the Pilara Founda-tion, which he established. Pi-lara is on the list of Top Ten.Pier 24 houses about 2,000

photographs, including works byDiane Arbus, Garry Winogrand,Edward Burtynsky, Lee Fried-lander, Robert Adams, HiroshiSugimoto, Dorothea Lange,Richard Misrach, and many oth-ers. Admission is free, and thespace is open to the public Mon-day through Thursday by ap-pointment only.Pier 24 recently presented an

exhibition of the collection ofRandi and Bob Fisher, who arealso on the Top Ten. Bob Fisher’sparents founded Gap Inc.Among the artists in the showwere Edward Weston, RobertFrank, Walker Evans, PaulStrand, Alfred Stieglitz, and An-dreas Gursky. Other exhibitionsare being planned for Pier 24.Another topic being discussed

is the increasingly global natureof the market, with great depthin France, England, Germany,Italy, Switzerland, Russia, theMiddle East, and elsewhere.

Roger Fenton’s Slave with Fly-flapper, 1858, from Michael Wilson’s holdings.

Angela Strassheim’s Untitled, 2004, from the collection of Elton John.

‘IT DEPENDS

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Jeff Wall’s In front of a nightclub, 2006, one of Andrew Pilara’s purchases.

Tina Modotti, Worker’s Parade, 1926, in the collectionof Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.

RIGHT Bill Brandt’s Nude, Seaford, East SussexCoast, 1957, was a gift of David Dechman and

Michel Mercure to the Museum of Modern Art.

86 March 2011 ARTnews

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Unlike the contemporary art market,there is less speculation and less buy-ing for investment with photography,according to several observers. Collec-tors are mainly buying because theyexperience the works and want to livewith them.Other observers point out that more

and more collectors of contemporaryart are collecting photography, includ-ing Eli Broad, who is on the ARTnewslist of Top Ten art collectors and hasbought many works by Cindy Sher-man and Jeff Wall, among others. “IsEli a photo collector? No,” said onecurator. “Does he have a lot of pho-tos? Yes.”A photography auctioneer said, “We

see more and more clients of other departments—Impressionist, modern,

contemporary, and American painting—becoming interested in buying pho-tography, whereas 15 years ago theywould not.”The Top Ten for photography also in-

cludes Thomas Walther, who has beencollecting photography for more than30 years. In 2001 the Museum of Mod-ern Art acquired—it was a partial gift,partial purchase—328 works by mostof the leading European and Americanphotographers of the 1920s and ’30s.The list included Man Ray, EdwardSteichen, Stieglitz, Paul Strand, ManuelBravo, Paul Outerbridge, Berenice Ab-bott, and many others.In 2000 the Metropolitan Museum

presented the exhibition “Other Pic-tures: Vernacular Photographs fromthe Thomas Walther Collection.” Dat-

ing from the 1910s through the ’60s,the photos were by anonymous ama-teurs and were discovered in flea mar-kets, in shoeboxes, or in familyalbums.“In the last ten years,” Walther told

me, “I have increasingly gone into the19th century, with works by GustaveLe Gray, Linus Tripe, Henri Le Secq,Roger Fenton, Charles Marville, Fran-cis Frith, William Fox Talbot, andmany others.”Walther has acquired about 2,000

photographs.“I pursue my collecting with the ut-

most passion,” he said.The Top Ten are listed in alphabeti-

cal order, and were selected based onhow active they are rather than on thesize or value of their collections. �

An image of Berck Beach, Nord Pas de Calais, from Raymond Depardon’s series “La France,” 2005. Celso Gonzalez-Falla and Sondra Gilman collection.

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