“Photographs contain our present, which very quickly becomes our past. It is this inherent nostalgia that gives them a powerful emotional power," says Philippe Garner in an interview specifically for Unique Estates Life Global View.
by Ivaylo Haralampiev / photography © Camera Work Gallery
In 1997, during an evening walk around Berlin, the German-American photographer Helmut Newton showed his friend, the graphic designer and art director Christian Diener, an old garage currently used as an art studio. Newton's experienced eye registered that it was the "perfect location" for the gallery Diener dreamed of opening with established photography collector Gert Elfering. That is where the story of Camera Work begins. The name of the gallery is borrowed from the magazine published by the American photographer Alfred Stiglitz between 1903 and 1917.
Early on, Diener and Elfering decided to feature both some of the most famous photographers in history, including Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Irving Penn, Man Ray, including Helmut Newton himself, and contemporary photographers with a mission to establish photography as an independent genre in the visual arts.
Camera Work recently celebrated its 25th anniversary as one of the world's leading photography galleries. The 25 Years Camera Work exhibition brought together the work of 25 photographers, including Diane Arbus, Peter Beard, Patrick Demarchelier and, of course, Helmut Newton. Philip Garner, Deputy Director and Consultant of Christie's and one of the world's most influential specialists in the field of photography and collecting over the last fifty years, was selected as curator.
A love of photography led the 21-year-old Philip to Sotheby's educational program in 1970. A few months later, he was invited to organize one of the world's first specialist photography auctions. For many years, Philip Garner was the deputy director of Christie's. He established himself as one of the world's leading experts in the history of art, decorative arts and design of the 20th century, and is the author of several books on photography. Garner, himself a collector and photographer (the latter a "secret"), was also largely responsible for establishing contemporary photography on the international art market. Winner of the Royal Photographic Society Award.
Those years passed very quickly. I am happy that I organized the anniversary exhibition, because it is not only a good balance sheet, but also a trip down the track of my memories. I go back to the 1950s. I fell in love with photography at a very young age. Among my favorite photographers at the time was Irving Penn, and here was Camera Work featuring him years later.
They forced themselves onto the international map with a leader who, with ambition and passion, conquered territory close to the gallery's chosen sensibility. One of the biggest mistakes is trying to please everyone. They have consistently focused on fashion and style, but also on historical photography, as well as launching young photographers.
The impetus for photography to become a significant cultural phenomenon gained momentum in the 1970s. Serious collectors appeared, including many museums. The interest then was in the more distant history of photography. Almost no one paid attention to modern photographers. But pictures from the 19th and early 20th centuries began to run out and today are a real rarity. Interest turned to post-war and contemporary photography, and Camera Work opened at the right time and place.
Photographic images are indeed so readily available today, and produced daily in the millions, that it really takes a leap of the imagination when one asks why one should value and possibly pay a high price for otherwise so accessible artefacts. But if you're curious about the craft, the more you learn and look, the more you'll notice that the prints represent something truly sublime.
In the past, some very famous photographers, among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, printed their photographs for a long time. Photographers today realize the need to be strict and impose restrictions to maintain a sense of relative exclusivity. The passion for issue numbering is an invention of the modern photography market.
The trend today is: straight to the wall! In today's photo culture, most creative photographers create images for exhibitions, not print media. In recent years, a whole generation of photographers have been photographing as artists once would have painted. They build complex scenarios where color is almost mandatory.
Today, many more collectors buy photography primarily in large format with the conviction that it is a work of contemporary art. Very different is the historical collector who collects a smaller format, in fact the only one available. Much of these collections, however, remain living in boxes.
Photographs, as a direct document, contain our present, which very quickly becomes our past. It is this inherent nostalgia that gives them a powerful emotional power. Photography walks a curious path between truth and fiction. It relies on verisimilitude, unlike painting. But still photography is not absolute reality. In fact, the greatest talents seduce us with their recreation of reality, even when the rational part of our brain knows that it is a fictitious world. Often photographs build dreams, ideals, ambitions that are in many ways impossible. But these ideals are still in classical sculptures, so what's new?!
Most of us auctioneers seem cold-blooded, almost emotionless, in complete control of the situation, but this is far from the case. Regardless of how many years I've done it, the excitement is high, the adrenaline level is very high. Every time I go to a stage where I only have half the script. I don't know how the other players will react. It's the same with bidders, imagine a collector who is passionate about a particular item but doesn't know how long or how much he will be able to bid.
In fifty years, thousands of wonderful works of art have passed through my hands. But nothing is more satisfying than to see in a museum or gallery a work with which I have worked and whose fate, so to speak, has been decided by my hammer. The privilege of touching them as part of my work is far more valuable than the idea that I can have some of these objects at home.
This is my secret garden, I love to take pictures and still do, I have built up a rich catalog over half a century. I have always photographed for pleasure, I did not feel the need to share with an audience. And even when I work with another photographer, the only one in the world is himself. If I had any pretensions to being a photographer, it would put a lot of strain on those relationships. My desire now to possibly show some of my photographs was dictated by my wife, who insisted saying that I had nowhere to wait any longer.