1. How and when did you begin collecting? What was the first photograph you bought?
Irving Penn’s Ballet Society while still in college. My wife Judy and I started collecting in earnest when we were in grad school at Stanford in the early 1980s; photo galleries were sprouting like mushrooms throughout Northern California.
2. What do you consider your first real success in collecting? Your biggest failure? What is your prize?
We purchased Julia Margaret Cameron’s Mia Album in 1990, after it had finally been granted an export license to leave the UK, which had originally been denied in 1974. This acquisition took every available cent we could beg, borrow or steal. Biggest failure? We totally missed Eggleston (now it’s too late). Prize? I suppose we’re best known for our Edward Weston collection.
3. What is your concentration or theme in collecting now, if any?
We identify the photographers we love and that we think are true geniuses, from Talbot to Nègre to Cameron to Weston to Brassaï to Arbus and beyond, and collect them in depth, showing various phases of their careers. The exception is daguerreotypes where we specialize in that great artist, Anonymous.
4. What is your approach? Do you go on instinct? Do you buy from galleries, dealers, auctions, and/or directly from artists?
Almost all the artists in our “core” collection are long dead, but yes, we buy from all of the above, including the artists’ estates. We prefer to buy large tranches of work rather than one at a time, when such opportunities exist. We collect 19th century with a 20th century collector’s eye, and 20th century with a 19th century collector’s eye.
5. Is there any other photography collector you especially admire?
What Helmut Gernsheim accomplished and foresaw in his day takes one’s breath away. That the British museums didn’t see fit to purchase his collection is astonishing in hindsight.
6. Is the idea of collecting vintage work important to you?
Not just important — essential.
7. How important is investment potential versus esthetic pleasure in choosing what to buy?
Like all serious collectors, we know the market for the artists we are interested in. Everybody overpays from time to time, but it is always best to do so with one’s eyes open. Show me a collector who claims not to care at all about the investment value of his holdings, and I’ll show you a liar.
8. If there is one picture you would like to buy but haven’t been able to, what would that be?
It is the Joseph Nicéphore Niépce View from the Window at Le Gras in the Gernsheim Collection at the Ransom Center, Austin, Texas, from 1826 that started it all.
Michael P. Mattis
(914)725-7148
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