Scroll down below to explore the latest posts from our daily collecting guide, Peter's quotes, notes and reflections from forty years of collecting and dealing in photography. Started during lockdown and continued by popular demand for over three years now, daily posts are sent by email to our mailing list subscribers, with live works for sale and related works to explore, as well as advance previews of exhibitions and events.
Access the previous 800 posts in our archive pages starting in March 2020 here
Use the #tags below right to search by category and subject. If there is a particular subject, era, style or artist of interest, please contact our concierge service for a tailor-made private view.
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#7 - Ansel Adams
Trailer - Camp Children, Richmond, CaliforniaAnsel Adams is justly celebrated for his epic depictions of majestic landscapes, but this rare, little discussed, haunting image of displaced children shows his profound empathy for humanity. Certainly on a par with his close colleague Dorothea Lange’s, “Migrant Mother”, certainly no less powerful.
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#6 - Julia Margaret Cameron
The Dream (Mary Ann Hillier), 1869Taking up photography at the age of 40 years old, urged on by her children as an antidote to her husband leaving to run the family plantations in India, Julia Margaret Cameron became the first great female photographer. It is so hard to find her prints in such perfect condition as this one. I had collected several in the past in not so great a condition but it was always a dream to find a 10. My dream came true with this one and it just transports me to a special pace each time I look at it.
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#5 - Kristoffer Albrecht
Small Apples, 1984I was visiting our great friend and artist, Pentti Sammallahti, in Helsinki and I casually said to him, “Perhaps there is another great photographer in Finland I should meet?”
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#4 - Arnold Newman
Senator John F. Kennedy at the Capitol, Washington DC, 1953This is my favorite Arnold Newman image. Such a great environmental portrait with a true sense of destiny as JFK looks to the future. Where is our leader now?
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#3 - Wynn Bullock
Woman's Hands, 1956 (printed 1991)Wynn Bullock, to my mind, is one the greatest 20th Century photographers. Often eclipsed by his more well known contemporaries, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. This is a haunting portrait of his mother’s hands taken in his modest house in Carmel in 1956. The beauty of the print just knocks me out and is the definition of the word “primal”. -
#2 - Alfred Stieglitz
The Steerage, 1907Of course, “The Steerage” is one of the most celebrated images in the history of photography. For good reason as its' genius graphic construction and human empathy is utterly timeless.
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#1 - Anonymous
The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem c. 1860Jerusalem has been, and is, the spiritual home to three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To say it is a magical place is a great understatement.
I have seen and collected many images of The Holy Land but this recent acquisition is I think the greatest I have ever seen taken at this special place. I believe it to be a unique print. It is as if Irving Penn had been transported back in time.