This exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson brings together a hundred prints from the collection of New York gallerist Howard Greenberg. The show runs until April 21.

In an interview with Sam Stourdzé last May, Howard Greenberg retraced the path that led to his collection and to his life as a gallerist, having already been a photographer. “When I gave up photography in 1970, I gave up on everything that my future was supposed to hold. But I knew that photography represented everything that mattered to me.” It began with the creation of the Center for Photography in Woodstock, which will soon celebrate its 35th anniversary. “It’s difficult to explain how and why, having started out as a photographer, I went from founding a cultural association in Woodstock to a commercial art gallery. Sometimes I think it was a painful rejection at the hands of a New York gallery that made me want to stop being an artist. At other times, I think I was convinced that all the great photographs had already been taken.”

For thirty years, he concentrated on photography from the first half of the 20th century, on experimental photography or, on the contrary, the documentary photographers of the New York School and the Photo League. Apart from rare prints by Margaret Bourke-White we can see prints by Pal Funk Paul Angelo, Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” and others by Marion Post-Wolcott, Dan Weiner, Raymond Jacobs, Ruth Orkin, Dave Heath and Karl Struss.

For Greenberg, the quality of the print is paramount, as evidenced by this exhibition, with Edward Weston’s “Nahui Olin,” Edward Steichen’s “Gloria Swanson” and Eugene Smith’s “Welsh Miners,” a print which Greenberg describes as possessing a great simplicity. In short, he is searching for a kind of “magic.”

“I’m not looking for the Holy Grail,” he says. “There are many photographs I like but which I do not own. Some may be added to my collection in the coming years. But it will be for the same reasons that all the other prints are there: it’s the right print of the right image, found at the right time.”

Bernard Perrine

Collection Howard Greenberg
Until April 21st, 2013
Fondation HCB
2 Impasse Lebouis
75014 Paris
France
+33 (0)1 56 80 27 00
contact@cartierbresson.org
Tuesday - Sunday 1pm - 6.30pm
Wednesday 1pm - 8.30pm