My Subversive Eye-part II

I will be continuing to excerpt sections of my essay from the Dali Museum catalog, The Subversive Eye: Surrealist and Experimental Photography from the David Raymond Collection, published in 2024.

1997—San Francisco

I was pretty clear about my avant-garde collecting path. The German dealer Priska Pasquer was in town and had some experimental photographs by the Japanese artist Osamu Shiihara (who was active in the 1930s) that she was planning to show to museums in the US. She showed me the work and I immediately fell for two solarized pieces: a large image of a hand holding an egg, and an image of two mannequin heads. I purchased them both. Although I was not part of an institution, I said I would get the work into an exhibition. Sure enough, The Ansel Adams Center for Photography was planning a show, Modern Photography in Japan 1915–1940. I let the curator, Deborah Klochko, know that I had these pieces and would love to lend them to the show. I ended up being the only lender from the United States; most of the works came from institutions in Japan.

Over the years, I purchased more works by Shiihara from MEM gallery in Tokyo and became good friends with the owner, Katsuya Ishida. I also saw many of the pieces that Priska first showed to me in museum collections: she had really fulfilled her initial intention. I believe that the work is significant and important, not just in the context of Japanese photography, but in the larger context of Surrealist/experimental work. Photography clubs in Japan were mostly creating ‘romantic’ pictorial work until the show Film Und Foto (1929) and Surrealist exhibitions traveled to the country. This started a visual dialogue of experimentation that went beyond just documenting the world. Manipulating imagery, photomontage, photo collage, solarization and more. I believe that Shiihara borrowed much from what he saw and then created his own unique visual language with it.

Late 1990s—Los Angeles/San Francisco

I became interested in the work of Manuel Álvarez Bravo after seeing a retrospective of his work in the early 1990s. My first purchase was a vintage print of El Umbral, which I found at Christie’s in New York: a close-up of a woman’s feet with some of her toes curled upward, standing in a doorway on a wet floor. I then connected with Rose Shoshana, the Los Angeles dealer who represented Bravo (in addition to Witkin Gallery at the time) and she and I became friends and collaborators. While at an event at her Rose Gallery, I met Weston Naef and Judy Keller, curators of the photography department at the Getty. At the time, I had been working with some members of Dorothea Lange’s family to place her work. The Getty was interested in starting a Lange collection and was in contact with her son, John. I was working with John’s children, who had a group of work themselves. I placed a large number of her pieces at the Getty and initiated a relationship with Rose Gallery that continues with the family.

Weston and Judy would visit me when they were in New York and I ended up working with them on numerous occasions. I have a vivid memory of Weston coming over one morning. He invited a dealer who specialized in snapshots to come by and share a sampling of what he had for sale. My New York apartment had a curved alcove facing 55th Street and a large, circular, black marble dining table surrounded by a leather banquette. We sat in this space with a pile of collected memories that fell into the realm of experimental or surreal, by mistake or intent. Weston and I selected what we responded to and then the dealer left. I think I purchased about ten pieces that day.—To Be Continued…..