Leslie J. Schreyer

Having been interested in fine art photographs in museums since my early adult years, I started collecting them in 2007.  Aside from the image, my most important prerequisite is the object quality of the print.  Most photographs in the collection date from the 1920s to the 1980s, with exceptions at either end, and most are “vintage” prints, which means photographs printed within a few, say five, years after the negative was created.

Vintage prints are desirable because they tend to show how the artist wanted the photograph to look.  Moreover, as the silver content of photographic paper diminished over the years, and as a result of the addition of optical whiteners in the paper in the 1950s, 1930s prints are richer than later, say 1960s, prints made from the same negative.

My collection consists mainly of black and white prints.  The color photographs I collect are limited to those printed using processes where the colors are very stable (i.e., do not change much over time), such as dye transfers and cibachromes.

In the last few years the breadth of the collection has further expanded as I have become very interested in 1970s feminist photography and conceptual photography.

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991), Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, New York, New York. Print c. 1936.

Gelatin silver print, negative 1936.

This photograph is from Changing New York, a series of 305 photographs of New York City taken by Abbott from 1935 to 1939. Changing New York is regarded as an important example of 20^th century fine art documentary photography; Automat, a fine example of modernism in a documentary piece, is one of its most well-known images.

Brassai (Gyula Halasz) (Hungarian/French, 1899-1984), Couple at the Bal des Quatre Saisons, Rue de Lappe. Print c. 1932.

Ferrotyped gelatin silver print, negative, c. 1932.

Brassai’s The Secret Paris of the 30’s photographs depict, in Brassai’s words, the “secret, sinister world of … toughs, pimps, whores, addicts, inverts … Paris at its … most alive, most authentic.” This photograph depicts a couple in a dancehall “where young pimps seduced girls and recruited the labor force for the streets and whorehouses.”

Josef Albers (American, born Germany, 1888-1976), Drei Grazien (Three Graces). Print date 1930.   

Gelatin silver print, negative 1930.

This black and white surrealist and modernist photograph of the nude torsos of three female mannequins dates from Albers’ years at the Bauhaus (1920 through its closure by the Nazi government in 1933), where he was a student for two years and then a teacher in the department of design. Albers emigrated to the United States in 1933, where he created his Homage to the Square series of paintings and prints demonstrating his color theories.