result. He hardly ever goes into the darkroom, so to get a Koudelka print that he did is incredibly hard.
foam magazine # 32 talent
With the proliferation of photography courses at degree level and above now, it seems to be that the education system teaches photographers to be artists from the outset. What do you think about that shift in education from an academic perspective as opposed to the traditions of learning on the job, or working in the commercial industry to develop one’s skills before entering the art market? It depends on the course but, yes, there is a lot of that. But that’s like art school. How many kids go to art school whose parents told them to go to college? Now it’s media or photography. It’s a place where all the layabouts go and where a few people who are really serious, really talented, really work hard at it. So you do get a large number of people studying photography. The ones who really want to be artists are the people who don’t know what else to do with themselves other than create art.
Michael G Wilson (b. 1942, New York, USA) is Managing Director of EON Productions Ltd, the company behind the James Bond films. Together with his sister, Barbara Broccoli, they have produced every 007 release since GoldenEye. Michael is interested in all aspects of still photography and is recognized as a leading expert on nineteenth century photography. He opened the Wilson Centre for Photography in 1998. The Centre is one of the largest private collections of photography today, spanning works from some of the earliest extant photographs to the most current contemporary productions. The centre hosts seminars, study sessions and loans to international museums and galleries. Michael is a Chairman of the Science Museum Foundation, a Trustee of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a Trustee of the Art Fund, Chair of the Kraszna Krausz Foundation, and a Trustee of Cape Farewell.
Do you go to any of the student graduate shows? Oh yes. I go down to The Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins to see what’s cooking. We have a program here where we were giving bursaries out. What we did was to look at people five years out of college and see who sifted through and who was left. If you are around five years later and still banging your head against the wall you’re worth looking at. So with this in mind how broad is your collection? Do you focus more and more on emerging talent? I buy across the board.
Laura Noble (b. 1974, UK) is a London-based gallerist, artist and writer. She is the author of The Art of Collecting Photography (2006) and of primary essays in various monographs. She has delivered seminars on Collecting Photo-graphy at Westminster University, Rochester University, Glasgow Art Fair, Fundacio Foto Colectania (Barcelona) and Foam Editions. Editor-at-Large for Photoicon Magazine and regular contributor for various periodicals, she is Director of Diemar/Noble Photography, a new Commercial Gallery in the heart of London’s West End.
To return to the subject of the print, how do you feel about ink jet printing? What’s important is what it looks like and what the artist’s intentions are. I would hope that it’s stable. Part of the covenant of the collector is that you assume the photograph is stable unless you are told otherwise. Then you can assume the artist has done the research necessary to provide that. For example, the demise of Cibachrome has meant that the people who used Cibachrome have now been able to kind of get the same effect by laminating plastic over the front of the picture, which is probably a bad thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the print in the long term.
WassinkLundgren is a collaboration between Dutch photographers Thijs groot Wassink (1981) and Ruben Lundgren (1983) who work and live in London and Beijing, respectively. Their work has been shown in group exhibitions across the world from Bilbao to New York to Beijing, as well as solo exhibitions in Amsterdam and Beijing. The duo has received numerous prizes including the Prix du Livre (Rencontres d’Arles), Best books of 2007/2008 (by Thomas Weski at Fotoforum Kassel), Nomination Theme Art Award (Art Amsterdam), Nomination Foam Paul Huf Award, Nomination Piet Bakker prijs (Utrecht School of the Arts) and Nomination Kunstanjers (Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds). WassinkLundgren will be showing a new body of work in a solo presentation at Van Zoetendaal Collections during Unseen (Amsterdam).
Do you have any daguerreotypes? Yes, but then I also buy Modern and contemporary. More and more we’re looking at being a supporter or sponsor rather than buying individual pieces, so that we do it by project basis and get the work into museums, helping them get established, to produce a book for example. We are about enhancing the careers of people rather than collecting the work. Do you think that this is a role for a new collector to think about? Well, if you have a lot of money and plenty of time and you have a nice curatorial staff to help you, yes it’s a perfect way to go. •
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