Interview with Howard Greenberg
Howard Greenberg and Saul Leiter
ANDREA: I didn’t know that you had such a reach, that Europe was so important to your gallery.
HOWARD: It comes a lot from France and Paris. I’ve always represented a few major photographers who were based in Paris. I’ve been at Paris Photo since the second year. I’ve been on the vetting committee for 15 years or so. I’ve developed really great relationships in Paris. Artists, clients, curators, people in the photo world. It stems from that, out of that I’ve made so many relationships. I had a show of my personal collection open in Switzerland and travel to Paris, Amsterdam and Budapest, and it was seen pretty widely by thousands of people. That gave me a big boost in Europe. I think it gave me a certain kind of respect that other dealers wouldn’t have had. That’s part of why I have so many good relationships there, and there is something else besides that which we’ve touched upon. Europeans have this other perception, this other appreciation for photography than Americans. I think the kinds of photographs I’ve shown over the years have had an enormous audience there, where here they’ve had a good audience but nothing to compare.
ANDREA: Why do you think that is?
HOWARD: I don’t know. It’s the way they perceive and accept photography. Europeans really do appreciate American photography. When I show a photographer they don’t know anything about, they are genuinely interested, and they want to know more. I’ll give you an example, a photographer we have represented for a long time. He is dead now, but he was alive when we did his shows and I eventually wound up with his estate. His name is Dave Heath. He has got a great reputation here in America, but he is not a household name. The first show I did of his work in my first New York gallery, and the first person who came in before the opening was Robert Frank, telling me how happy he was that someone was showing Dave’s work. Dave, in his estimation, was one of the best photographers there is. You could talk to any photographer over 50 and they know Dave Heath. Keith Davis from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, understood Dave, and they eventually did a great book and a show. It traveled to one or two venues, including Philadelphia where Dave was born and raised, but that was it. It was a great show. Great book, but did it resonate much beyond anything? No. Three years ago, we had a show of Dave’s work at Le Bal in Paris. There were 7,000 people that saw the show and were blown away by it, nobody ever heard of Dave Heath. It really resonated. I can’t even tell you, but now when I put a picture of Dave Heath’s on the wall at Paris Photo, I’m going to have a whole lot of people interested in it and they are going to tell me over and over how great this guy was, how much they loved the book and how happy they are that they know who this guy is now. But I wouldn’t get that now if I did another show in New York.
ANDREA: It’s fascinating to me.
HOWARD: I have a bit of a theory, you know, many of the photographers that I’ve championed and really brought into the market are photographers that were not widely known. Some of them are in the history books, some of them aren’t. Saul Leiter, nobody knew about him, and a few others that were really great photographers nobody knew much about. I think it’s very hard for most American curators, certainly the last generation, to upset their apple carts. There is a list of acceptable great photographers that they’ve inherited and they’ve stuck with.
ANDREA: You still think it’s like that?
HOWARD: Yeah, I can’t even begin to tell you how successful we’ve been with Saul Leiter. Now when people write about the history of 20th century photography, there’s Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter, Rob Frank, he’s right in there with those people. That’s how well he’s been accepted. We have not had one major museum in this country show his work.
ANDREA: That’s shocking.
HOWARD: That’s right, and that’s because most American curators are simply not interested in reinventing their own wheels. They’re doing another Irving Penn or Robert Frank show, but a Saul Leiter show? “No, he’s not one of the important photographers because I didn’t learn that he was one of the important photographers.” I’m giving a blanket criticism of curators here, I’m sure different curators can say something else. But in the meantime, he’s had major shows in Europe, major shows in Asia, he really is loved around the world. The biggest problem for the estate, for the foundation, which is run by a woman who’s been with me for 20 years, who worked closely with Saul, her biggest problem is that even though Saul left a lot of work behind, it sells so fast she is having a hard time holding on to good ones of his. It’s interesting, but has any museum, especially in New York which was his home, even thought about doing a major retrospective? Which, by the way, would be extremely interesting because he was also a great painter.
ANDREA: Didn’t you do that show on him?
HOWARD: We did a show of his painted photographs, not of his actual paintings. He was a great painter, his form was photography. From a museum’s point of view, there is a lot of meat there to do a show. The greatest show was at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. They did a show of over 400 objects, and it was a smash. It stayed in the public’s eye in Europe for several years. It was an amazing show, and there was so much material there. No New York or other American museum has stepped up.
ANDREA: I’m just shocked because I just adore his work. His color is just fabulous. This is very surprising to me. Do you approach them, or do they always approach you?
HOWARD: Well, let’s put it this way, I know a lot of curators. We talk. If I push a photographer that they are not so interested in, it falls on deaf ears. If I suggest a photographer that they have interest in for some reason, and I can encourage them by making it possible or easy for them to get all the material they need to do a show, then sometimes things happen. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. That’s really what I think my job is, to bring that horse to the water. But a curator or publisher will not create that, they have to want it.
ANDREA: I don’t understand it. Other people could understand how they didn’t go crazy for him. The books that Steidl has done for him are just amazing. Did you hook up with Steidl because you were in Europe?
HOWARD: It all started with Saul, actually. There was a man named Martin Harrison. He is a Brit who is essentially a curator and a writer. He has morphed into the art world now. For a long time he was in photography, specializing more or less in fashion. Martin has done what for me is the most interesting book on fashion because he’s brought in street fashion. It’s a book called Appearances, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. He’s got this great Louis Faurer photography. Martin is the one who really rediscovered Saul, as well as Lillian Bassman and some others. Martin actually curated a show for my gallery years ago, we called it “In and Out of Fashion.” This was really where it started for me with Saul, and then what happened was Jane Livingston, who did all the New York School exhibitions and eventually got the book published. She came to me, and she’s an old friend, and she said, “There’s this one person in the New York School who I really want you to meet. He’s one of the most talented and different out of them, and I really think you guys should meet.” And that was Saul. She set this up. I met Saul because of Jane. And the crazy thing was, Saul was such a character, it wasn’t easy at first. He was kind of testing me. He did want to have a gallery and a show, and we more or less quickly decided towork with each other. At that point I hadn’t seen his color work, I only knew him for his black- and-white. From his appearance and the work he did with the New York School, in my mind it was all black and white. The first show we did was concurrent with the publication of the book, about his black-and-white work. It was about two years later that he came to me with a box of colored prints, and he said, “Do you want to see my color work?” and I said, “Sure, let’s see your color work.” I didn’t know what I was going to see. There’s more to the story, and then we did a show of his color work. But the Steidl book didn’t come until several years after that. We had a very successful show, I think my prices were $700 for a print. I took him to art fairs because it was great to have color work on my walls that were vintage and so good, so I showed them over and over. We would sell a couple prints here and there, but I wasn’t getting traction for a long time. It wasn’t until we moved to 57th Street and we did a show there, color was suddenly becoming very interesting to the photo and art world, and here was this guy who was doing color work long before anyone else. Roberta Smith picked up on it, she loved it and wrote a big review. It was in the Times every week for the duration of the show. That triggered a much larger reaction, and then the book came out, and suddenly the floodgates opened. At that time the big shows were in Europe, with the biggest show being the Cartier-Bresson Foundation. By biggest, I mean the most popular show that catapulted him further into stardom. That’s kind of how it happened. It was great because it should have happened, and I was so gratified that after several years of doing what we could do, finally there was traction. It took off because Saul certainly deserved it, and the rest is history.
ANDREA: I think it’s very commendable that you stuck with him.
HOWARD: Why wouldn’t I? I love the work.
ANDREA: I don’t know, there are many people that if they don’t sell, they drop the people.
HOWARD: For better or for worse, that has never been my way. I say for better or worse because sometimes it’s been a detriment to have so many photographers here because it makes it look like there’s no room for anybody new or anybody else. Sometimes, frankly, people I represent don’t get enough airplay because I have so many other commitments. I tend to be very loyal and I work with the photographers that I love or respect, and it doesn’t go away after a year or two or after an unsuccessful show.
