Thomas Eakins, “The Swimming Hole”, 1885

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Philip Gefter, the gifted biographer of Richard Avedon and Sam Wagstaff was giving a talk on the latter and when the Q&A started the young man in the row in front of me asked my question. At the conclusion I tapped him on the shoulder and, rather like the caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland”, asked “Who-o-o-o are you?” Not meaning to be too imperious and probably not succeeding, I chatted up the young man, Campbell Walters, who proved to know more than average bear about Mr. Wagstaff, perhaps, the premier photo collector ever.

Young Campbell is obsessed. He knows chapter and verse. He even took me to the collector’s crypt at Holy Redeemer on Fifth Avenue as a birthday treat — Wagstaff’s.

Philip Gefter’s book "Sam Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe - A Biography” (Liveright/W.W. Norton 2014) is a treat too as is his more recent Avedon bio.

Gefter’s portrait of Wagstaff is as full as “Sam’s big love for shimmering light”. It is colorful, anecdotal, and naughty; it provides an invaluable historical bridge spanning from the beginnings of collecting photographs in the 1970’s to today and locating Wagstaff as the pre-eminent influence, colored by his “typical imperiousness and the confidence of his own vision.”

The October publication was preceded by a full page piece (also by Mr. Gefter) in the Sunday Art & Leisure Section of The New York Times, a bit of self-promotion that Mr. Wagstaff might have approved of himself. I did too.

The cast of characters is almost as memorable with Wagstaff himself: urbane, handsome, insightful, passionate, sexy and sexual; and his one time lover and artistic soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe. Gefter pays attention to the collector/dealer cartel of George Rinhart, Harry Lunn, Paul Walter, and John Waddell, and brings them vividly to life, along with less well remembered influences like Enrico Natali, John McKendry, and Gerard Incandela. The women in Wagstaff’s life are also as importantly there: Judy Linn, Patti Smith, Barbara Jakobson and Anne Ehrenkranz.

Note that I think there has been a real failure generally to acknowledge the impact of Hughes Autexier and François Braunschweig of Texbraun, business and life partners based in the Paris flea market at Porte de Clignancourt. As tastemakers of the 1970s, their championing a mix of 19th century photographs with contemporary highly charged sexualized work by Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin is still de rigueur. Wagstaff certainly got the message.

The former cast of characters has what Gefter identifies as a collective “gay sensibility”; he also describes this as “alienation” which may serve as a broader description for what motivated the collector. He offers that this is as being fueled by sexual longing, quoting Bruce Hainsley in Art Forum “Wagstaff acknowledged collecting as an erotic drive akin to the size queen’s, ”with “the inextricable, if elusive, link between gay desire and the interminable pleasures of the gaze.”*1

It is a fascinating read, and Gefter is the perfect insider to have written it. Gilman collection curator Pierre Apraxine’s final remarks about Wagstaff also reflect Gefter’s affecting approach to biography, "Sam told me of his belief that if one looked at things with enough intensity, they could, by passing mystic disciplines or drug induced trances, hold the key to a heightened state of consciousness, a fuller experience of life. . . . it is less the object at which we look that gives value to our experience, than the intensity with which we look at it. It is the intensity of the pure act of seeing which illuminated Sam’s life, and which now reflects ours.”*2

Thomas Eakins, “The Swimming Hole”, 1885

There are not an overwhelming number of books on photography collectors or collections with very few of them venturing past the picture book into the personal histories or psychologies. The stories of Andre Jammes and dealer Harry Lunn would be welcome additions to the shelf with Philip Gefter having notably led the way following up with his Avedon biography in 2020.

My only encounter with Wagstaff was at an ICP event I think. He gave some sort of talk and afterwards, I pulled myself together enough to stammer out breathlessly “oh, Mister Wagstaff, how do you take care of all those photographs?” There was a deathless pause, and he responded “Kid (that may be an invention on my part), they’re all over the fucking (I may have added the modifier too) place. Indeed in spite of the clean design of an all white living space, Mr. W. was reported to have pictures in piles on the floor and coffee table which he would clear periodically to cut and do lines of coke on his Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes.

A nice detail that but I actually found his advice liberating. Not the coke part, but the part about not being too too fussy. Delight in the photographs, first and foremost.

It’s been difficult to locate writings by Wagstaff which I find odd because he was a curator at major museums in Detroit and Hartford. His classic book modestly titled “A Book of Photographs” has this odd quote at the opening, “… the pleasure of looking and the pleasure of seeing (are) like watching people dancing, through an open window. They seem a little mad until you realize they hear the sound that you are watching. “*3

The frontispiece photograph in “A Book of Photographs” is Thomas Eakins’ “The Swimming Hole”, 1885, an image of naked boys that is youthful, graceful, free, unfettered. It unpacks less simply to a contemporary audience who knows too much.

He liked it enough to share it. I agree, it’s a delight.

Collecting is fine madness, and it is my particular pleasure and obsession to spread the gospel too.

Another person from this period of my life I want to honor is

Juliette — Julie to her friends — Gallant and her life and business partner, Martin Bondell, who founded Fotofolio in 1975. Fotofolio was THE post card company. They also did T-shirts and books. They my published first real writing in Larry Giannetino’s “Close Friends”.

Postcards were everywhere.

Julie and Martin were as important in the world of contemporary photography as anyone I can think of. Not only did they have an “eye”, but they told their version of the history of photography with the best possible duotone reproductions, made by Sid Rappaport at Canal Street Printing. They perfected the art of the photographic postcard. They made photography ubiquitous. Fotofolio created a world of collectors with great and less known photographic works at 60 cents a piece.

You could collect photography by shopping Fotofolio’s wire racks in museum or head shops and then installing them at home with some thumbtacks on the wall or with magnets on the refrigerator, or even framed and gifted. I still have hundreds of postcards that I would buy as a sort of note taking on great pictures and used, later, as a teaching tool, asking students to describe images without reading the caption information on the back of the card.

Personally Julie and Martin and I had similar sensibilities and found that often we had bid on the same photographs at auction. We could cite chapter and verse on photographs we had lusted after over the years.

They — especially Julie — were supportive of me in my not-for-profit activities. We would talk several times a week. Then time passed, and we were no longer in touch. And now she’s gone. It’s sad.

I think of her.

The company is now run by their daughter Anya, who is all grown up. Back in the day, the artist Gary Schneider was a dear friend to the three of us. He created a stunning, haunting portrait of Anya when she was young. It captures her special shy and sly reticence. Our print has hung in our residence for almost thirty years. The son, Stefan, is also in the art world, a very, very good painter with his mother’s soul.

*1 Bruce Hainley, “The Eye of Sam Wagstaff”, ArtForum, April 1997

*2 Philip Gefter "Sam Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe - A Biography” (Liveright/W.W. Norton 2014, page. _

*3 Gray Press 1978

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