PRINCETON, NJ.- Considered among the top photography collectors in the world, Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla have been committed to the medium for over 40 years. More than 130 images from their esteemed collection will be on view at the
Princeton University Art Museum in Shared Vision: The Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla Collection of Photography from June 29 through Sept. 15, 2013. Among the prominent photographers included in the exhibition are Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rineke Dijkstra, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, André Kertész, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Misrach, Vik Muniz, Man Ray, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Garry Winogrand and Francesca Woodman.
Many exhibitions profile the history of photography, but few are able to reflect the exquisite eye and discerning depth and diversity that this exceptional collection amassed by Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla does, said Princeton University Art Museum Director James Steward. What these preeminent collectors are able to share though this exhibition is not only their own aesthetic and emotional response to the evolving photographic canon but the lasting impact of the most important practitioners of their day.
Gilman and Gonzalez-Fallas photography collection began in the early 1970s when Sondra Gilman purchased three images by Eugène Atget. The couples collecting philosophy centers around the acquisition of major works by leading photographers from the past 100 years and a focus on vintage prints. We try to verbally describe art, and its not a verbal experience. The end result is a love affair, said Sondra Gilman when describing what draws her to a particular image.
Divided into seven sections, the exhibition explores key themes and subjects in the history of photography, including landscape, portraiture, childhood, narrative photography, figural and formal abstraction, the object and urban and suburban views. Seminal works such as Man Rays Portrait of Meret Oppenheim (1933), Henri Cartier-Bressons Rue Mouffetard (1954) and a classic typological grid by Bernd and Hilla Becher (196573) will share the exhibition space with Sally Manns Jesse at Five (1987), a 1993 image from Hiroshi Sugimotos series Seascapes and a 2004 large-format frame of urban renewal in China by Edward Burtynsky.
Shared Vision was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville in partnership with the Princeton University Art Museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by MOCA Jacksonville and produced by the Aperture Foundation, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting photography and the definitive publisher of scholarly works related to the subject. The publication features selected images from the exhibition, with historical context about each image and the photographer, contributions from the curators and an interview with the collectors.