In a way, my father was lucky. He had a hunch that his vision of the National Gallery would interest other collectors and persuade them to come in with him, and that hunch proved to be right.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It was my father's hope, and it is ours, that the National Gallery would become not a static but a living institution, growing in usefulness and importance to artists, scholars and the general public.
I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.
My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.
My father did advertising photography.
My wife was the first art collector in the family, and I didn't become interested until around 1973. The first important artwork we bought was a Van Gogh drawing of two peasant houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
My brother had boxes of comic books. He was really the collector.
The man at Kodak told me the shots were very good and if I kept it up, they would give me an exhibition. Later, Kodak gave me my first exhibition.
I was so impressed with the work we were doing and I was very involved ideologically in photography - that I arranged an exhibition at the College Art Association. The first exhibition I picked the photographs and so on and we had an exhibition in New York.
And several galleries - two had asked me and I said no, because I didn't want to leave things on consignment.
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.