Michael Wilson began collecting photography in the 1970s and has gradually built up one of the world’s finest collections, housed in the Wilson Centre for Photography in London. The producer of the James Bond films, he serves on the boards of trustees of various museums and is passionate that photography should be more widely regarded as one of the most important artforms of our times.

Gerry Badger (GB): How did you start collecting photography?

Michael Wilson (MW): I’d been collecting books, different kinds of books – incunabula, first editions, illustrated books – and then I moved on to prints. Then, in the 1970s, I became interested in photography after meeting Weston Naef. We’d been to college together, but when he came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as photography curator, we met up again. I used to go to his place and see photographs, and I met various people there – like Mapplethorpe, Sugimoto, Ralph Gibson, and André Kertész. Weston had some very good things on his walls and that started my interest. I started collecting about 1978. I guess I’m an early member of the second wave of photographic collectors.*

GB: What drew you to photography in particular?

MW: In the Seventies, the art history of photography was in its infancy. There were a lot of discoveries to be made, a lot of history to be written, a lot of gaps to be filled. This was a good time to get involved because you could help to build and make a contribution to the art history of photography. That was the original idea, and then I became interested in the aesthetic of the medium. As a collector, I continue to evolve. I started out as a collector of nineteenth-century travel photography, then the nineteenth century in general. Then I moved on to Pictorialism, then modernist photography to a certain extent, and finally contemporary works. So over the past thirty years, I’ve expanded my interests. I still collect in all these areas, but my views continue to expand in different directions.

GB: Can you remember your first purchase?

MW: My first purchase from a dealer was in New York City. I bought an Annie Brigman called The Heart of the Storm. Then I started going to photography auctions in the late Seventies. I was very familiar with the auctions here when they held them at Sotheby’s Belgravia and there was a lot of good nineteenth-century material to be had over here.

GB: Do you have a favourite photograph?

MW: No, I have so many that I love, but it’s like asking if you have a favourite child. There’s no answer to that.

GB: Do you think collecting is a creative act?

MW: Absolutely.

GB: People always talk about a collection’s shape. But I guess that if collecting is a creative activity, it must always change and evolve?                                                                          

MW: Yes, with my changing attitudes and an evolving appreciation of what’s going on, I keep on broadening my horizon and that broadens the collection. It’s pretty much about the whole history of photography at this point. In fact, I’ve even begun collecting photobooks, inspired by the new interest in the subject.

GB: What’s been your greatest satisfaction in creating the collection? Because on this side of the pond at least, it must be better than most museum collections…

MW: Well, the collection has many aspects, but one of the primary ones is that it’s a teaching collection. So for me, one of the greatest satisfactions is when we have students in to study it, which we do quite regularly. We also run a series of seminars for artists and curators, and it’s great to see their views on photography change. For photographers too – sometimes the things they see inspire them. I’m always pleased to see that the collection can have that kind of an impact.

GB: So you see the collection as essentially something that can be used, and not just something sitting in boxes or plan chests?

MW: Of course, that’s essential. You can’t just collect for yourself. At least that’s my belief.

GB: What advice would you give to someone thinking about collecting photography?

MW: Well, I’ve had these conversations from time to time, and one of the most important things I’d say to a new collector is do not buy what you like. That’s usually a mistake, yet the opposite advice is usually given – buy what you like – so what does that mean? We’re so used to seeing photographs as advertising, or reportage, that when we begin to collect we think that we should be collecting pictures that are immediately ascertainable. We say, “That’s a great picture, I like that.” But I think it’s better to avoid that impulse, and rather look for pictures that disturb you, that you might not even like when you first see them. But when you go home and sleep on it, they begin to stick in your mind. And you say, “Why’s that?” Those will tend to be the pictures that have a lasting effect, and which you will really enjoy over time.

I don’t know if it still happens, but when I began collecting dealers would let you borrow pictures before you bought, and you could take them and hang them in your house for a few days and get to know them before going ahead and buying. Sometimes if I have people as house guests for a few days and I have a group of pictures hanging on the walls, almost inevitably the pictures they first like when I ask them, don’t survive the cut, and they end up liking pictures they overlooked at first. Time is the key – you need to take the time, you need time to develop your eye.

* What is termed the ‘first wave’ of photography collectors, people like Helmut Gernsheim and André Jammes, began just after World War II. The ‘second wave’, which included Michael Wilson and such figures as Sam Wagstaff and Paul Walter, began in the 1970s.