Howard Greenberg has been a gallery owner for more than thirty years. He is nowadays considered one of the pillars of the New York photographic scene. While he is well known as a dealer, his rather private passion as a collector is now revealed for the first time to a larger public. The Howard Greenberg Collection—which has been carefully assembled over the last thirty years—counts around 500 photographs that distinguish themselves by their high print quality.

The unique collection reflects Howard Greenberg’s diverse fields of interest that range from the modern esthetic approach of the 1920s and 1930s with the works of Edward Steichen, Edward Weston or the Czech School to contemporary photographers such as Minor White, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank. A large part of the collection is dedicated to the humanist photography genre, represented—among others—by Lewis Hine, David Seymour and Farm Security Administration photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, witnesses of the Great Depression of the 1930s. More than anything the collection illustrates New York’s enormous influence on the history of photography in the 20th century: architecture and urban life are reflected in the photographs of Berenice Abbott, Weegee and Lee Friedlander.

Co-published with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, and the Musée de l´Elysée, Lausanne