A photograph should "turn your stomach" as you look at it.

LlucmajorCuban lawyer and businessman Celso González-Falla and his wife, art curator and patron Sondra Gilman (1926-2021), are considered one of the world's top ten photography collectors. Their collection currently includes more than 1,700 works by over 400 artists, about 100 of which can be seen at the Toni Catany Foundation from Llucmajor (Mallorca) until April 17 in an exhibition entitled From our hearts. Sondra Gilman and Celso González-Falla Collection. The number of great photographers represented in the exhibition, which will remain open until April 17, is extraordinary, and among them are Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Bill Brand Klein, and Francesca Woodman.

"The important thing is that a photograph speaks to you. Images should speak to you," said Celso González-Falla on Friday during a conversation in Palma with Pepe Font de Mora, former director of the Foto Colectania Foundation. "There has to be something that speaks to you, perhaps it reminds you of something, simply because of the form, or because there's a very beautiful woman, or whatever, but it must speak to you," González-Falla emphasized, before asserting that none of the photographs they have acquired have failed to speak to him. The passionate reference of the exhibition's title is also powerful when González recalled how Sondra Gilman chose a photograph. "Sondra said the only time she wanted to buy a photograph was when her stomach churned while she was looking at it," he explained.

González-Falla and Gilman are also known for always buying prints vintageThat is, vintage prints. And another distinctive feature of their collecting was that they always bought photographs by looking at them directly. But they broke this unwritten rule when they bought a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto when Gilman was already very ill with cancer. They looked at it on a computer screen, and when it arrived at their home, Gilman was able to enjoy it for fifteen days before her death. "It's the best photograph we ever bought," said González-Falla.

From Eugène Atget to Robert Mapplethorpe

González-Falla maintains that they were not the owners of the images but rather "curators," and that they were always clear that they had to share them with the public. Since Gilman's death, he has collected primarily Latin American and young artists. Following Gilman's wishes, no work can be sold, and the collection is linked to the Gilman & González-Falla Arts Foundation. They would have liked to reach an agreement with a museum to exhibit the collection, but the asking prices were so high that they haven't been able to reach an agreement yet. "I'm ninety years old, and I think my son will have the problem," González-Falla said wryly.

His relationship with photography dates back to when he photographed oxen and cows owned by his father in pre-Castro Cuba, and his work as a collector began when he went into exile in New York and met his wife. Gilman had already purchased the first three photographs in his collection in 1974, three works by Eugène Atget that MoMA had duplicates of, for $250 each. From the beginning, González-Falla recalls that before buying a photograph, he and his wife had to see it three times. To say yes, they had to agree. "We would look at the photograph for the first time, then go back to the gallery, and if we liked it, we would place a kind of hold on it. We didn't have a curator; that is, all the photographs we've bought were bought by the two of us," he explained. They would first hang the photographs on the staircase of their apartment, which in the preserved images looks like a museum. Another litmus test for the new acquisitions was observing how they interacted with the photographs already there. "I always buy because I like a photograph; I've never bought as an investment," says González-Falla.

One of the young artists Gilman and González-Falla supported was Robert Mapplethorpe, who came to their home to show them his work. "We bought his first photographs when the Whitney had an exhibition of his work, and we had the opening party at home," says González. When he photographed Gilman, he gave her a hard time: he asked her to change her dress for a black one and also made her change her hairstyle. "Two of Mapplethorpe's photographs arrived at our house, and we spent a few days deciding which one to keep, and when the bill arrived, we realized that Sondra had bought both of them," recalls González-Falla.