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

LlucmajorThe Cuban lawyer and businessman Celso González-Falla and his wife, art conservator and patron Sondra Gilman (1926-2021), are considered among the ten best photography collectors in the world. Currently, their collection includes more than 1,700 works by over 400 artists, a hundred of which can be seen at the Toni Catany Foundation in Llucmajor (Mallorca) until April 17 in an exhibition titled Toni Catany Foundation in Llucmajor (Mallorca) until April 17 in an exhibition titled From our hearts. The Sondra Gilman and Celso González-Falla Collection. The number of great photographers represented in the exhibition, which will be 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, it might remind you of something, simply because of the way it looks, or because there is a very beautiful woman, or whatever, but it must speak to you," stressed González-Falla, before assuring that none of the photographs they have bought have failed to speak to him. The passionate reference in the exhibition's title is also powerful when González recalled how Sondra Gilman decided on a photograph. "Sondra used to say that the only time she wanted to buy a photograph was when her stomach churned while looking at it," he explained.

González-Falla and Gilman are also known for always buying vintage prints, that is, period copies. And another distinctive feature of their collecting method was that they always bought by viewing the images 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 the computer screen, and when they received it at home, Gilman was able to enjoy it for fifteen days until her death. "It is the best photograph we bought," said González-Falla.

From Eugène Atget to Robert Mapplethorpe

González-Falla assures that they have not been the owners of the images but rather "curators", and that they have always been clear that they had to share them with the public. Since her death, Gilman has collected mainly Latin American artists, 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 it, but they have been asked for so much money that no agreement has been reached so far. "I am ninety years old, and I think my son will have the problem," said González-Falla, wryly.

His relationship with photography dates back to when he photographed his father's oxen and cows 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 bought the first three photographs in his collection in 1974, three works by Eugène Atget that MoMA had duplicates of, for 250 dollars each. From the beginning, González-Falla remembers that before buying a photograph, he and his wife had to see it three times. To say yes, they had to agree. "We looked at the photograph for the first time, then we went back to the gallery, and, if we liked it, we put a kind of reservation. We didn't have any curator; that is, all the photographs we have bought, we have bought them ourselves," he explained. They first hung the photographs on the staircase of their apartment, which in the preserved images looks like a museum. Another acid test for new acquisitions was to observe how they dialogued with the photographs that were already there. "I always buy because I like a photograph, I have never bought as an investment," says González-Falla.

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