Carrère Gallery

The Carrère Gallery is named after the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings which built the Forbes building.

On view: Ongoing

Introduction to the exhibition by Robert Forbes:

I grew up in a household where history was an everyday event: our father, Malcolm Forbes, imbued his love of the subject in each of us five siblings. There were always stacks of alluring books around; many were photography books, including famous ones like Irving Penn’s Moments Preserved or Robert Frank’s The Americans.

Collecting photographs started innocently enough for me, buying old albums and daguerreotypes, stereo cards and formal group portraits. It was my way to touch history, observe people and imagine who they were, caught in a moment of their varied and complex lives. When I read Beaumont and Nancy Newhall’s History of Photography I was truly hooked. The book told the stories of great early photographers, explained their techniques, and showed fine examples of their reportage and artistry.

In the early 70s the big auction houses started to have photographic sales in New York and London, and I would pore over the catalogues admiringly. Later, as a wage-earner, I frequented the nascent world of photo galleries, gathering a treasure here and there. Among my first purchases were the ones in this show by Lewis Hine, who wielded his camera for social change while bringing his artistic vision to bear. In particular, his shots of the immigrants at Ellis Island exude grace and compassion.

Over the years I convinced my father to let me buy some photographs for the company, when budgets would allow, such as Julia Margaret Cameron’s The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, or Charles Dodgson’s Alice and Lorina Liddel in Chinese Dress. Alice was the girl for whom it has been said Dodgson (as Lewis Carroll) wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass. For me, owning an image of this inspirational young lady was a bit of magic brought to life.

This collection had only my own point of view to guide it; I bought only images that I liked for themselves, not as part of a group of 19th-century portraiture or landscapes of the American West. I also concentrated on two photographers, Irving Penn, whose work is in the main gallery, and Harry Callahan, whose pictures of his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara, are wonderfully poetic.

My father also bought some photographs, mainly contemporary color images that caught his fancy; I have come to enjoy these as well. So what you have in this gathering are some of my favorites images, acquired over the last 40 years, many of which grace the hallways and offices of the company.

These favorites represent a personal journey and the growth of my personal eye. I hope you will be drawn to them as I am, intrigued by the people and the places, imagining what each photographer was striving to capture.