The New York collection presented in 2016 is an incredible, exciting journey through the most important artists of this century with a special focus on Contemporary Photography. The works encompass the great masters and pioneers of creative photography as well as pieces from a new generation of artists utilizing new visual languages.

The path commences at the dawn of the modernist photography movement with the fascinating experiments of Pierre Dubreuil’s complete series of Diapositives from the early 20th Century, and arrives at the absence of the image where the light becomes “the everything”, with the contemplative light installation of James Turrell.

Photography, as contemporary art form, embraces a multiplicity and variety of themes. The representation of reality is vivid in the places photographed by Stephen Shore, Robert Polidori, Andrew Moore and Victoria Sambunaris and is objective and neutral in the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, Candida Hofer and Thomas Ruff.

Real landscapes appear contrived by extracting the subject from his common vision as seen in the works of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Olivo Barbieri and Elger Esser. The infrared landscapes of Richard Mosse alienate the viewer from reality, and the architecture of Edward Burtynsky, Frank Thiel and Michael Wolf become industrial textures, just as natural hyper-detailed textures can be found in the works of Richard Misrach and Andreas Gefeller.

An alternate reality, where landscapes are models recreated by hand by the artists, takes on a surreal dimension in the artworks of Gregory Crewdson and Lori Nix while James Casebere’s scenes appear truthful, blurring the boundary between what is real and unreal. Landscapes reach artificial representations in the computer- simulated images of Joan Fontcuberta and the in the digital animations of Yorgo Alexopoulos.

The representation of human beings is strong in the artists’ research present in the collection. Through the work of Paul Strand, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier, Elliott Erwitt and the intimate shots of Nan Goldin we can see the relationship between humanity and society.

The representation of human feelings becomes more personal and explicitly theatrical in the works of Cindy Sherman, Alex Prager, Erwin Olaf and the artist duo 
Tania & Lazlo who also investigate the feeling of discovery and the desire to experience and connect with nature. Exploring the wildest parts of ourselves and the feeling of freedom is also strongly present in the work of Ryan McGinley and Bill Henson.

The work of Ormond Gigli is the bridge between fashion and art, as is Tim Walker’s dream like imagery. David LaChapelle and Miles Aldridge show the excesses of contemporary society, narrating it with irony through strong Pop Art imagery.

In the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Claudia Angelmaier, the photographic medium is used in an alternative way, interacting with viewers and their reflections, and playing with the reproduction of the image.

In the end of this journey the image loses her shape in the abstract work of Chris Succo and is dissolved in Anish Kapoor’s Shadows. This leaves us total freedom to perceive ourselves and what our interiority suggests.

The artworks presented in the collection form an extraordinary and varied statement of our time. These contemporary authors were confronted and inspired by the society they live in, narrating themselves and their time and sharing their vision with all of us.