Christie’s was founded in 1766 by James Christie, a name and place that speaks of extraordinary art, unparalleled service and expertise, as well as international glamour. Christie’s conducted the greatest auctions of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and today remains a popular showcase for the unique and the beautiful. Christie’s offers over 600 sales annually in over 80 categories, including fine art photographs.

Sheyi Bankale (SB): Photography is the medium of the modern age, and sits perfectly as a collectable medium, which makes photography especially appealing to new collectors. Do you feel that auction houses are mandatory for new collectors?

Philippe Garner (PG): I would say that the collecting of photographs is a field that functions at various levels and with a very broad base. Certainly, the auction houses are a key part of the market place, not least because they are probably the most public forum, and in that respect they give a real sense of the quantifiable results and published evidence of the patterns and trends in the market. They also, of course, bring a wonderful array of material to the market. So to be a collector, and be without the auction houses, is kind of a contradiction.

SB: I would say that that is an interesting point which leads on quite nicely too, as you said, the auction houses. It has been the domain of the secondary market, and also seen as a specialist area for blue-chip artists and collectors. But there now seems to be a concerted effort to enter into the emerging market. Is that just a natural progression or does it serve a purpose?

PG: I’m not sure that I would necessarily agree with that. When you are talking about emerging, I just want to be clear about whether you are talking about emerging artists or emerging territories that are becoming active in the market.

SB: Emerging artists.

PG: Then I would say – and I speak principally of Christie’s when I am looking at the pattern of what tends to happen – that the auction houses still really do tend to essentially serve as a secondary outlet. It is not our remit to promote young or new talent that hasn’t already to some extent found its way and found its place out there in galleries and the world that we are talking about. So we are still respecting the distinction between the role of the gallery to bring really fresh talent to the market place, and the historic role of the auction houses to offer works that have already established a certain profile. And what we have seen in the last decade or so is an acceleration of the rate at which contemporary art becomes recognized, widely endorsed and generates a secondary market.

SB: Contrary to this, there has been a slight trend of a number of emerging artists who are dealing directly with the auction houses.

PG: Very rarely is that the case with us. We may be offering work from an artist or more likely through an intermediary, but it is not our ambition or our idea to usurp the place of the gallerist and the very important role of the gallerist. Your question concerns the issue of everybody within this complex mix understanding what they can do best and then dovetailing effectively with other players. And it is not our ambition through our auctions to become the first outlets. We wish to stay topical, and relatively young artists who start to build a reputation, whose work is traded and turned over into the secondary market, we are absolutely there to be a part of it, but there is that distinction between primary and secondary. We are watching very closely all the time to see what is happening in the contemporary field, and we are trying judiciously to construct sales with works that have already established their credentials. And for some of those artists to become a part of the high profile auction world is a further credential or endorsement but the key point I am making is that it isn’t the first one.

SB: What is Christie’s relationship with collectors? Do you need to extend that relationship, perhaps acting as a dealer in offering structuring of collections and providing extended information?

PG: In so many cases, we inevitably end up knowing collectors well and many of them become our friends as we all function in the same world, and collectors share one characteristic with specialists in auction houses – they are passionate and love to discuss and compare notes on the field that interests them. So inevitably there is a dialogue between our specialists and our clients. What we strive to do is to put together sales of work of real quality that we believe in, that is in the field of proven material that we can present with pride. And clearly we endeavour to draw an ever-widening circle of enthusiasts into our world. And that is called marketing, if you want a one-word explanation of the process. But as I see it there is a natural rhythm, there is a point where you can’t push beyond what is the natural cycle and the natural pattern of people becoming intrigued by the art and having the means to become collectors, being drawn into that world, for the pleasure of it. And so they become our clients. It is very important for us to respond swiftly and proactively to progressions and changes in the market, but there is a point at which one has to be sensitive to the difference between providing this high profile international service and pushing things beyond what is natural. And I guess the word that comes to mind in such a context is speculation. We would rather work with clients who are drawn to the arts through a passionate curiosity than endeavour to sell our product (for want of a better way of describing it) as the stuff of potential speculation. Passion first, the rest is hopefully an attractive by-product.

SB: So you see it more like a passion, before an investment.

PG: Absolutely. I think that I speak personally, as has always been my instinct, and with a corporate perspective as well. We are here with our passion to be key players in the arts. The art is at the heart of it, our love for the art is at the heart of it and our satisfaction is working within a marketplace where there are constant encounters with collectors, curators and very passionate people who feel the same way as we do about the art.

SB: Going back to a comment you made earlier, obviously you are working with responsibility towards the client and establishment per se. Is there a responsibility of auction houses to protect the artist’s career?

PG: To protect an artist’s career? That is a very good question. And an interesting one. I guess I am a Darwinian, in response to that question. By which I mean: I do feel that there must be a truism about the survival of the fittest, or one might say the survival of the best. I think that in the end quality will out, and quality will survive and it is not for us, nor is it for anyone really, to prop up work which has perhaps enjoyed a fashionable flurry of success but which lacks substance, and in the end, time, history and connoisseurship all contribute to establishing a valid pantheon of great achievements. We can only be a part of that process; we can’t force it or buck the pattern, I suppose. So, in the end, I would say that no, I probably don’t feel that our decisions should be influenced by some sense of responsibility to artists to hold their market line. They must find their own level in a process of natural selection.

SB: It has been said that ‘everybody loves to hate auction houses’, partly anger in terms of not protecting the work, but mainly of letting the market govern itself.

PG: Well I would say don’t hate the auction houses, don’t shoot the messenger. We are merely a mirror of our clients’ appetites, sensibilities, passions and, one might say, to a certain extent of trends and fashions. So our aim is to be a measure of what real quality is and to encourage others to identify what is meant by real quality in the arts.

SB: Well quite significantly, Christie’s has regularly achieved record prices for photographic auctions, say notably Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and Andreas Gursky. Do you feel this holds prominence in the photographic art market?

PG: Oh definitely. I feel that Christie’s can boast a string of auctions and events which have really helped raise awareness of how interesting and exciting the history of photography is, from the daguerreotypes of the 1840s through to contemporary work. We have staged great sales of specific one-owner collections, which I think provide an extraordinary opportunity for collectors all over the world to see what a variety of potential approaches there can be to the subject. And we have had individual sales devoted to single artists. We’ve had sales devoted to Robert Mapplethorpe, to Horst, to William Eggleston, to Diane Arbus. Our work is part of the broader process, in which we are just one player, of educating, raising awareness, raising levels of respect for the important traces of the history of our culture.

SB: For my last question, do you agree that auction houses have therefore attributed to the impact on the way that art is perhaps perceived or even produced?

PG: In a one word answer I would say yes. Certainly, if you look at the profile that Christie’s and other leading auction houses have achieved as a media phenomenon, it is a profile which is out of proportion to the scale of our business. There are industries which quietly get on with manufacturing or trading at levels far, far greater than the global total of the art market and yet there is a glamour, there’s an aura, there’s something there around the art market that is fascinating to a very big audience. And the promotion, the publicity, the talk and interest are remarkable in their extent and reach and ultimately good in raising awareness of the arts and encouraging people to think not just in terms of the material value of the works but also about works of art as being worthy of such high esteem for their cultural significance