Howard Greenberg has been an art dealer for thirty years and is considered today one of the pillars of the New York photography scene. The Howard Greenberg Gallery, in the Fuller Building on East 57^th Street, has continuously presented major exhibitions, including a recent two-part retrospective on Joel Meyerowitz, with a hotly anticipated show on William Klein opening on March 1. Until recently, though, his passion for collecting has been a private matter.

He has patiently built a collection of more than 500 images over the years, starting with a print by Karl Struss, which he had on consignment in the late 1980s. A selection of some 120 works has been shaped into an exhibition that opened last week at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson after having been seen at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne.

The exhibition could be considered autobiographical, as it traces the evolution of Greenberg’s interests, from the Modern aesthetics approach of the 20s and 30s with works by Edward Steichen, Edward Weston to the Czech School to Modern photographers such as Minor White, William Klein and Robert Frank. Humanist photography is well represented, including works by Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and Robert Capa, among others.

Ruth Orkin, American Girl in Italy, 1951, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

In an interview with Elizabeth Avedon last fall, Greenberg said, “It’s not an encyclopedic history of photography...it’s the magic of photography when the right picture printed the right way just grabs you.”

Read the entire interview. View images from the collection. The Howard Greenberg Collection continues through April 28 at Fondation Cartier-Bresson, 2 Impasse Lebouis, 75014 Paris.