Watch the indefatigable W.M. Hunt, a renown collector and dealer, in action. The first video is a montage of clips from a public lecture about The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, the first major US exhibition of his collection that ran from 1 October 2011 to 19 February 2012 at George Eastman House, from which Aperture and Thames & Hudson simultaneously published a book. The video posted below the fold is from Artlog, wherein he talks about his visceral approach to collecting, acquiring an eye for good work, and his advice for aspiring collectors.
Featured in the current issue of 1000 Words, the photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme - the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterised, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.
W.M. Hunt was a founding partner of the prominent photography gallery HASTED HUNT in Chelsea, Manhatten and served as director of photography at Ricco/Maresca Gallery. He and his collecting have been featured in The New York Times and The Art Newspaper as well as on PBS. He is a professor at the School of Visual Arts and on the Board of Directors of the W.Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, N.Y., where he was the recipient of their Vision Award in 2009. He also served on the Board of Directors of AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers) and as chairman of Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS.
There are many words one can use to describe W.M. Hunt; funny, captivating, even legendary but his eloquence is his own and his book is my personal favourite so I cannot.
