Interview: Claire & James Hyman

Presentation

"Claire and I began collecting international art, particularly contemporary art, in the mid 1990s. However, over the years we began to focus more on photography from French salt prints and paper negatives from the 1840s and 1850s through to contemporary international figures such as Sophie Calle and Zanele Muholi.

However, in recent years the collection has focused more on photography made in Britain. Our website www.hymancollection.org showcases this British collection and we have also founded the charity, The Centre for British Photography, to support photography in the United Kingdom though exhibitions and events as well as a grants programme to help photographs realise their works. We are presently fund-raising for a permanent home for the Centre so that we can develop our public programme. More details of the charity can be found here: www.britishphotography.org

You do not need to be a British national to be supported by the charity – it’s enough to live and work in Britain. In fact part of our mission is to celebrate diversity and multi-culturalism, to demonstrate the ways in which we all benefit from different voices, perspectives, histories and cultures. Post-Brexit this message is even more important." – James Hyman

What led you to collect photography?

"We like the accessibility of photography. It’s a language we all understand whatever our nationality or culture. The European idea that oil on canvas is the most important medium is bizarre geographically and historically. But, of course, the ubiquity of photography is also an enormous challenge for artist’s working in the medium. It makes the conceptual dimension even more important. About fifteen years ago we started collecting photography from the African continent, including David Goldblatt, Pieter Hugo, Athi Patra-Rugo, and we were among the very first collectors of Zanele Muholi back in 2010. But somehow it began to feel more urgent and helpful to support photography in Britain. We strongly believe that British photography is under-supported and underappreciated both at home and abroad."

Could you tell us about a particular work in your collection?

"People know and love Bill Brandt, Chris Killip and Martin Parr but there are so many other wonderful documentary photographers who are less well-known internationally. For example, we lent wonderful works to the recent Tate shows Photographing the 80s by Melanie Friend, Peter Kennard, Anna Fox, Ken Grant, Colin Jones, Paul Seawright and Jo Spence. So we are keen to support all forms of documentary practice and help it become better recognised nationally and internationally. However, documentary is just one part of our collection and just one part of the story of photography in Britain.

What especially interests us in terms of contemporary practice is more conceptual work, especially by women. This is generally more issue-based and often uses self-portraiture, the body and forms of performance. This is a central aspect of our collection and we have major works by Heather Agyepong, Sophie Calle, John Coplans, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Douglas Gordon, Sunil Gupta, Susan Hiller, Zanele Muholi, Rosy Martin, Jo Spence, Paloma Tendero, and many others. Where possible we try and collect in depth, purchasing entire bodies of work and sometimes complete exhibitions. Jo Spence is a key figure, for us, an incredible influence on later generations and we have a huge collection of her work and have staged three museum exhibitions based on this collection.

We have also began acquiring archives which creates a huge task in terms of cataloguing and digitising. We want the website of our collection to serve as an educational resource so we are putting as much information as we can online."

What type of photography do you collect and are there recurring themes in your collection?

"We have a particular love of John Blakemore’s beautiful work. His landscape and nature photographs are amongst the greatest achievements in British photography, and he was also an exceptional darkroom printer, often toning his black and white prints. We are proud to have the largest collection of his photographs and unique artist’s books in private hands and to have worked on a film with him in 2023. Sadly he died in January this year. One of his obsessions was tulips and one of his greatest photographs is Tulipa which has the rich tonality and imagery of a seventeenth century Dutch still life. He deserved to be far better known internationally. Another great favourite is Rose Finn-Kelcey’s The Restless Image. It’s a surreal self-portrait that explores the difference between how something feels and how something looks. I love that she looks like an exotic bird and that her dress looks like a seashell. We have had a print of this hanging at home for years."