E-Photo
Issue #30  7/23/2001
 
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By Alex Novak

Roger Therond, former director of Paris Match magazine and one of the top photography collectors in the world, died last month at his apartment in Paris. He was 76. Therond's passion for photography, especially French photography, was well known. Some 250 pieces were shown at the Maison Europeénne de la Photographie in Paris in the fall of 1999. His book from that exhibit, Une Passion Francaise, is one of the great books on that subject and is on I Photo Central's list of Must-Have Photography Collecting Books. He had been instrumental in launching a major photography website and had been generous with his time and collection. Just in May Therond received an award from the International Center of Photography in New York ''for having contributed to the shaping of photojournalism in Europe during the past 50 years.'' He will be missed...

The Austrian auction house Dorotheum is currently for sale. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, in addition to Christie's and Sotheby's, interested parties include the investment group Unternehmens Invest AG, the Austrian auction house Wiener Kunst Auktionen, the online auctioneer OneTwoSold, investment banker Johannes Strohmayer, lingerie maker Palmers and the Austrian private bank Meinl Bank...

In a further twist to the Sotheby's-Christie's anti-trust matter, the New York Times recently reported that several confidential documents were inadvertently sent to lawyers for A. Alfred Taubman, the former chairman of Sotheby's who is facing criminal antitrust charges. The documents were apparently part of more than a million pages of internal records gathered by Christie's, about a third of which was provided to Taubman's lawyers. Among the documents provided were eight Christie's called ''privileged'' because they involved lawyer-client discussions or work products. Taubman, who has pleaded not guilty and remains Sotheby's largest shareholder, is to go on trial in October.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.