Jeremy Lipking, A Privileged View, American Art Collector, Issue 100

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A Privileged View

OUR PHOTOGR APHER FR ANCIS SMITH L O O K S B A C K O N T H E PA S T N I N E Y E A R S W O R K I N G I N T H E F I E L D.

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hank you, good reader: because you love to look at beautiful art set in lovely homes, I get to photograph what you love to see.

I am remarkably grateful for this privilege, and it’s one I’ve enjoyed since American Art Collector was a toddler.

I was simply in the right place at the right time, and that good fortune has sent me into many gorgeous homes to photograph countless pieces of amazing art. As much fun as I may have when I go out photographing for American Art Collector, I must keep in mind—I have a job to do here.

My job isn’t so much to give you, the reader, a tour of the collector’s home and collection, but to tell the story of what I find behind that front door. I want to recreate the experience of being in the home and looking at the art. My challenge is taking a life-size space and presenting it in an image that is never more than 11 by 17 inches on the page. I have to make sense of the space, and make sure the artworks are legible. To that end, the first hour of any shoot is spent asking the collector, and myself, what must the reader see so they catch a sense of the home, the artworks, and the person who

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home’s story to its most basic and beautiful elements.

And speaking of envy, I do sometimes get a view into the lives of the rich and famous. Not only do I glimpse how life is lived in these homes, I also see the occupants working at their businesses: the discipline of hard work certainly figures in their successes. Cheech Marin and his lovely, talented wife Natasha Rubin were friendly and gracious.

Their home, set above the Malibu surf, was marked by a comfortable blend of rusticity and sophistication, and so felt very California canyon. Natasha, a concert pianist, practiced in a studio on the property, and Cheech had a fine office for writing.

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united these entities? What stays in? What’s left out?

I try to think like a poet, or at least a short story writer: each and every photographic element must speak to the same end.

Because my process is all about finding this sense of story, I deal in that great truth of photography: the viewer can’t know what’s outside the image frame, but it’s my job to suggest it. The viewer imagines what is outside the bounds of my photo. One collector gave me a great compliment when, after seeing the spread of her home, she said to me: “Francis, I envy the home you photographed!” It’s not that I made her house look better than it does in real life, I simply edited the

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amazing painting can be included in the finished spread.

These peeks behind the curtain of fame are fun, but only for the sake of anecdote. I like being in the homes of people who love art—that’s it. Whether the collector has a great deal of money or space is not as important as their love for beauty. Every collector expresses this love differently from another. Some are exuberant, buying each and every painting they love, while others are more restrained and contemplative.

Either approach works handsomely,

because it’s the spirit that matters. And truly, what matters most to me is the people who live in the homes, and the people who create the art. The artist channels beauty into their work, while the collector, in becoming the steward of this art, creates a whole new beauty by design and display in the home. I feel grateful that my work, in concert with artist and collector, just might create yet another beauty for you to see on the page.

You complete the cycle. Beauty is food for the soul, and I’m glad for these years of working for our mutual nourishment.

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Francis Smith has been photographing for American Art Collector since the magazine’s early years. He studied the history of art at Vassar College, and worked as an interior designer in New York City. While not showing you collections from across the country, he’s pursuing his love for photographic portraiture in his project called America

By Another Name, a story inspired by our nation’s former poetic name, Columbia.

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The New York City apartment of hiphop and fashion impresario Russell Simmons spoke of his love for art, and also his passions for social justice and meditation. One of my most favorite works of art that I have seen in all my years of photographing for the magazine was over Simmons’ desk. Alas, during that first hour I spend with any collection, learning about the collecting stories to tell, I realized this work—small, standing alone—wouldn’t fit into a larger story.

But this painting informed my soul, and I think of it often. While I wish I had a snapshot of it, as an artist, I know that the inner effect wrought by this small painting must stand as enough.

This painting, aside from standing alone, was right above a true-to-life working desk. I have to be 99 percent certain of the resultant photo’s inclusion in the magazine before I ask for a working space to be tidied.

Even while I’m there, I know the collector has work to do. It’s a sad and simple truth of photographing a collection: not every