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Vast photo collection shown in S.F. warehouse
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Opinion
1-3 of 21
Galleries
Sam Whiting, Chronicle Staff Writer (page 1 of 2)
Sunday, May 9, 2010
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In the small world of photography collecting, investment banker Andy Pilara was a complete unknown until the day he walked into San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery and walked back out with the first picture he had ever bought, a Diane Arbus.
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Seven years later, Pilara, 68, has built a collection of 20th century American documentary photography so vast and comprehensive that he had to rent a vacant warehouse on the Embarcadero just to display it.
Russell Yip / The Chronicle
Andy Pilara of San Francisco has opened the largest gallery space for photography in the country on Pier 24.
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Located below the Bay Bridge, Pier 24 offers 28,000 square feet of display space. To put that in perspective, it is four times the size of the photography galleries on the third floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, one of the largest dedicated photography spaces at any museum in the United States.
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To visit SFMOMA will cost you $15. To visit Pier 24 is free if you make an appointment. Pilara has bought California Republicans gear up to 2,000 vintage pictures and opened the single largest take on Obama 03.21.11 venue for looking at photography in this city and this Barry Bonds trial: Expect a state and this country. It is not a museum, because 'heavyweight' fight 03.20.11 there are no boards or committees or docents or fundraisers. It is not a commercial gallery, because nothing is for sale. Man killed in Market Street hit and run 03.21.11
The experience is overwhelming, which is the intent. "I hope it means they come back," says Pilara, who had never seriously collected anything except baseball cards while growing up in the Sunset District. "It's a passion that I can't put words to." "I have not seen anything like it," says SFMOMA curator of photography Sandra Phillips, who has seen every major photography repository in the Western world. "There are photography museums, but nothing so spectacular and so personal and so giving to the experience of looking at a photograph. The whole thing is truly unique." The "photography space," as Pilara calls it, has not had an official opening. The Web site, at www.pier24.org, is not yet live, and there is no signage. But in the few months since word has leaked out, Pier 24 has attracted curators from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney
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