Leonard Joel auctions in Australia is to auction the Parekh Collection of International Photographs on 15 December 2013. The collection of Dinesh Parekh covers photography from the 1840s to the modern period including such names as Le Seq, Fenton, Cameron, Cartier-Bresson, Halsman, Kertesz, Penn and many others.
Dr Dinesh Parekh is a retired psychologist, born in 1939. He grew up in Rajhisthan, India and earned his medical degree from SMS Medical College Jaipur in 1962. He later obtained a diploma in psychological medicine in 1967 and a doctorate in psychiatry in 1970. He became a fellow of the ANZ College of Psychiatry in 1976 and was a World Health Organisation research psychiatrist for 3 years. He had private practices in Resevoir, Sunshine and Thornbury until he retired in 2011.
Dr Parekh has been collecting photographs for most of his adult life. His interest in photography developed as a teenager and he began collecting in earnest after qualifying as a doctor. The first photographs he acquired were of 10 of the most beautiful women in the world including examples by renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh.
His passion for collecting continued for more than 40 years over which time he has amassed more than 10,000 paintings, lithographs, chromolithographs, albumen photographs and silver gelatin photographs from 1840s-2000s.
Dr Dinesh's international photograph collection comprises around 700 works and is a Who's Who of 90 of the world's best known photographers from the 19th century to the present day. The earliest example in the sale is a remarkable 1842 salt print from a calotype negative, The Hungerford Suspension Bridge by William Henry Fox Talbot, the British photography pioneer and inventor of the calotype process. Other highlights include a signed silver gelatin print of the iconic Woman of the Night by Hungarian photographer Brassai (Gyula Hasz) and a silver gelatin portrait of the artist Miro by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh. Several examples by American photographer Brett Weston, (son of Edward Weston) are also featured, most notably Nude Underwater, signed and dated 1979.
The catalogue is available online here.
Image: Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Dance, circa 1964, est AU$600-800.
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