U beginning of 2008, one of the most important collections in the photography of mode could be put on sale. That will depend on a baby to be born. A girl. That until Leon and Michaela Constantiner wait. Leon is 48 years old, Michaela, 27. Leon is questioned:
"To be an old father takes more time." It adds, like being defined:
"Which was not socialist to 18 years does not have heart, says one. Connery. Who did not become socialist at 50 years does not have a heart, should one affirm. Young person, I was republican, capitalist, avid of all; older, I am concerned more with the future of the world and his drifts. Then, a baby changes all."
Leon Constantiner entered the world of the collectors of photographs one day of 1991, at Sotheby' S in New York. On York Avenue, it falls in stop in front of an image from Helmut Newton: a self-portrait with its June wife and a mannequin. It had come as a dilettante to the exposure including/understanding this image, the following day it tears off it with 7 000 dollars (5 139 euros).At that time, Leon is not rich. It arrived to New York a few years earlier, of Mexico, where it was born in 1959, of a Lithuanian father and a new Yorkean mother. The eternal one of these Jewish families of the east of Europe which had the premonition, in the medium of the years 1930, the horror which advanced. Why Mexico? Because more accessible than the United States, which had restricted their quotas of Jewish immigrants.
The family is easy. The life is pleasant, rigorous and liberal education. Constantiner are little a monk. A family "mania" is to be noted: his/her father constituted one of the most beautiful collections of watches of his time.
In 1966, Leon is 7 years old. It discovers New York with its family. It is the enchantment, a hotel of the 54E Rue, neons, a city which never stops. Sixteen years later, it goes back there, when Lopez Portillo, Mexican president, nationalize the banks. The stay will last one month. Formalities of immigration obliges, it will wait seven years before being able to settle there. When it returns, it is 30 years old and it turns to the cinema. He is a producer, mown of course. Its kitchen is its office.
Its first marriage goes to vau-l' water, it is only found. The long ones in short films, nothing is a success, then it trails. As it adores the women, it becomes a pillar of more blazing the topless bars of New York.
"I met hundreds of girls there. They fascinated me. With no I had history. It was not the matter. I looked at them and I discovered that it was they which dominated us. It is this obviousness which I found in all the images of Helmut Newton. Helmut misogynist? bullsh*t! It was the ultimate in love one with the woman."
Leon Constantiner then will give up the cinema and will start to manage the family inheritance. Less glamour, remunerative. It can buy without borrowing. Its second photograph of Newton (a woman sellée like a horse), it buys it 4 000 dollars. The tenth, the hundredth! of its price today. It finds images that even Newton believed disappeared, by foaming all the galleries and the merchants. In New York, Los Angeles, London.
"There were the goods, the honest ones, impassioned, but also the swindlers, the go-getters. I am not upset with them. One learns from each one. A long time, I was the ideal pigeon."
They are wrong: Leon learns. A little later it begins one second collection: that of the images of Marylin Monroe. There too, a phantasm of childhood, born in a movie theater of Mexico City where
Seven years of reflexion were projected. It will pile up all the most beautiful images of the photographers who will cross Marylin.
Most beautiful photographic "Christmas" of Leon goes back to 1999. One learns with the collector that Newton will pass to the varnishing of a gallery of New York. Leon is in fright. Helmut is there, out of white tennis and leather jacket.
"Hello Sir, I am your larger fan and you are my hero." Conscious of ridiculous the matter and in sweat, Leon Constantiner leaves while running. It will await four years its second go with the Father Christmas. It receives it at his place, a penthouse with the angle of Park Avenue and the 58E Rue. At that time, Leon has only eighty Newton, laid out in all the apartment. Helmut is bluffé:
"Oh my God! I did not believe that it was possible." What would it have says, if it knew that it has five today of them hundred one? Consequently, they will correspond and be seen regularly, until the death of the Master, in 2004.
"I cried during hours."
Meanwhile, something changed in the life of Leon Constantiner. It was on September 10, 2001. With a dinner in friends, it meets a very beautiful Czech: Michaela. It is its first voyage to New York: it knows only some English words. It looks it with fear.
"This type monopolized me during all the evening. It spoke without stop. I with my was promised in marriage. Leon had any to only make. I was certain that it was one of the clones of the killer of women in American Psycho
, that I had just read."
Leon knows that it is the woman of its life. But the following day, September 11, following the attacks of the morning, Michaela disappears. Like insane, Leon seeks it everywhere. It reappears a few weeks later of Miami, where it took refuge. Leon Will allure Michaela. They will not separate any more. Sentimental Bluette can be, but from this meeting is born the third collection: that of the mode.
Michaela adores Penn, Bourdin, Sieff, Chris von Wagenhein, that it makes him discover: a world as much in charge of sensuality and erotism. Leon buys again. It is all the more easy as it is the only one at that time to be been interested in it and to have the means of them:
"the majority of the museums and the large collectors were never interested in the photograph of mode. It is deplorable. It is probably the best reflection of our company."
In six years, Leon Constantiner accumulates the main part of the icons of the mode.
"To be the first is a formidable orgasm. That changed these two last years. A new race of collectors was born. Rather hunters: investors of Wall Street, which buy works of Gursky or Serrano, like trophies of bear or elephants that they make empailler and that they expose on their walls. This market will not last."
In the apartment that they will leave soon, before the birth of the baby, a hundred photographs are exposed, which change with the liking of moods. Day before yesterday evening, their living room was a vault devoted to Penn and Newton. With the last visit of Helmut, in this living room there were only its large naked. It photographed the couple in front of its works. It never sent its images.
the whole set of ad is super..cannot find them online
this one is from hfgl
