Photocollect exists in the actual world as well as in the virtual. We have been private dealers in fine 19th and 20th century vintage photography and emerging contemporary work for the past 20 years. (My how time flies when you’re having fun.) During that time we have sold many important photographs to the finest museums and private collections from New York, where we are, to Tokyo, Sydney and Hong Kong, where we are not. Photocollect, Inc. is a member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. We do the major trade shows and travel extensively to buy as well as to sell. At home we hold Collector’s Seminars to attract and encourage new collectors. It seems that providing education is one of our major endeavors, and we love to do it. Collecting confidence comes out of knowledge not hype. We also act as auction purchasing consultants and agents. And if that were not enough we invest money for qualified investors in fine art photography. When you come to New York please come by for a visit. Just call (212) 327-2211 and we will arrange for a mutually convenient time.

Biographical Sketches

Alan Klotz, The gallery’s owner and director definitely comes to photography from the academic side. He has an MFA in photography with a concentration in museum practice from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. While there he studied primarily with Nathan Lyons the Workshop’s director and the late Beaumont Newhall, the preeminent photographic historian, and the then director of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House. Mr. Klotz was an intern at the Eastman House where he worked with the Alvin Langdon Coburn Estate. He studied printmaking and bookmaking with Joan Lyons and took workshops with such notables as Robert Frank, Frederick Sommer and Dave Heath. While in Rochester he also worked for channel 21 (PBS Rochester) as a cultural reporter and critic and produced a documentary film on dissent in the Soviet Union which aired in several PBS venues.

His teaching career spans 25 years beginning in Rochester where he taught history and criticism at the Rochester Institute of Technology and supervised the graduate photography gallery. Since then he has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the ICP/NYU program, and at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where he is currently visiting Associate Professor of Art on the Graduate Fine Arts Faculty. He has lectured extensively here and abroad and has written numerous articles, reviews and book essays on photography.

He began PHOTOCOLLECT gallery in 1977 and divides his time between New York City and Stone Ridge, NY where he gardens, cooks, and does carpentry work on his never to be finished house in the silence of the Catskills.

Janet Sirmon, the gallery manager, grew up in the mountains of Montana, Utah and Oregon. She claims that she learned how to ski before she learned how to walk. In 1992 she graduated from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA with a B.S. in Economics. During that time, when she was not laboring over Keynesian theory and IS/LM models, she spent many hours in the darkroom. Her love of photography led her to the graduate program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. While there she had the opportunity to study with photographer Philip Perkis, sculptor Cyrilla Mozenter, and the eclectic Alan Klotz before graduating with an MFA in 1996. Ms. Sirmon began working with Mr. Klotz in 1994.

She spends her free time creating her own art, working out at the gym, and Rollerblading through the streets of Manhattan.