David Kronn: The Irish doctor and his incredible collection of photographs
Pediatrician and photography enthusiast Dr David Kronn: "I approached IMMA, and the director at that time, Enrique Juncosa, came to New York. When he saw the collection, he said immediately that they were interested in having it." Picture: Patrick Hogan/Provision.
Dr David Kronn is a New York-based pediatrician and photography enthusiast who has gifted hundreds of prints to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in his native Dublin.
These cover the entire history of photography over the past 200 years, including examples of 19th century daguerrotypes and albumen prints; 20th century microphotography and pinhole photography; and contemporary analogue and digital images.
A selection of 130 works from Kronn’s fourth – and most recent – donation is currently showing at the museum, and features prints by international photographers such as August Sander, Herb Ritts and Annie Leibovitz, as well as images by contemporary Irish artists such as Alice Maher, Richard Mosse and Amelia Stein.
Kronn’s gift to IMMA is the largest donation of photographs anyone has ever made in Ireland. “I don't have any children,” he says, “so I was deciding on where I would leave my collection. One of the things that I'm very keen on is maintaining the collection as a body of work, and it seemed like a good idea to give it to Ireland.
"I approached IMMA, and the director at that time, Enrique Juncosa, came to New York. When he saw the collection, he said immediately that they were interested in having it. That was over 15 years ago, so it's been a process. But I’m happy that my collection will be part of the national collection in time.”
Kronn traces his interest in photography to his schooldays in Dublin. “Our scoutmaster was a photojournalist,” he says, “so we all learned how to process photographs. That was a good start. I became quite proficient while I was studying Medicine at Trinity, and people began asking me to take photographs for them. So, I was very keen on the medium even before I arrived in New York.”
At that time, in the early 1990s, New York was the centre of the photographic art market. “There were many photography galleries, and I got invited along to exhibitions.
"In time, I became involved with the International Centre for Photography. I got immersed in that environment and started going to auctions. At one point, I bought a photograph, and then I became very interested in collecting.
“I think the first photograph I bought at auction was by William Claxton; it's called The Release. Early on, I also bought a Bernice Abbott photograph, which is actually on exhibition at IMMA at the moment. I remember also buying two photographs by Helmut Newton, one of Charlotte Romping and one of David Bowie, which I still have on my wall. I progressed from there. I began buying work from galleries, and nowadays I'm also working with photographers directly.”
Some of the photographers he has befriended are Irish, while others are based in America and Europe. “In Ireland, I work with people like Conor Horgan, Aoife Shanahan, David Farrell and Tony O'Shea. And then, in America, Mark Riddell is somebody I'm working with quite deeply.
"I’ve also collected a lot of work by Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, who’s based in Dusseldorf. She's in the Becher School of photography, documenting in-between places and vanishing spaces around the world.”
There are, says Kronn, any number of themes in his collection. “As a pediatrician, or medical geneticist, I'm interested in photographs of children,” he says. “But I'm also interested in abstract photographs, and the idea of time in photography, where you're seeing how things change. That could be in two complementary photographs, or it could be in a photograph that shows movement in different ways.
“There's many different ways of conceptualising time in photography. It could be historical, for instance; you could take a photograph of a place where something significant has happened, and that could be an interesting record of what happened in that space. That's always interesting to me, and it's something I'm pursuing in my collecting.”
Kronn acknowledges that his decision to donate his collection to IMMA has influenced how he now collects work. “I tend to buy several photographs by the same photographer now, rather than just one at a time, because I'm thinking about how the photographs will be exhibited at the museum at some point. So that's an important aspect of the collection. You're not only buying photographs, you're thinking of curating them and how they will be shown as well.”
Kronn has collaborated with IMMA’s head curator, Seán Kissane, on the four exhibitions of work from his collection the museum has hosted to date: Out of the Dark Room in 2011 featured images such as Herb Ritts’ iconic photograph of Madonna and Robert Mapplethorpe’s portrait of Laurie Anderson; Second Sight in 2014 showcased a number of leading Irish photographers such as Willie Doherty, Paul Seawright and Gerard Byrne; while Northern Light in 2020 examined the history of conflict in Northern Ireland and featured work by Gilles Peress, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Donovan Wylie, amongst many others.
Kronn has been heavily involved in organising all four exhibitions. “I’ve had the chance to do a little bit of curating,” he says, “thinking about how the photographs will be hung, and how they relate to each other. It’s been very rewarding, and something I've learned a lot from.”
He has also been involved in compiling catalogues for the shows. “We’ve done three so far, and we're thinking about another exhibition in the next few years, so there probably will be another catalogue for that.”
Kronn is not quite sure how many photographs he expects to donate to IMMA in all, “but there's well over 1,000 photographs at this point, and I’m still collecting.” He has also maintained his interest in taking photographs. “I had one image in the previous exhibition, Northern Light; a sort of a COVID self-portrait. I think that’s the one photograph of mine that’s been exhibited so far. But I'm actively working, and maybe someday we'll see more.”
- David Kronn Photography Collection runs at the East Ground Galleries at IMMA until Sunday, January 26. For further information, visit imma.ie.
