Celebrated Interior Designer’s Rare Photography Collection Goes to Auction

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A black-and-white portrait of a young woman with short, light hair, wearing a light-colored sweatshirt with a dark V-neck insert.

An extraordinary collection of 200 photographs — including works by Edward Steichen, Man Ray, and a rare print of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother — belonging to a celebrated interior designer is going to auction.

Internationally recognized interior designer Vicente Wolf’s personal collection will go on auction as part of a two-part sale by Christie’s in New York on October 22.

Marilyn Monroe waves with her right arm raised while sitting on a decorated parade float, surrounded by a crowd and a photographer.

A woman with arms raised above her head dances on a stone platform, her sheer garment blurred by motion against a landscape.

A woman with short, dark hair sits on a chair in a cobblestone alleyway, resting her chin on her hand while wearing a dark dress with a white collar and lace-up boots.

The Vicente Wolf Photography Collection — a collection assembled by Wolf over nearly five decades — will be offered by Christie’s across one live and one online auction. It includes photographs spanning a wide range of subjects, genres, movements and periods, with works by some of the most influential European and American photographers of the 20th century.

Wolf built his career working across residential, hospitality and commercial spaces while developing a parallel interest in photography. His approach to collecting began with advice from photographer Richard Avedon and continued for decades.

A triptych of black-and-white portraits showing the same elderly man with a mustache, wearing a white collared shirt.

A black-and-white photograph shows a brightly illuminated fountain shooting a tall jet of water into the night air, with its reflection shimmering on the dark water below.

A woman with a weary expression rests her chin on her hand, flanked by two children who have their faces turned away from the camera.

According to a press release, Wolf says he spent considerable time searching for the right print of Lange’s Migrant Mother, one of the best-known American photographs of the 20th century, before finding one at auction. Wolf’s print shows the mother’s thumb, which Lange later edited out, making the print unusual and revealing how the iconic photograph originally looked.

“I hunted for a long time for the right Dorothea Lange photograph and when I saw Migrant Mother come up in an auction catalogue, I had to see it. I was really surprised knowing the image pretty well, that I had never seen mother’s thumb in the photograph and in going through and doing some research, I found out that Lange had edited out the thumb after the first few images were printed,” Wolf says. “I thought this was the perfect image to own of Dorothea Lange because A, of its uniqueness and B, because it made it just a little different than every other image that you see of Migrant Mother. I think details like that bring an image back to the days when the original photograph was taken.

A black-and-white landscape of rolling sand dunes with prominent wind-swept ripples and deep shadows.

A black-and-white portrait of a woman wearing a swim cap, holding two fingers to her right eye.

Among the artists represented in the collection are Alexander Rodchenko, Constantin Brâncusi, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Diane Arbus, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Francesca Woodman, and Avedon. The sale also includes an anonymous press print of Marilyn Monroe that was hand-masked as a mock-up for the first cover of Playboy in 1953.

The Vicente Wolf Photography Collection will go up for auction at Christie’s on October 22.

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