Christie’s has announced a single-owner auction of the photography collection accumulated by Trevor Traina, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Austria from 2018 to 2021. The October 3 New York sale includes iconic works from leading postwar and contemporary photographers including Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, and Cindy Sherman, and is estimated to bring as much as $2.8 million. Estimates run as high as $300,000, for Eggleston’s Greenwood, Mississippi (Red Ceiling), 1973.
Born in San Francisco as the son of a shipping executive and avid art collector, Traina began his business career working as a brand manager at Canadian conglomerate Seagram’s. Branching out into academics and art, he served as an honorary adviser to both the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley before being nominated for an ambassadorship by then-president Donald Trump. Along the way, he founded or co-founded several tech startups.
Diane Arbus, Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, NYC, 1967 (1967). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd.
Traina’s collection is so extensive that it reflects how photography evolved and diversified over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, from a medium associated with documentation to one that has been fully absorbed into contemporary art practice. On the earlier end of the timeline is Robert Frank, whose 1959 photobook The Americans broke ground by imbuing documentary street photography with emotion and social criticism. The trend continued with Diane Arbus, whose upbringing in the poverty of the Great Depression informed her portrait photography of outcasts and outsiders.
Two themes can be seen in Traina’s collection: the rising prominence of female photographers, and the mainstreaming of color photography—a technological advancement which, much like the introduction of color in film, was initially met with fierce resistance from art world purists when it became commercially available in the early 1900s.
Alec Soth, Charles, Vasa, Minnesota, 2002 (printed 2004). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd.
Traina’s holdings were shown in 2012 at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, in the exhibition “Real to Real: Photographs from the Traina Collection.” He and Christie’s previously did business together in May, when the auction house sold Arbus’s print Identical Twins, (Cathleen and Colleen), Roselle, New Jersey, 1966 (1967) for a record-breaking $1.2 million.
“Everyone has their own fantasy of the impossible collection,” Traina said in a statement. “I was lucky enough to build mine, traveling the world and unearthing the origins of color photography. I assembled a collection of incredible works that tell a story of how observational photography has grown from the outskirts of fine art to being at the very core of contemporary culture. I am delighted to bring these masterpieces to Christie’s from the walls of my homes, and I hope these wonderful photographs bring as much joy to their new owners as they have brought to me.”
A selection of works from Traina’s collection will go on view at Christie’s Los Angeles from September 10 to 12 before the October auction. According to the house, all lots from the auction will be “presented on the blockchain and offered with an associated digital certificate of ownership exclusively included with a Kresus wallet.”