The vision of the collection is to tell the story of the history of fashion photography from the early 20th Century through to the new, innovative voices working today. From Edward Steichen’s early fashion studies of the 1930s; through the great mid-century rivals, Avedon and Penn, who established fashion photography as art; the most prominent fashion photographers of the 70s, 80s and 90s, such as Newton, Ritts, Demarchelier and others; to contemporary photographers such as Paolo Roversi and Erik Madigan Heck. The focus has certainly evolved since we started the collection. At the beginning we hadn’t defined a vision and the goal was simply to explore the medium. The earliest works I acquired included portraits, landscapes, and photo-journalism. I had toyed with the idea of being a war correspondent when I was a teenager, and I was very drawn to the work of action men such as Don McCullin. But many of those images can be hard to live with on your living room wall. I explored landscapes, particularly those involving innovative processes – Abe Morrel, Edward Burtynsky, Nadav Kander, Sohei Nishino and others – and I enjoyed their calm and overwhelming scale. But there are only so many 2-meter-square works you can hang outside a museum. Fairly early on, Diana introduced me to the work of a British artist called Tim Walker, on a visit tomthe Michael Hoppen Gallery in London. I loved his whimsical and fantastical images. They were primarily fashion works but were set in the most wonderful landscapes and backdrops – often with set design that would have done Broadway proud. And this sparked an interest in the use of images in fashion and advertising. How had the genre evolved to sell dreams in this way? Who had made the leaps to get here? Was it art or commerce and where was the dividing line? I could see the potential for a narrative. And that’s how the fashion journey started.