Peter J. Cohen: The Collector of Vernacular Photography

Peter J. Cohen, a Chicago-born investment manager living in New York, has amassed over 60,000 vernacular photographs cataloged into 130 categories, stored in his Greenwich Village studio. His collection spans from the late 19th century to the early 2000s, focusing on snapshots and camera-less photography. Cohen began collecting seriously in the 1960s, buying works by Edward Weston and Baron Adolph de Meyer. His vernacular collection started in 1993 at a flea market, where he bought five snapshots. He now acquires images from flea markets, eBay, and Etsy. Cohen has donated substantial portions to about sixty US institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, MFA Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Morgan Library, and SFMoMA. His first donation to MoMA in 2007 involved 300 images selected by Peter Galassi and Susan Kismaric. He published "Snapshots of Dangerous Women" in 2015 with an introduction by Mia Fineman. Cohen also collects camera-less photography and has works by Adam Fuss, Marco Bruer, and others. He collaborates with other collectors like Robert E. Jackson, whose collection was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in 2007.