For more than three decades, New York gallerist Steven Kasher has championed artists and photographic archives — from Civil Rights-era photography to overlooked masters. In his new book, “Memoir of a Collection: Finding Meaning through Art,” to be published by Abbeville Press on April 7, Kasher turns his attention inward, reflecting on the artworks that shaped his life and career. A book signing will be held at Lazypoint in Amagansett on Saturday, May 16, from 3 to 6 PM.
Part memoir, part art criticism, and part philosophical inquiry, the illustrated volume brings together a series of linked essays in which Kasher examines the images, many from his own collection, that left a lasting mark on him — works that illuminate not only the artists who created them but also the personal and historical experiences through which we encounter art.
“Every collector has a story about how an artwork entered their life,” Kasher writes. “The deeper story is how the art enters your consciousness and stays there quietly changing the way you see the world.”
Best known as the founder of Steven Kasher Gallery, opened in Tribeca in 1997 and later operated in Chelsea, Kasher became a leading advocate for photography that bridged documentary, vernacular, and fine art traditions. The gallery introduced audiences to figures such as Ming Smith and Vivian Maier while mounting historically significant exhibitions devoted to Civil Rights photographers and counter-culture archives.
The gallery opened in 1997 with the first (and still only) New York show devoted to the work of Black photographer Ernest Withers, introducing his now iconic “I AM A MAN” photograph to many audiences. Over the following decades, Steven Kasher Gallery became known as a place where canonical works by artists such as Andy Warhol and John Chamberlain could appear alongside Minneapolis police mugshots or portraits made for the Village Voice — presented as equally powerful sources of meaning.
In “Memoir of a Collection,” Kasher retraces his path through the art world as an artist, curator, writer, dealer, and collector. The book unfolds as a series of encounters — with artworks, artists, and historical moments — that form a portrait of a life shaped by looking closely.
“Art is not just something we admire on walls,” Kasher writes. “It’s something we carry with us. The images that matter to us become part of our memory and our moral imagination.”
Kasher shares stories of artists he knew personally — including Philip Guston, John Chamberlain, June Leaf, and Robert Frank — and photographers whose work he helped bring to broader audiences, among them Ernest Withers, Mike Disfarmer, and Charles Moore.
The book also invokes a wider cultural landscape populated by musicians, writers, and filmmakers whose work intersected with Kasher’s life in New York’s creative communities. Figures such as Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson appear alongside references to Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen, reflecting the cross-pollination of artistic circles that defined the era.
Personal history plays an equally important role. Kasher reflects on growing up as a first-generation Jewish American, shaped by the memory of the Holocaust, the moral urgency of the Civil Rights Movement, and a keen awareness of Eastern spirituality — forces that profoundly informed his curatorial and scholarly interests.
“Looking at art closely is a way of practicing empathy,” Kasher writes. “When we truly see an image, we’re seeing the lives and experiences embedded within it.”
Illustrated with more than 125 images and a cover drawn by Sophie Crumb, “Memoir of a Collection” invites readers to reflect on the works that have shaped their own lives. By examining artworks ranging from anonymous photographs to museum masterpieces — and even digital images circulating on social media — Kasher suggests that the act of looking can become a form of personal inquiry.
The book proposes a democratic approach to art: that meaning is discovered through the viewer’s own experiences and memories. “This book is an invitation,” Kasher writes, “to look at the images around you, to ask what they mean to you, and to discover what they reveal about who you are.”