As a recent graduate student of the prestigious Institute of Fine Art at New York University, Virginia Zabriskie opened her gallery in midtown Manhattan in 1954. With no money and no cachet, she was forced to show artists that no other galleries were showing, such as the American modernists. Her early exhibitions include such scholarly exercises as "A Decade of American Cubist Painting" (1957). She then played a major role in reviving postwar interest in Dada and Surrealism, and helped raise the status of photography in the 1970s.Throughout her career, she has been an arbiter of taste, setting an example for collectors and scholars alike to look beyond the canon to find great art.

IN 1977,  YOU OPENED A PARIS GALLERY LARGELY DEDICATED TO PHOTOGRAPHY AT A TIME WHEN THERE WAS LITTLE INTEREST. WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE MEDIUM?

I showed a great deal of photography because it was new to Paris at that time, even though there was a lively photography scene in New York. I looked at the medium very differently, as it had a literary aspect to it that I did not see in painting or sculpture. And there’s the practical aspect of being able to carry an entire exhibition from New York to Paris under your arm.

WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS?

The photographers I admire have a great aesthetic range—Alfred Stieglitz, Brassaï, Harry Callahan. I met many of them in Paris, including Brassaï and Pierre Jahan. The American photographers Berenice Abbott, Callahan and Lee Friedlander came over for their show openings. I had the gallery in Paris for 23 years.

I show younger artists as well. One is Japanese artist Tomoko Sawada. We found her work on the Internet while planning a show called "Who, Me?" about role-playing and self-portraiture. She was living in Japan, and we invited her to participate in the exhibit. She won an ICP [International Center of Photography] award in 2004 for Best Young Photographer and is now in many museum collections. I also show the Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta. He came to my gallery in Paris some 20 years ago and I’ve been representing him since then. There is a very conceptual side to Fontcuberta, as well as humor.

Among earlier artists whose work I introduced is Claude Cahun. I purchased an anonymous surrealistic sculpture of a hairy eye at the auction of items owned by major Parisian dealer Charles Ratton. I knew it had to be by Cahun. My attribution was confirmed by François Leperlier, who was writing his doctorate on Cahun. He took me to the Isle of Jersey, where she had lived. A small dealer there had Cahun’s photographs and I bought them all.

The next year, 1992, I did my first Cahun show. In the past few years her work has gotten a lot of attention. Aperture recently published a book on her.

WHAT ARTIST WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HAVE A MAJOR MUSEUM RETROSPECTIVE?

Richard Stankiewicz, an artist that I’ve represented since 1972, and one of the most important mid-century American sculptors. Also, there are European art movements that we have not explored in the U.S., such as the Nouveaux Réalistes and the Affichistes—[Jean] Tinguely, [Jacques] Villeglé, [Raymond] Hains, [Daniel] Spoerri—highly respected in France and Europe.

WHICH RECENT MUSEUM SHOWS WERE NOTEWORTHY?

The retrospective of Lee Friedlander, whose work I showed in Paris and New York, at MoMA in 2005. I also enjoyed the extensive Dada exhibition, which traveled to MoMA last year, because of my involvement with that material, particularly works by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.