German collector Artur Walther might have a bone to pick with New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. In a recent feature, the critic lamented the American art world's neglect of older non-Western art in favor of contemporary non-Western fare. But if you ask Walther, plenty of African and Asian artists working today still aren't getting a fair shake — and he's out to change that.

Last week, the retired Goldman Sachs partner opened the Walther Collection, a new project space devoted to showcasing his vast collection of African and Asian photography and video. The 1,750-square-foot gallery — formerly a studio for Walther's own photography — is located in the West Chelsea Arts Building on West 26th Street. Its inaugural exhibition, "As Terras do Fim do Mundo," is the first solo exhibition of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe in the United States — the first in a long series of exhibitions focusing on photographers unfamiliar to American audiences, Walther said.

"There is wonderful work by artists that have just not been known in the U.S. and not had the exposure that I believe they should have," Walther told ARTINFO. Upcoming shows include an exhibition of portraits by Malian photographer Seydou Keita and German photographer August Sander (curated by star curator Okwui Enwezor) as well as solo shows by South African photographer Guy Tillim and Nigerian artist Rotimi Fani-Kayode, both U.S. debuts.

View Slideshow: Visions of Africa on the Hudson: New Walther Collection Gallery Brings Non-Western Photography to Chelsea

The New York space is a satellite of the Walther Collection's main exhibition venue in Neu-Ulm/Burlafingen, a residential town in southern Germany. That three-building complex, inaugurated last year, boasts 10,000 square feet of exhibition space and presents programming that compliments and expands on the foundation's more modest New York shows. Walther certainly doesn't need to worry about having enough art to fill both spaces — his collection of 19th- and 20th-century photography consists of 1,200 works by over 100 leading figures, including Malick Sidibé, Song Dong, and Candida Höfer. Though the financier only began collecting African art in the late 1990s, he has built one of the world's most significant holdings of African photography.

"My collection is not focused at all on who's who in photography, and I'm not collecting individual images or pictures," said Walther. "My collecting is much more about looking at the artist and the overall oeuvre and being involved in great depth." Walther added that he owns approximately 70 images by the South African photographer David Goldblatt, a number that "is typical of the collection and my way of approaching it." He noted that on his second visit to Jo Ractcliffe's studio in Johannesburg, the artist took him out to her backyard and showed him a brand new workspace built exclusively with the proceeds from his last buying trip. "These are the kinds of connections and support you can give in a very personal but very effective way for the artist," he said, with evident pride.

Walther, a board member at New York's International Center for Photography selects art the way a museum curator might — he buys with the intention of building a cohesive exhibition. "It's very much driven from a research and curatorial perspective," he said of his collecting practice. Almost 50 percent of the work in "Appropriated Landscapes," the current exhibition in Germany, for example, was purchased specifically for the show. Walther and the Berlin-based curator Corinne Diserens researched and purchased African landscape photography for three years before they felt the selection was comprehensive enough to put on view.

Walther became interested in African photography after seeing his friend Enwezor's seminal 1996 Guggenheim show "In/Sight: African Photographs from 1940 to the Present." At the time, he specialized in Asian photography, but had become overwhelmed by the explosion of the art market there. "At the beginning, you visited them [Asian artists] at home, and you walked up six flats and they were in these tiny apartments, and now they have factory space and the employ 50 or 60 people," he said. For the past few years, he's been spending more time in Africa, embarking on month-long buying trips and visiting the Dakar and Johannesburg Biennales.

Now that both the German and New York spaces are open, Walther said he looks forward to turning his focus back to collecting. "I really do spend most of my waking and my sleeping time on art," he said.