The Beautiful Timepieces Of Phil Toledano

Phil Toledano is a renaissance man. The conceptual artist is a photographer, installation artist and documentary film maker. His work has been in magazines including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and Esquire. His documentaries and photographic works are renown.

Mr. Toledano was born in London, England in the 1960s to a Moroccan mother and an American father. His father, an artist, inspired his son to follow in his footsteps. Today, Phil Toledano is based in New York City and works as a film and media photographer, but he also creates conceptual art. He enjoys creating photographs and documentaries that are personal and powerful including his 2010 Days With My Father and The Many Sad Fates Of Mr. Toledano which was shown at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Aside from his work, Mr. Toledano has vast and eclectic interests. He has become a serious collector of vintage cars and vintage watches. He is fascinated by horology, the study of time keeping devices. His love of vintage timepieces is like his art, eclectic and conceptual. Here are 5 of the beautiful timepieces of Phil Toledano.

Breitling Co-Pilot

His 1960s Breitling Co-Pilot is a favorite of Phil Toledano. The Swiss watch company was founded in 1884. The company is one of the few family owned independent watchmakers in Switzerland. Breitling even developed its own mechanical chronograph movement. Breitling specifically created watches for use in aviation.

The Breitling Co-Pilot debuted in the mid-1950s and was developed with military aviation specs. The watch is large with 22 mm lugs. It has a rotating steel hour hand and a 41 diameter bezel. What really set it apart from other watches of the time is its minute hand feature. The minute register counts to 15 units instead of 30. This is due to the fact that aviators had 15 minutes to get aircraft ready for takeoff.

Mr. Tordeno’s 1960s Breitling Co-Pilot is oversized and features luminous white sub-dials. The chronograph has 3 registers, a silver bezel and a yachting configuration. The watch has a stylish leather bracelet. The vintage Co-Pilot is a rare find for watch collectors, and Mr. Toledano is proud of his.

Breitling Superocean Heritage

Breitling debuted the Superocean in 1957 as a diving watch. Over the decades it was developed with specifications of the elite Navy SEALS. Mr. Toledano’s Breitling Heritage is vintage and classic. It is similar in appearance to Breitling’s Co-Pilot chronograph but it has a central minute and an aperture at 6 o’clock that indicates that the watch is running. Because it was developed specifically for diving, it is highly waterproof. It has a sports diver’s bezel and features automatic movement. Mr. Toledano is proud of his vintage Breitling Superocean Heritage.

Breitling Navitimer 806

The Navitimer is one of the most exclusive vintage finds for watch collectors. The 1960s model is stately, elegant and complex. The Navitimer was developed as a Navy Aviator’s chronograph. This model features a black dial, 3 white sub-dials and a rotating silver bezel. The case is stainless steel case with a snap on brushed satin finished case back. The classic watch is mechanically wound. The bracelet is brown leather.

The Breitling Navitimer 806 is a unique, sophisticated and complex watch. It was proudly featured in the James Bond thriller Thunderball in 1965. Mr. Toledano feels his Breitling Navitimer is a bit cliché due to its popularity with vintage watch collectors, but he knows the watch is a must for his collection.

Longines Nonius

Phil Toledano is proud of his 1970 Longines Nonius timepiece. The watch is a cult classic for watch collectors. Longines was founded in Switzerland in 1832. The company developed watches for army men and later for aviators. Charles Lindbergh wore a Longines watch to aid air navigation during his first trans-Atlantic flight. Prior to that, the watch was used to keep time during the first modern Olympics in 1896 and during Luigi Amedeo’s exploration to the North Pole in 1899.

Mr. Toledano’s 1970 Longines Nonius is distinctive and rare. It features an orange running seconds count down fixed to the second hand for the most accurate timekeeping. This Longines Nonius is a unique prize for watch collectors.

Omega Speedmaster

His Omega Speedmaster was Phil Toledano first old watch. The 1960s Speedmaster is prized by Mr. Toledano because of his love of space travel. He has photographed the Soyez re-entry for National Geographic and he even owns an actual space suit.

The Speedmaster debuted in 1957 as a sports watch. The original watch was manually wound and kept accurate time in stressed environments. Because of this, the watch was worn in outer space. In 1965 Ed White wore the watch during America’s first space walk during NASA’s Gemini 4 mission. It was later worn by Buzz Aldrin during America’s first moonwalk. The watch became known as the “Moonwatch”.

It is able to withstand both high and low temperatures and pressure. It can withstand a vacuum, humidity, acoustic noise and linear acceleration. The watch dramatically was used to time the 14 second Mid-Course Correction during the fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission when an oxygen tank ruptured.

Phil Tordeno is proud of his conceptual artwork and proud of his vintage collections. He has worked hard to create work that is symbolic. The appeal of vintage cars and vintage watches is like conceptual art. The pieces he has collected reflect the intricacies and nuances of the time period they were created in. The vintage watches in his collection represent technological development and the importance of complex and durable timekeepers that could be used to precisely keep time in airplanes, under water and even in outer space. Mr. Toredano is a talented connoisseur of quality art throughout the ages.