Marjorie and Leonard Vernon began collecting the photography of Anthony Hernandez early on in the artist’s career, before he had made a name for himself. Recounting their first meeting, Hernandez wrote:

"I think Sandy Phillips, the photo curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was here (in Los Angeles) to visit and somehow I got invited to join her at the Vernons…after that, I went up to visit with artist Ben Lipson, and showed them my Rodeo Drive work in the late 1980s. They did buy something from me then - on that very first visit …. It was my first color work and the last photographs I made of people … Leonard said he just loved the way I looked at the world, and just a week before he died he was looking at my pictures in my most recent book…"

Denise Bethel, Senior Vice President and Head of Department for Photographs at Sothebys was introduced to the work of Hernandez by the Vernons. Describing this acquaintance, she wrote:

"I first saw Tony Hernandez’s work not in a gallery, and not in a museum, but when Leonard Vernon showed it to me. He’d been buying it for years, before Tony had the name he’s since made for himself. It never occurred to Marjorie and Leonard that their collection should not or could not start in 1840 and end in the 21st century."