The ten most expensive photographs ever sold: 1. Andreas Gursky, Rhein II (1999); 2. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96 (1981); 3. Richard Prince, Cowboy (2001-02); 4. Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001); 5. Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904); 6. Unknown, Billy the Kid (1879-80); 7. Dmitry Medvedev, Kremlin of Tobolsk (2009); 8. Edward Weston, Nude (1925); 9. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe (Hands) (1919); 10. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe Nude (1919).
A few days ago, a photograph by Andreas Gursky sold for $4.3 million, becoming the most expensive photo ever. Four point three million is a staggering amount of money, but still no more than one-third of an elvis. Above is the entire top ten, at least if Wikipedia is to be trusted. (I couldn’t find any other up-to-date lists.) Rhein II might not be the greatest photo in the world, but it’s still better than the boring Sherman photo it surpassed. Personally, I was a fan of Gursky’s 99 cent diptych, solely for the delicious irony that the most expensive photo was of a dollar store.
Looking past the fact that expensive art sells because it sells for a lot of money—i.e., most buyers pay a lot because they’re betting on other people later paying even more—it’s tempting to guess why these particular photos sold for so much. There are two outliers on the list. The first is Dmitry Medvedev, who isn’t a photographer at all. This photo sold in an auction for charity, and was clearly bought to score some political points—I’m sure a photo of a turd would have sold for a lot in the same setting. The other outlier is Richard Prince: the cowboy isn’t Prince’s photo, it’s part of a Marlboro ad that Prince rephotographed and blew up. Hilariously, the Sotheby’s website doesn’t display the picture because it’s “under artist copyright”.
The Billy the Kid photo is also a little different, in that the photographer is unknown. Still, it isn’t hard to imagine why the only extant picture of a legendary historical figure sold for a lot. The other photographers, for better or worse, are all serious, respected giants. Gursky is on the list with two of his monumental pictures; Stieglitz with two of his studies of the human body, and in particular the body of his wife, painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
My favorite from the top ten is Steichen’s moonlit pond. The photograph stems from the height of pictorialism, a movement popular around the turn of the century. The pictorialists thought that photography, to be an art, should emulate painting. That turned out to be a blind alley, but Steichen’s Pond is still a masterpiece. If it was called Impression, Moonrise over a Pond, it wouldn’t look too out of place among a bunch of Monets. The color is due to the printing, and not inherent in the negative, but it’s still an early color print.
Four million is a lot of money. But the incredulous fail to take a few things into account. First, JPEGs aren’t on sale. The auction houses are selling physical artifacts whose presence can’t be determined via computer screen. The Gurskys are huge. (On the other hand, the Weston print is only 13 by 23.5 cm, less than a standard A4 or US Letter paper.) I haven’t seen any of these pictures in person, but I can imagine some of them pack quite a lot more punch in person. I’ve seen one of Warhol’s Mao prints. On the web, it looks like something you could cook up in Photoshop in five minutes. When you’re standing in front of it, and it covers an entire wall, two stories tall, it’s literally awesome. Going by that experience, I’m sure the same can be said for the Gurskys.
The other thing to think about is that these are all resales. The original photographers didn’t get anything for these sales, except indirectly in the form of higher sale prices for their new work (if they aren’t dead already). This is very much the art world being the art world.
