10 Most Expensive Photographs in the World Sold for Crazy Money
Sometimes photographers amaze us with their art, their ability to capture the world around us in a unique way and make us look at it from a different angle. And sometimes they do something completely disgusting or ordinary, so much so that it is impossible to understand why the work is considered a masterpiece. One way or another, these Expensive Photographs were sold for millions of dollars.
Expensive Photographs:
- Rhine II (1999)
Author – Andreas Gursky
Price – $4,338,500
Andreas Gursky is a famous German photographer, who has taken many photographs that were later sold for fabulous amounts of money. In 1999, he took the photograph “Rhine II”, which depicts the Rhine River between two dams under a majestic cloudy sky. Gursky created a total of six images of the Rhine, and “Rhine II” is the largest photograph in the series.
The most amazing thing about the photograph is that it was made using Photoshop: initially, the background was “spoilt” by a power plant, port facilities, and a passerby walking his dog – Gursky removed all of this, leaving only the Rhine itself and the dams.
Gursky commented on his actions: “Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine could not have been obtained on site; reworking was necessary to ensure an accurate image of the modern river.”
After finishing, the photographer printed the photograph measuring 185.4 x 363.5 cm, mounted it on acrylic glass and framed it. The photograph was sold at Christie’s in New York for $4,338,500 in 2011 — the buyer was the Monika Sprüth gallery in Cologne, and the Expensive Photographs was subsequently resold to an unknown collector.
- Untitled #96 (1981)
Author – Cindy Sherman
Price – $3,890,500
American photo artist Cindy Sherman works in the technique of staged photography. Her works are widely known among people of art, and she is ranked seventh in the list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the Art World-2011” according to “ArtReview”. Sherman herself calls herself a performance artist and categorically refuses to admit that she is a photographer.
One of her most famous and prized works is photograph #96, taken in 1981: the image shows a girl, freckled, with red hair and bright orange clothes, lying on her back and looking into the distance. According to Sherman, the photograph has a deep meaning – a teenage girl, at once seductive and innocent, holds a piece of newspaper with personal ads in her hand, which means that the still immature female essence is looking for a way to break out.
The Expensive Photographs was purchased at Christie’s auction in 2011 by an unknown collector.
- For Her Majesty, a collage of photographs (1973)
Authors – Gilbert Prosch and George Passmore
Price – $3,765,276
British artists Gilbert Prosch and George Passmore work in the genre of performance photography. They became world famous for their works in which they acted as living sculptures.
Their photo collage, taken back in 1973, sold for big money at auction in 2008: the black-and-white photographs depict men in expensive suits combined with interior items. The buyer is unknown.
- “Dead Warriors Speak” (1992)
Author: Jeff Wall
Price: $3,666,500
Canadian photographer Jeff Wall is known for his large-format photographs: the artist’s “calling card” is the technique he developed for printing photographs on a transparent base.
His most famous work, Dead Warriors Speak, was inspired by the war in Afghanistan. Despite its realism, it is a staged photograph: all the people in the picture are guest actors. Wall used makeup and costumes when working on it, and the picture itself was taken in a photo studio and later processed on a computer.
The finished image, measuring 229 x 417 cm, was printed on a transparent base and placed in a plastic box.
- Untitled (Cowboy) (2001–2002)
Author – Richard Prince
Price – $3,401,000
Richard Prince is considered one of the most famous American artists of his generation. The main themes of his works are stylization of the period of the so-called “American antiquity” and the modern world of consumption. Three photographs brought him worldwide fame, including “Cowboy”.
The photograph was created specifically for the Marlboro advertising campaign: the cowboy in the picture, according to the artist, is not presented as a typical standard of American courage, glorified in Westerns, but as a kind of illusory sex symbol, an unattainable ideal of a real man.
The painting was sold at Christie’s auction in 2007.
- 99 cents II, diptych (2001)
Author – Andreas Gursky
Price – $3,346,456
The above-mentioned photograph, “Rhine II,” is not Gursky’s only million-dollar photograph: his two-photo work, “99 Cents II,” sold for less, but still earned its creator several million dollars more.
The photographs depict a supermarket displaying consumer goods. In fact, the two pictures are strikingly similar and differ only in angles. Of course, Gursky resorted to computer processing to remove unnecessary details from the pictures – customers, low-hanging lamps and wires.
The photograph was acquired in 2007 by Ukrainian businessman Viktor Pinchuk. The high price of the Expensive Photographs is primarily due to the author’s name, which had already become extremely famous by the time of sale.
- Los Angeles (1998)
Author – Andreas Gursky
Price – $2,941,755
Another of Gursky’s photographs depicts a nighttime landscape of Los Angeles – from a bird’s eye view, the city looks like a field of distant artificial lights. The Expensive Photographs symbolizes the modern world and man’s place in it. According to the artist’s concept, man is the main character of this photograph: everyone lives in a vast world of universal globalization, where he occupies the place of just one of millions of the same inhabitants.
- Lake in the Moonlight (1904)
Author: Edward Steichen
Price: $2,928,000
Impressionist artist Edward Steichen worked in the first half of the 20th century: he created a famous series of portraits of Hollywood celebrities, and later took up documentary filmmaking, for which he received several Oscars.
His most famous photograph, Lake in Moonlight, is an autochrome photograph: originally a black-and-white photograph, Lake was given color by Steichen’s use of light-sensitive jelly. No one had used this technology before, so it can be considered the world’s first color photograph.
In 2006, “Lake in the Moonlight” was sold at Sotheby’s for a huge amount of money. The price can be considered justified – the picture is more than a century old, and it is an excellent preserved illustration of the history of Expensive Photographs.
- Untitled #153 (1985)
Author – Cindy Sherman
Price – $2,770,500
Another example of Cindy Sherman‘s work is the untitled photograph #153. It depicts a dead, mud-spattered woman with bluish-gray hair: her glassy eyes are looking up at the sky, her mouth is half-open, and there is a bruise on her cheek. The photograph leaves behind an eerie feeling, but nevertheless, it was sold at auction for a seven-figure sum.
- Billy the Kid (1879–80)
Author – unknown
Price – $2,300,000
Billy the Kid was an American outlaw accused of murdering 21 people. The governor of one of the Wild West states offered a large reward for his capture, and the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who later wrote a biography of the cutthroat.
The uniqueness of this photograph is that it is the only image of Billy the Kid, no other photos exist. It was sold in 2011 at the 22nd annual auction “Brian Lebel’s Old West Show & Auction” in Denver. Collector William Koch bought it for more than $ 2 million, although the organizers initially did not expect to receive more than $ 400 thousand for the photo.
The authorship is attributed to Kid’s friend Dan Dedrick, but it is no longer possible to determine exactly who took the picture. The Expensive Photographs was made using the ambrotype method, using a metal plate, and the image on it is reflected in a mirror image.
