The latest trend for art collectors is one that may come as a pleasant shock to photographers: Sales of both contemporary and classic photos are hot, and the prices they’re being sold for by the big auction houses, are skyrocketing. With both Christies and Sotheby’s offering photographic prints for four, five, and even six figures, modern photographers may want to think about how they can break into this red-hot market.
Next week, for instance, on September 28, high-end auction house Sotheby’s will auctioning some 49 works, all from currently-working photographers, from the Ames collection that is expected to raise $2-3 million, according to Artnet.
Christies, meanwhile, has more than 400 photos from the New York Museum of Modern Art that it will be putting on the auction block in coming months with asking prices from $1,000 to $300,000. Photographers whose work will be auctioned include Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Garry Winogrand.
Christie’s expects that someone will plunk down six figures for a Rayograph. Ten years ago, whoda thunk?
The images, generally, are BIG. Photos by Steven Klein are in the 34×60-inch range, for example. Sotheby’s will be auctioning his Visionaire 67 Fetish series on October 5th. Then there are photos from the collection of one Stanley B. Burns, MD—dauguerreotypes that might have fetched perhaps a hundred dollars, now worth enough to be auctioned by Sotheby’s.
This comes on the heels of a report by a British private banking group, Coutts, that ranked photography as “the most valuable and fastest-growing collectible segment last year.” Meanwhile, other art media sales are stagnant or dropping. So yes, if you’re a photographer with a unique vision, now may be the time to monetize it.
