Record price for a photograph: getting close to $1M

From the Art Newspaper:

At Christie's in London on 20 May, the oldest extant image of the remains of the Athenian Temple of Olympian Zeus, or " Olympieion", on the Acropolis,1842 - among the most "modern" compositions by the seasoned 19th-century French traveller, artist and historian of Islamic architecture, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) - became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. . .

This unique, large, full-plate image . . . more than quadrupled its estimate of £90,000-120,000, rocketing the benchmark for both a Daguerreotype and record for a photograph at auction to a monumental £565,250, or $922,488 (€789,654). Amid intense international interest, it was bought by an anonymous overseas collector, widely believed to be the wealthy Sheikh Saud al-Thani of Qatar, along with a good number of other top lots from the sale, which doubled, tripled, quadrupled and quintupled estimates or, even, exceeded them by a factor of 10. If so it will be the latest addition to the rich holdings of 19th-century British and French photographs destined for his new museum.

al-Thani has been known to buy the entire contents of photography and photographica auctions, often paying absurdly high prices (to the joy of consignors).

Posted by David on May 27, 2003 2:52 PM