50 Masterworks for 50 Years of Sotheby’s Photographs

Sotheby’s London and Sotheby’s New York hosted a joint photography auction on the 21st and 22nd of April with the 50 Masterworks to Celebrate 50 Years of Sotheby’s Photographs, bringing together 25 photographs embodying Sotheby’s journey in photography sales over the last 5 decades.

The main event was the New York auction, which brought together many expensive lots from a range of photographers past and present, followed up the next day with an auction of 25 remaining lots from Sotheby’s London:

‘Sotheby’s London is proud to invite our collectors on a journey through the history of Photography. This exploration will be portrayed in 25 works – starting with a work pertaining to the early days of the medium through Gustave Le Gray’s practice, before exploring 20th century modernist works by Frantisek Drtikol and Erwin Blumenfeld, as well as fashion photography through the lens of Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh and Guy Bourdin, concluding with contemporary works by Chris Levine, Martin Parr and Nobuyoshi Araki.’

The most expensive lots in the New York auction including a collection of work from William Henry Fox Talbot which raised a huge $1,956,000 after a small estimate of $300,000-$500,000. The highest price paid for a single image went to Lee Miller’s Nude which saw a hammer price of $504,000, making it the most expensive photograph of the year. Coming joint third was Untitled Film Still 37 by Cindy Sherman and Harlequin Dress by Irving Penn, both selling for $252,000 each. The New York auction realised a sales total of $3,696,060.

The most expensive London lot was Chris Levine’s Lightness of Being, a portrait of Her Majesty The Queen, which was given an initial estimate of a minor £30,000-£50,000, but outperformed its top estimate by selling for £119,700 ($165,736). The second most expensive lot was The Wild Ones: Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz, Helena Christensen, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Karen Mulder & Stephanie Seymour, Brooklyn, for American Vogue, May 1991 by Peter Lindbergh, which sold for £69,300, followed by Xteriors V, 2001-2010 by Désirée Dolron, which saw a hammer price of £37,800. The auction realised a sales total of $683,881.

View each image by clicking on the image title, or browse the full results at each auction houses’s website: here for New York or here for London.

image by Eva Dang