Phillips London Photography Results

With a season’s worth of photography auctions taking place in November it was Phillips’ turn to complete the season with two auctions taking place in London.

The first to take place was the annual Photographs auction at Phillips’ London HQ. With over 130 lots available from renown artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Dorothea Lange and Peter Beard, the auction was billed as an opportunity to acquire work from some of the leading names in the field. Estimates ranged from £2,000 to £900,000 with a couple of lots available with no reserve.

The most expensive lot was, unsurprisingly, a collection of The Beatles photographs by Richard Avedon, which was considered the auction’s star lot gaining a pre-auction estimate of £700,000-£900,000. The lot raised £809,000 and became the second most expensive photographic lot to sell at auction this year. The auction was a successful one for work by Richard Avedon, with his Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent print the second most expensive lot of the auction. The photograph outperformed its £55,000-£75,000 estimate by selling for £85,680. Wolfgang Tillmans rounded out the top three with the sale of his Collum print gaining a hammer price of £76,860 after an original estimate of £50,000-£70,000. In total, the auction brought in £2,339,270

The following day, Phillips London hosted A Classic Vision: Photographs from A Private European Collection; ‘An online-only sale dedicated to a Private European Collection, featuring 55 classic photographs by renowned 20th-century photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Elliott Erwitt and Garry Winogrand’. Estimates ranged from £1,000 to £15,000 and included 23 lots available with no reserve, this meant lots were available for as low as £567.

With a 55-lot offering of almost entirely black-and-white prints, the most expensive lot was the only colour print on offer; Terry O’Neill’s Faye Dunaway, Hollywood was given an initial estimate of £5,000-£7,000 and gained a £20,160 hammer price. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous decisive moment print; Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, came in second, outperforming its £6,000-£8,000 estimate by achieving £12,600. Ruth Orkin’s American Girl in Italy, Florence completed the top three with a £8,190 print, after a pre-auction estimate of £4,000-£6,000. Overall, the auction raised a total of £196,434.

*View each lot by clicking their titles.

image by zichao zhang