Photography Auction Results; October 2022
Often scheduled as one of the busiest times of year for photography auctions, October brought together five auctions from Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips.
At the start of the month, Christie’s and Sotheby’s set the scene for a month of photography sales. The first auction to be held was Christie’s online auction Photographs, which ran from the end of September to 6th October. The auction brought together work from the biggest names in the industry such as Edward Weston, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Diane Arbus. The most expensive lot was a portrait of Lee Miller by Man Ray. The print had been given a pre-auction estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 but ended up outperforming the top estimate by over $200,000. The print sold for $378,000, making it one of the top ten most expensive photographic lots of the year. Alfred Stieglitz’s From the Back-Window print came in second with a hammer price of $252,000, followed by Edward Weston, whose Nude (Miriam Lerner: hands and torso) received a final bid of $226,800.
Sotheby’s began the month with a double bill of photographic sales. Taking place online, the Contemporary Photographs and Classic Photographs auctions were held by Sotheby’s New York on 7th October. The auction of classic photographs brought in $1,893,906 in sales, with the highest priced lot the renown The Tetons and The Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942 by Ansel Adams, which regularly sells well at auction. This time it picked up a sales price of $252,000. Ansel’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 came in second place with a hammer price of $189,000 and finally Gustave Le Gray’s La Vague Brisée sold for $88,200.
The sale of contemporary photographs saw Wolfgang Tillmans take the top two spots with prints from his Freischwimmer series. In 1st place was Freischwimmer 117 with a sales price of $201,600 followed by Freischwimmer 200 with a $138,600 hammer price. Cuban artist Anna Mendieta rounded out the top three with her Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints) print selling for $88,200.
Not to be left out, Phillips hosted two photography auctions in October, starting with an online auction of photographs by Dorothea Lange in The Family Collection. The highest priced sale was White Angel Breadline, San Francisco which sold for $25,200. Selected Images from The Public Defender came second with a sales price of $22,680, and after an estimated sales price of $4,000-$6,000 Queen, North Carolina sold for $16,380. Then it was the annual Photographs auction held by the New York house, which brought together over 300 lots from artists like Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Ruff and Hiroshi Sugimoto. With a sales total of $4,617,774, the auctionn’s highest priced lot was George Robinson Fardon’s San Francisco, Cal. Which received a $189,000 hammer price. William Eggleston’s 14 Pictures came second with a $176,400 sales price, followed by Ansel Adams’ ever-popular Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico with a final bid of $176,400.
The month of October brought in a combined sales total of $11,013,534 in photographic sales.
image by yoann siloine