the most expensive photography for nearly $ 3 million

1904

I can do better pics, - sigh!

auctioned at Sotheby's in New York

 

At $2.9m, Pond-Moonlight becomes world's most expensive photograph
Roger Tooth
Wednesday February 15, 2006
The Guardian

The Pond-Moonlight by Edward Steichen, taken on Long Island in 1904, broke the world record price for a photograph when it was sold for more than $2.9m (£1.67m) at a two-day Sotheby's sale which began in New York last night. The previous record for a photograph at auction, $1,248,000, was set in November by Richard Prince's "Untitled (Cowboy)".

Steichen's 42cm by 40cm photograph, from the collection of the wealthy American industrialist Howard Gilman, is a dreamy, moonlit landscape with reflections of trees in a pond. As an image it is rather beautiful, bearing the impressionistic quality of early photography; an experiment exploring the limits of the photographic plate.

Its fame reflects just how much the value of rare, early prints has increased. Steichen's work is sought after by private collectors - this is the kind of landscape that usually only museums can acquire.

Only three prints of this photograph are known to exist. Two were held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, which acquired the Gilman collection in 2005, and one of these is the one sold by Sotheby's. The third is in the Museum of Modern Art. So the Met has sold what is, in effect, a duplicate, making the final auction price all the more astonishing.

The three prints were made under Steichen's supervision, and are a great example of a rare vintage photograph by an artist who had an influence on later 20th-century photographers such as Richard Avedon, whose work is also represented in the sale. Steichen's early painterly photographs, possibly naive to our image-soaked modern eyes, helped establish photography as an art form.

· Roger Tooth is the Guardian's head of photography

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1709964,00.html

 

oh wow.. that's a lot of money there.. Do you have an icognito ofr a wallpaper.. That looks pretty awesome...

 

Just one more thing I would never buy even if I had the money to pay for it.

 

Just saw it in morning newspaper. Photograph is great but not worth 3m for me.

 

Classical impressionist look. Unbelievable bid though.

 

wow now thats some money out there...

 

Nice picture, it's impressive it is from 1904

 

Was the technology there in 1904 to take such photograph ? I think may be that is why it is so costly.

 

The first photograph was taken in 1839.

 

WOw...so old!!!

and the name os domain which u have posted is htt p://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast .com

Funny

 

I wonder how much is the most expensive picture ever sold..?

 

While i was looking at the most expensive picture ever sold i came accross these facts.

 

170M hmm not bad

 

who owns Monalisa ? some trust who owns all vinci paintings or government of France ?

 

Must be nice to have *Money to Burn!*....

 

Heee heee.... those are expensive items... to most of us. It is all relative, if you are a billionaire... what's a few mil?? It would be like a couple hundred bucks to most of us...

 

Abramovich who bought the USD $170 million painting is a billionaire. He was the richest man of UK last year(though he is russian)

 

im taking a picture to cover my health insurance in 2080.