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Buying historyThe boundaries between photo-reportage and art photography are ever more blurred as collectors increasingly seek out the work of photojournalists. Artprice.com, a French company that monitors the international art market using a database of 21 million prices at auction, summarizes some examples of the trend and explain which photos sell and why.
Collective memory and photography For many years, photojournalism was considered a secondary form of art, much like scientific or ethnographic photography, because photojournalism's original goal is to disseminate information. Since the 1950s, however, photojournalism has built a reputation on its aesthetics and techniques as well as on its testimonial values partly thanks to World Press Photo with its annual contest celebrating the year's best journalistic photographs, and due to a number of exhibitions in museums underlining the news photo's dual role as documentary testimony and aesthetic artifact.
The great names of photojournalism - Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Raymond Depardon, Robert Doisneau, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Marc Riboud - all documented their times through sensitive images of undeniable cultural significance. Many of these are now finding their way into cultural institutions, prized for a combination of the iconic value of the shots and the photographers' commitment, as well as aesthetic considerations (definition of the image, framing, etc.). In auction houses, the price of these historic pictures is mostly determinated by the year of the print. The date the photo was printed must be as close as possible to the date the photo was taken. America in crisis The highest priced photojournalistic picture ever is White Angel Bread Line by Lange, which captures the depth of America's crisis between the two world wars. Lange took this photograph in San Francisco during the Depression, where a bread line was set up by a woman known as the "White Angel." In the foreground of the image, a solitary man seems to pray, his face above his empty cup. On Oct. 11, 2005, Sotheby's in New York sold a print from around 1936 for $720,000 (nearly €600,000). Another print of the same subject, printed around 1955, was offered at New York's Phillips, de Pury & Company sale on Oct. 19, but this one failed to command the same interest and sold for its high estimate of $45,000 (€35,897). Prior to that, the highest price paid at auction for a photograph was a relatively modest $120,000 for Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (Oct. 22, 2002, Christie's New York). Despite these record sales, though, around half the Lange and Evans pictures that come up are later prints and can be bought for less than €5,000. The commitment of Robert Capa Two years later, Capa reported on the second Sino-Japanese war for Life, before going on to record the allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Working among the soldiers, he took 119 pictures of which 108 were accidentally destroyed by a Life photo lab worker. Auction houses regularly auction D-Day images printed between 1960 and 1990. These tend to find buyers for an average of €3,000 to €7,000. Oddly, Capa's records at auction were not set by images stemming from his committed journalism but by two self-portraits taken around 1938, that went for three times their estimate at €15,000 to €17,000 on April 25, 2003 (at Phillips, De Pury & Luxembourg, New York). Two classic figures: Henri Cartier-Bresson and Edward Steichen While the majority of transactions range between €1,000 and €5,000, Cartier-Bresson's work generated record sales at auctions in 2005. Christie's sold On the banks of the Marne for $110,000 on Oct. 10, 2005 (€90,827). The photo shows a picturesque picnic scene along the Marne River and depicts the changing French society of the 1930s. It dates from 1938, just two years after the French won the right to annual holidays and is thus in historical context. The print itself is a later version (1955), and collectors - who are demanding about print dates - tend to prefer vintage prints dating from between 1930 and 1950. On the banks of the Marne 's prices fall steeply for 1970s and 1980s reprints to between €4,000 and €7,000. For example, the same image, signed by the artist but printed in the eighties, was sold for only £3,200. (€4,756, Sotheby's London, Nov.14, 2006). The Luxembourg-born American emigrant Edward Steichen was director of aerial photography for the allied forces during World War I. However, he spent most of his career working on portraits of well-known figures (actress Greta Garbo, British prime minister Winston Churchill, etc.) and genre scenes - anecdotic, intimate or popular scenes. His work is popular among Americans and most of his works was selling for between €1,000 and €10,000 even before his index began a spectacular rally with an increase of 240 percent in 2005 alone. On Feb. 14, 2006, his photo of Rodin's Balzac reached $550,000 (€462,330) setting a new record at Sotheby's New York. Steichen's photo engravings are less popular. Collectors can buy a "piece of history" for less than €1,000. Today, the boundaries between photo-reportage and art photography are blurring, as visual artists such as Sophie Ristelhueber, Paul Seawright and Jean-Luc Moulène move onto what was previously considered journalistic territory.
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Reader comments (7)
Well, I don't really know what to say... This article tells us facts.
I would like to never consider photography as an art. The main reason is because it is hard for a human beeing to forget about his/her ego, and I wonder everyday: "Do you do your job because you want to become famous and flatter your pride?".
I guess a lot of photographers enjoy beeing super recognized, I am hoping myself to sell prints someday. I am a human beeing and I have a certain thirst of conquest. But the true motivation remains humanism... otherwise I just couldn't look my face every morning through the mirror.
So please let me share my opinion. Why should we care about the price of a print, anyway it is a luxury for rich collectors. If someone tells me one day: "I'll give you little money every day to eat and do your job, and I give you the insurance that a lot of people will see your work but you'll earn nothing". I'll say OK!!!
But I'm dreaming. Like a lot of young photographers, I'll try to hunt grants, awards and so on, because it is necessary to survive... but I hope I will never loose myself in this art market, sometimes synonym of self-satisfaction, and polishing the ego of both buyers and "artists".
Comment posted by Eric Perriard on February 24, 2007
I’m baffled. I’m trying to work out why this posting is on the blog – a graph of “price growth”! Is it just advertising for “Artprice.com” or is it supposed to incite us all to go out and buy a few prints of our favourite photographers with the reassuring knowledge that in 5 years time they’ll be worth so much more? Personally, I couldn’t go out & buy them and even if I could, I’m quite happy with my copy of “The Mennonites” & “ de qui s’agit-il?” and they aren’t signed copies! Didn’t HCB sort this all out years ago? Photography is a craft not an art. Or have opinions really changed? This reminds me of an English documentary made at the time of Cartier-Bresson’s retrospective exhibitions in London. At the end of it the interviewer said “ Henri what do you think when people call you the world’s greatest photographer?” To which he whispered “bullshit!” He saw things so clearly and had obviously got his priorities right. What does it really matter how much his photos are now worth? One last remark - isn’t a blog there to create some kind of dialogue or exchange? How about people from Magnum commenting from time to time?
Comment posted by James Cox on February 25, 2007
looked at the work of Seawright, Ristelhueber, Moulene. banal and superfluous, too bad they have fooled people into thinking that a large print of a amateurish photograph is worth looking at.
Comment posted by brad westphal on February 26, 2007
Henri deserves that. Goods news for Magnum and all fellow photographers who are expressing their freedom in capturing street spirits in a truly documentary way. Truth and freedom matters. Always.
Only thing that upsets me — there is no chance to buy "The Decisive Moment" less than $950. Any chance to await reprint?
Comment posted by Renars Jurkovskis on February 26, 2007
Photography is an infinitely reproducible art -- a "mass medium," as it were. But the general public and non-photographer art buyers of the world don't seem to get that. Photographers seem happy to play into that fundamental misunderstanding.
I am always amused when I stroll through a photo gallery and I see numbered prints: e.g., "435/500". Oh, and after the 500th print the photographer destroyed the negative?
I can understand that collectors prize "hand-made" prints, but photo skills and darkroom skills are two separate things, and I'm not ready to diminish the value of any given photographer based on his or her abilities and/or commitment to darkroom work. In fact, I would say that the most powerful photo exhibits I've been to in recent years were fabulous because great images were "professionally" printed.
HCB didn't do the prints for his mind-blowingly fantastic retrospective exhibit at the National Library in Paris in 2003. But those prints were beautiful in a way that made me fall in love with many of his images that I'd only had lukewarm feelings for prior to the new prints.
By contrast, a recent Edward Weston exhibit at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art were archival prints, made by Weston himself in the 1930s and 40s. The prints were dulled by time, which I'm certain weren't how Weston intended them (nor how they looked when they were freshly printed). As a result the ART was reduced in importance in favor of the ARTIFACT. I would much rather have seen brand-new "professional" prints that actually showed Weston's VISION (which, as part of the f.64 aesthetic, was all about deep blacks, a broad-range of grey, and pure whites; what was on display was dark brown, dark yellow, and light yellow).
Oh, but the Weston prints contained his signatures.
THAT's what is being sold, prized, valued.
Word to photographers who are considering their legacy: sign your digital prints! (And use archival papers and inks.) (And make multiple copies of all your digital files, storing one set at a friend or family member's home far enough away to avoid overlapping fires, floods, and storms.)
Comment posted by Terry Carroll on April 6, 2007
Need prices of David Seymore photos, where would i go. Thank You,Steve
Comment posted by steve kadetz on July 24, 2007
What a surprise! $110,000??? I have an original (signed) "On the Banks of the Marne" which I purchased at a "divorce aale" approx 15 years ago.
I guess I should take it down from my wall and place it in a vault. (smile)
Comment posted by S. Willis on February 2, 2008