Magnum Blog / Buying history

Buying history

The 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. Christie's sold Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1938 "On the banks of the Marne" for $110,000 on Oct. 10, 2005 (€90,827). Collective memory and photography The photojournalism market is booming. Turnover at auction has risen by more than 500 percent in 10 years and the trend is strong in the USA, France and the UK. 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.

Eric Perriard

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".

James Cox

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?

brad westphal

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.

Renars Jurkovskis

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?

Terry Carroll

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.)

steve kadetz

Need prices of David Seymore photos, where would i go. Thank You,Steve

S. Willis

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)