Photography

One image, many prints

Unlike a painting, a photograph can exist many times. Collectors therefore ask about the print, not just the image. A vintage print made close to the date of the negative is usually worth the most – dealers differ on how close, some allow about ten years. A later print by the photographer, an estate print made after his or her death and a modern reproduction can all show the same picture.

The differences are large. At a 2013 sale of Bruce Davidson's work, vintage prints from East 100th Street sold for up to $20,000, while signed prints made later sold for about $4,000. There are exceptions: Ansel Adams' early prints from the 1920s are worth less than his famous later prints, because the process he used then has not aged well.

Records and the market

The most expensive photograph ever sold at auction is Man Ray's Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), which fetched $12.4 million at Christie's New York in 2022. For eleven years before that, the record was held by Andreas Gursky's Rhein II, sold for $4,338,500 in 2011 – a large contemporary print from an edition.

Most photographs in homes and estates are family pictures, press prints or reproductions. But work by well-known photographers, early processes such as daguerreotypes and albumen prints, and signed prints can be worth a careful look.