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Style and Travel

Photo opportunity

Jenny Wilhide

Wednesday, 16th May 2007

‘To collect photographs is to collect the world,’ said essayist Susan Sontag. Judging by auction results at Christie’s, Phillips de Pury and Sotheby’s in New York this spring, all of a sudden collecting photographs costs the earth too. Andreas Gursky’s 99 Cent diptych broke all records at $3 million, and more than $37m was spent on photographs in April alone.

The collectors were treated to the very best: Ansel Adams, Stieglitz, Margaret Cameron, Irving Penn, Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, Fox Talbot, Weston, Paul Strand, Avedon and on and on through the greats. Sumptuous, haunting, raw and ravishingly stylish — they couldn’t get enough of them.

All this for works that, until recently, much of the art world wouldn’t call art at all. Some commentators said the New York sales were merely evidence of new billionaires throwing indiscriminate money around. But surely what we’re seeing, at last, is photography being taken seriously.

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