Most Expensive Photos And Other Photography Items Sold To Date

The Leica o-serie, the world's first 35mm film camera made in 1923, has sold at auction recently for a staggering £1.7 million. As well as this, the largest book of photos ever published sold for £330,000. This book of photos by Francis Frith depicting the holy lands and pyramids in Egypt was only estimated to sell at £50,000.

The latter, let alone £300,000, is a large amount of money to spend on a book. However, paying over the actual value of the product seems to be a theme; this story of a business man paying more for a photo of a beach hut than the thing itself was actually worth springs to mind.

Having said that, all of these are dwarfed by the amount paid for the Leica! These recent sales got us interested in other photography items, particularly photos, that have sold at auction for very high prices and here, in reverse order, are the photos and the values they were sold for:

5) Edward Steichen's 'The Pond - Moonlight' (1904) $2, 928,000 in 2006 at Sotherby's.

4) Andreas Gursky's '99 cent II Diptychon' (2001) sold for $3,346,456 in 2007 at Sotherby's.

3) Jeff Wall's 'Dead Troops Talk' – (A vision after an ambush of a red army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, in winter 1986). This photo sold at Christie's New York on the 8 May 2012 for $3,666,500.


2) Cindy Sherman's 'Untitled' (1981). It sold at Christie's on 11 May 2011 for a massive $3,890,500.


1) Andreas Gursky's 'Rhein II' (1999) is the most expensive photo ever sold (to date). This photo sold on 8 November 2011 for a whopping $4,338,500. At Christie's. Wow.