The Collector Daily website has published its annual review of photography auctions and prices for 2022.  The record price for a photograph was broken in May 2022 when a buyer paid $12,412,500 for a 1924 print of Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres*.  This was the first photo ever to sell for over $10 million – a ceiling which was breached again in November when a 1904/5 print of Edward Steichen’s The Flatiron sold for $11,840,000.  If you click on the link above you will see the top ten by value photograph sales for the year and you can flick through the photos themselves. The website suggests that the significance of the prices paid is that collectors of surrealist and contemporary art may be crossing over into the photography market.  It certainly shows that there is a lot of spare cash still sloshing around in those circles. 

The other thing that is interesting about the list is that only one of them – the Steichen – is what you might call a ‘straight’ photograph.  All of the others seem to come with some sort of unspoken message which the viewer is left to decipher.  So it seems to be a particular style of photography which is selling (and in my view a particularly charmless one). 

As pointed out by the Collector Daily commentary, the price graph falls pretty rapidly after those top two prices: number ten on the list went for $724,000 – a price which would not generally get you into the top ten at all.

I understand very little about economics – and I sometimes wonder if economists are not the witchdoctors of the modern world – but reading between the lines of the commentary it seems to be anybody’s guess whether prices such as these are sustainable.  And myself I can’t help wondering if, in histories to be written about the precarious economics of the 21st century, art prices will merit a footnote as indicators of imbalance for those who cared to look.

• My French dictionary defines ‘le violon d’Ingres’ as an expression meaning ‘an activity pursued actively outside one’s profession’ (ie, a hobby or pastime presumably) and is a reference apparently to the artist Ingres’ violin playing. Quite what it means as the title of this photograph is perhaps another message for the viewer to decide.