The Steady Rise Of Fine Art Photography

The ArtTactic published a survey that showed that confidence in the modern and contemporary photography market is up by 9.2% since May, with the biggest increase in confidence at top end of the market, for photos priced over $100,000. Some 92% of experts surveyed thought that prices for modern photography are likely to rise in the next six months, while 34% thought that prices in contemporary photography would go up and 66% thought they would remain at current levels.

Historically, prices for fine art photography have tended to be much lower than those fetched by artists working in other medium, but that seems to be changing for some parts of this market, albeit pretty slowly. “Prices are definitely creeping up, but it’s not a steep curve, more of a gradual slope,” says Ben Burdett, owner of  ATLAS gallery, a London fine art photography gallery that has helped to build the photography collections of people such as Elton John and institutions such as the National Museum of Qatar and is currently exhibiting at Art Basel Miami Beach.


His assessment is that most years, a new auction record is set for the highest price paid for any photograph, while new auction records for the most coveted artists are set every one to two years, but that prices even for the hottest photographic artists are still pretty reasonable. “Compared to the fine art world, it’s cheap. It’s easy to buy a major name in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
ATLAS focuses on classic and modern twentieth century vintage photography, photo journalism and fashion photography, but also represents a selection of contemporary photographers, whose work the gallery bought to the fair. “We’re selling a lot of the work of Nick Brandt here. He’s a young artist, but his composition is very traditional. We’re also seeing a lot of interest in more conceptual photography, such as the late 20th century photogram artists like Floris Neusüss. In a sense, they are close to fine art as they are not reproducible.”

He says there’s a relatively short list of really hot names in the photography market that consistently do well at auction, such as earlier twentieth century photographers like Richard Avedon and Irvin Penn, Helmut Newton, and living artists such as Cindy Sherman and Andreas Gursky. A 1999 Andreas Gursky work, Rhein II, holds the record for the most expensive photograph to be sold at auction after it fetched $4.3 million at Christie’s in November last year. “At auction, you see the same names, and indeed the same images by those photographers, sell again and again. People feel more comfortable joining a party where everyone is already having a good time.”