The 10 most expensive photographs ever sold at auction

Photography was the last thing the art market took seriously. For most of the twentieth century a print was treated as a reproduction rather than an object, and prices reflected that. Then, over roughly twenty years, a small number of prints crossed into territory that used to belong to paintings.

Below are ten of the highest confirmed prices paid for photographs at auction, each with the house and the date so the figure can be checked. They are worth reading even if the only sale you will ever run is a charity evening with twenty lots, because what turns an estimate into a record is not the object. It is the room.

1. Man Ray, Le Violon d'Ingres — $12,412,500

Sold by Christie's in New York in May 2022 and still the highest price paid for a photograph at auction. The 1924 print shows Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray's model and companion, seen from behind in a turban, with two violin f-holes added to her back. The estimate was $5 million to $7 million, itself the highest ask ever placed on a single photograph. The hammer fell at $10.5 million; the rest is the buyer's premium.

2. Edward Steichen, The Flatiron — $11,840,000

Christie's, New York, November 2022, from the collection of the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Steichen photographed the Flatiron Building at dusk in 1904 and printed it in gum bichromate over platinum, which is why the sky reads as painted rather than exposed. The high estimate was $3 million. It hammered at $10 million, and the total with fees was $11.84 million.

3. Andreas Gursky, Rhein II — $4,338,500

Christie's, New York, November 2011, against an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. A chromogenic print more than three metres wide showing the Rhine as six flat horizontal bands; Gursky removed a factory building and some dog walkers digitally. It held the overall record for a decade and is still the highest auction price for a photograph by a living photographer.

4. Man Ray, Noire et blanche — $4,020,000

Christie's, New York, November 2022, against an estimate of $1.8 million to $2.2 million. The 1926 image sets Kiki's face on a table beside an African mask. A different print of the same picture had already made €2,688,750 at Christie's in Paris in November 2017, a record at the time for a classic photograph, and another made about $2.9 million at Sotheby's in London in June 2025. One image, three very different prices.

5. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96 — $3,890,500

Christie's, New York, May 2011, on an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. From the 1981 Centerfolds series: Sherman photographed as a young woman lying on an orange kitchen floor, holding a torn scrap of newspaper. For six months it was the most expensive photograph ever sold, until Gursky's Rhein II passed it in November of the same year.

6. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #93 — $3,861,000

Sotheby's, New York, May 2014, on an estimate of $2 million to $3 million. Another of the twelve Centerfolds. Two works from one series, made by one artist in one year, sold three years apart within thirty thousand dollars of each other, which tells you how narrow the top of this market is.

7. Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) — $3,749,000

Christie's, New York, May 2014, on an estimate of $3 million to $4 million. Prince rephotographed a cigarette advertisement and printed the result at large scale, a gesture that turned appropriation into a saleable category. Several prints from the Cowboy group have passed three million dollars at auction; this is the highest of them.

8. Jeff Wall, Dead Troops Talk — $3,666,500

Christie's, New York, May 2012, against a high estimate of $2 million. A staged 1992 scene of an ambushed Soviet patrol in Afghanistan, more than four metres wide, made as a transparency in a lightbox. It remains the highest auction price for a photograph by a Canadian artist.

9. Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon — about $3.34 million

Sotheby's, London, February 2007. A two-part view of the inside of a discount supermarket, over three metres wide, from an edition of six. It was the first photograph to pass three million dollars at auction, and two other prints from the same edition had changed hands for considerably less the year before.

10. Edward Steichen, The Pond—Moonlight — $2,928,000

Sotheby's, New York, February 2006, in a sale of photographs released by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Steichen made the negative in Mamaroneck, New York, in 1904 and hand-applied light-sensitive gums, so each of the three surviving prints is a slightly different colour. It was a world record when it sold, and it is the oldest photograph on this list.

What a twenty-lot evening can take from this

Seven of the ten lots above sold above their high estimate, several of them at a multiple of it. That is not an accident of the photography market; it is what a low, credible estimate is for. An estimate is not a valuation of the object, it is an invitation to start bidding, and a number that looks a little conservative gets more hands in the air than one that looks correct. Choosing opening bids for your own lots works the same way, and the guide goes through how to set them.

The second lesson is that none of these prices came from a crowd. They came from two bidders who both refused to lose. Ten people bidding a lot to four hundred and then stopping is a worse result than two people who each want it badly. When you build a lot list, the useful question is not "will anyone want this" but "is there more than one person in the room who wants this". A committee that knows its guests can answer that; a stranger cannot.

Third, every one of these records happened in the last minute of the lot. Bidding on the Man Ray ran well past the point where most of the room had dropped out. If your online lots close at a fixed second, the bidder who was still deciding never gets to decide, which is why a late bid should extend the lot rather than end it. That behaviour, with the countdown and the running total on screen, is described on the how it works page.

Fourth, each of these prints arrived with a catalogue entry that explained why the object was unlike any other. You are not writing a catalogue, but three honest sentences per lot — what the winner actually gets, who is giving it, and why it is hard to get otherwise — will do more for your total than a better photograph of it. The same applies to donated prints and paintings, and there is more about that on the page for art auctions. If you are running a gala rather than a sale of art, the charities and galas page covers the evening around the lots.

You can build a lot list and rehearse a whole evening before deciding whether to run it for real. There is a walk-through at getting started.

Prices as reported at the time of sale, including buyer's premium where the source states it.