Setting Records at Sotheby's

We have a winner.

At yesterday's auction of photographs from the Met's collection, Sotheby's sold Edward Steichen's Moonlight - The Pond, shown below, for $2,928,000. This is most definitely a record for a photograph sold at auction, beating the high estimate by a mutiple of three. Two photos by Alfred Steiglitz also broke the $1 million mark.

On my last gallery visit, I noticed the pricing of a newly minted MFA's work was around $3000 per print. Just two years ago, I seem to recall Alec Soth's Sleeping series to be in the mid-thousands per print, mostly, and this was following his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. Others have commented (ranted?) on this phenomenon of late as well. Yes, I know, what the market will bear, what the market will bear, but it seems a bit out of control even in light of the even more whacky pricing going on with other media.