In 1989, Edward Weston’s photograph of a nautilus shell brought in $115,000 dollars in auction and, in 2004, Edward Steichen’s moonlit pond photograph sold for a record $2.9 million dollars. In just 15 years, the record sale for a single photograph increased from $115,000 to $2.9 million dollars (this is not inflation). Earlier this month, a new record was set when Andreas Gursky’s “99 Cent” photograph sold at Sotheby’s London for $3.3 million dollars.

99 Cent, 1999
© Andreas Gursky

After a long Friday of squeezing through cubicles of art, which started with Scope NY and concluded with the more notorious Armory Show, I found myself thinking quite a bit about art that sells — more specifically, photography that sells.

Later in the evening, I had a chance to sit down in a coffee shop and relax. I decided to pick up the copy of The New York Times Magazine, which I had been given for free at one of the fairs, and open to the article by Arthur Lublow titled The Luminist: How Jeff Wall’s large, glowing, elaborately staged pictures are helping to make photography the painting of our times.

Jeff Wall photographed in his studio by Justine Kurland
© Justine Kurland

The first thing I thought to myself was: Jeff Wall sells. Right? Due to my ‘art fair’ state of mind, I got caught up in the portion of the article which discusses photography’s status in the art market (mentioned above) and considered Wall’s own price tag:

While a large Wall photograph infrequently appears at auction, his dealer’s price — and remember, a gallery generally charges much less than an auction resale brings — is about a million dollars.

A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai), 1993
© Jeff Wall

Ejiri in Suruga Province (A Sudden Gust of Wind), 1830-5
© Katsushika Hokusai

If you haven’t already, read the full article. There is a lot to gather from the writing, most notably for me the bits about Wall’s process of working and some of his personal beliefs about contemporary photography.

P.S. Jeff Wall’s big traveling retrospective show will be up at MoMA from February 25 – May 14.