Displaying items by tag: 175 masterworks to celebrate 175 years of photography: property from joy of giving foundation

“175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation" auction held at Sotheby's New York on December 11th and 12th, broke the world record for a photography auction. The sale was drawn from a collection gathered by the late American financier Howard Stein. The auction grossed the grand sum of $21,325,063, or £13,591,629 - beating its presale estimate of $13–20 million, or £8.2 - £12.7 million. The sale greatly surpassed the previous record, set in 2006 by a Sotheby's sale of photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which reached the total of $15 million, or £9.5 million.

The auction also set a number of artist's records. The top lot, an impressionistic view of Venice by Alvin Langdon Coburn ("Shadows and Reflections, Venice," 1905) fetched the staggering sum of $965,000, or £614,726.

On 11 and 12 December 2014 Sotheby’s New York will present 175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years Of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, a single owner sale of the most significant collection of photographs in private hands today. The works to be offered date from photography’s earliest years in the 1840s to contemporary 21st Century color images and include major photographs from all of the medium’s most important practitioners including: Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Gustave Le Gray, Irving Penn, August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston, among others. The collection was meticulously put together over decades by Howard Stein (1926-2011), one of photography’s greatest collectors, whose vision and keen understanding of the medium informed his purchases. Mr. Stein donated the collection to the Joy of Giving Something Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the photographic arts, which is the sole beneficiary of the sale. Highlights will be shown in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Paris prior to the full exhibition in New York. The pre-sale estimate of $13/20 million is the highest ever for a Photographs auction.