The $30,429,899 Photograph
So, here is a view of the most expensive image ever (that doesn’t really exist - except for now because I made it):
This is an amalgam of 16 (out of 18) of the most expensive photographs ever sold, all at once (based on the list at Wikipedia).
I averaged all of the images in Imagemagick, and brought them into GIMP for some level adjustments and minor processing.
I am only missing two images, that I could not find suitable resolution versions of. Those two were Andreas Gursky’s “99 Cent II Diptychon” (2001), and Dmitry Medvedev’s “Tobolsk Kremlin” (2009).
The rest of the images, at auction time, had a staggering value of $30,429,899! (I’ll sell you a print of this for a bit less…) :D Of course, I averaged the images to produce this, so perhaps it’s better to show the averaged price of $1,901,868…
The 16 images blended together are:
| Andreas Gursky | Rhein II (1999) | $4,338,500 |
| Cindy Sherman | Untitled #96 (1981) | $3,890,500 |
| Jeff Wall | Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) (1992) | $3,666,500 |
| Edward Steichen | The Pond-Moonlight (1904) | $2,928,000 |
| Cindy Sherman | Untitled #153 (1985) | $2,700,000 |
| unknown | Billy the Kid (1879–80) tintype portrait | $2,300,000 |
| Edward Weston | Nude (1925) | $1,609,000 |
| Alfred Stieglitz | Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands) (1919) | $1,470,000 |
| Alfred Stieglitz | Georgia O'Keeffe Nude (1919) | $1,360,000 |
| Richard Prince | Untitled (Cowboy) (1989) [12] | $1,248,000 |
| Richard Avedon | Dovima with elephants (1955) | $1,151,976 |
| Edward Weston | Nautilus (1927) | $1,082,500 |
| Jeff Wall | Untangling (1994) | $1 Million AUD |
| Eugène Atget | Joueur d'Orgue (1898–1899) | $686,500 |
| Robert Mapplethorpe | Andy Warhol (1987) | $643,200 |
| Ansel Adams | Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948) | $609,600 |
After staring at it for a bit, I actually started to notice a Conehead looking Andy Warhol in the middle. In fact, now I can’t stop seeing it.
