News

The single-owner sale “175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation" held at Sotheby's New York on December 11 and 12, 2014 established a new world record for a photography auction with a total of 21,325,063 USD .

The collection gathered by the late American financier Howard Stein, who started Joy of Giving Something, Inc. in 1999, sold well beyond its estimate of 13–20 million and broke the previous record, set in 2006 by a Sotheby's sale of photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which totaled 15 million USD.

The top lot of the sale, a view of Venice by Alvin Langdon Coburn (Shadows and Reflections, Venice, 1905) sold for a record 965,000 US, almost doubling its high presale estimate of 500,000.

Another record was set for August Sander 's Handlanger at 749,000 US against a presale estimate of 350,000 to 500,000. Sander's previous record stood at 493,000 USD, when Werkstudenten was sold in 2008 at Sotheby's in New York.

Tina Modotti's Workers' Parade (1927) fetched 485,000 USD, a new record for the artist while Julia Margaret Cameron's No. 5 of series of twelve lifesized heads (Kate Keown) went for 461,000 USD almost doubling the artist's previous record established in 2013 with The Val Prinsep Album, which included 32 photographs.

Lee Miller's Untitled (Iron work) (1931) was hammered at a record price of 377,000 USD, well above her previous record of 230,500 USD established at Sotheby's New York in 2012.