Primitive photography – Revisiting old negatives

The market for 19th century photography rallies on each new sale of a private collection offering the opportunity to bid for major negatives which have been carefully preserved for the past 100 or 150 years. Other than how well these delicate prints have been preserved, the wide range in prices depends on the subject’s interest and the beauty of the negative. Daguerreotypes, negatives in all genres and old prints tell us as much about the 19th century as they do about the history of the photographic medium.

19th century photography first came to the fore in 1999 when Sotheby’s achieved unexpectedly strong results at its sale of the André Jammes collection. Galvanised by this new market in which prices were soaring, buyers bid up over a two-year period, driving a significant increase in price levels (+191% between January 1999 and January 2001). Prices had risen too rapidly, however, and gave up their gains in 2001. A pioneer of photography such as Gustave LE GRAY (1820-1884) has yet to recover the record prices set at that time. In 1999, a collector paid close to EUR 720,000 for his Grande vague, Sète (GBP 460,000), beating the pre-sale estimate by a factor of ten! Since then, the best price level achieved for a print of this same Grande Vague has been GBP 85,000, some EUR 600,000 short of the 1999 record.
Another record sale, another collection… this time belonging to the artist since it was the Joseph Philibert GIRAULT DE PRANGEY archives which were to record the most impressive result of the past five years: GBP 500,000 for an 1842 daguerreotype, 113.Athènes, T(emple) de J(upiter) Olympien pris de l’Est (20 May 2003, Christie’s London). The work united all the qualities required to set a record: historic interest (taken only three years after the official birth of the daguerreotype), provenance (the artist’s archives) and rarity value (we only know of two daguerreotypes of this temple in the archives). Such price peaks remain exceptional, however, since the trend is now for modern and contemporary photographs. The 19th century pioneers do not reach the heights of the current stars of the art: let’s not forget that the some USD 3 million achieved for the Richard PRINCECowboy image at Sotheby’s NY in November 2007 is far from the price levels seen by a Le Gray or a Prangey.

2008 is confirming this trend. On 7 April, the Sotheby’s New York auction of the Quillian collection recorded five and six-figure results for Édouard Denis BALDUS, Lewis CARROLL and Eugène ATGET. Baldus achieved USD 49,000 (EUR 31,000) for a view of the west portal of Amiens Cathedral (1855). He had not done better since the Jammes sale in 1999 when his Rochers en Auvergne tripled the pre-sale estimate, the hammer coming down at USD 68,000. Some other noteworthy results from the 7 April sale: USD 105,000 (EUR 66,700) for the albumen print, Alexandra Kitchin, by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898). The artist had not exceeded the symbolic USD 100,000 mark for 7 years!

These results, while creditable, are shy of those recorded on the same day for the modern prints from the Quillian collection. Unlike 19th century negatives, those of the 20th century set new records, notably for Edward Weston (Nude, 1,285 million de dollars), Paul Strand (Rebecca, 515 000 dollars), August Sander (Werkstudenten, 395 000 dollars), Richard Avedon (Marilyn Monroe, New York City, 365 000 dollars)and Hans Bellmer (La Poupée, 260 000 dollars).