By Daryl Lang

The downturn in the economy cast a shadow on the fall photo auctions in New York last week. As the stock market swung wildly, the auction houses had a hard time attracting high enough bids on some works.

A three-part photo auction at Sotheby’s sold just 69 percent of the lots offered, and the major photo auction at Christie’s sold 53 percent. A photo auction at Phillips de Pury had somewhat better results, selling 70 percent.

For comparison, similar auctions last October at Sotheby’s and Christie's sold 86 percent and 71 percent of the lots respectively. There were similar declines in the percentages of the total estimates sold at these auctions.

This may be a sign that as the economy slides, the material coming up for auction through consignment is not as good, says Pennsylvania photo dealer Alex Novak, publisher of the E-Photo Newsletter.

“It was no great disaster. We didn’t see any prices dropping dramatically,” Novak says of the week. Adding all the auctions together, Novak says the auction houses had significantly better sales than they did during the fall auctions during the 2002 recession.

One bright spot was Christie’s auction of William Eggleston work, “William Eggleston from the Collection of Bruce and Nancy Berman,” which kicked off the week on October 13. That sale sold 54 of 60 lots, or 90 percent, and earned nearly $3 million, just shy of the estimate.

One lot – “Los Alamos, 1965-74,” a set of 75 dye-transfer Eggleston prints – set a new record for Eggleston and was the only lot sold all week that exceeded $1 million. It went to a private European buyer for $1,022,500.

But the same day as the Eggleston sale, a sale of all-contemporary photographs – the first of its kind for Christie’s – proved a disappointment. It sold just 54 of 93 lots, or 58 percent. The total for the auction was just over $1 million, or 61 percent of the estimate. The top sale was $110,500 for a series of three prints by Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Seascapes 1987-1993,” which went to a private American buyer.

Then on October 14, the main auction of photographs at Christie’s sold just 53 percent of the 256 lots offered, and bidding totaled a meager 61 percent of the estimate.

A gelatin silver print by Irving Penn, “Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean
Patchett), 1950” sold for $266,500 to a private Asian buyer, making it the auction’s top sale.

The only record set was a 1927 self-portrait by Claude Cahun, which sold to a private European buyer for $110,500, more than twice the high estimate.

At a three-part photo auction on Oct. 14 and Oct. 15 at Sotheby’s sold 69 percent of the lots offered and earned 69 percent of the auction’s estimate.

The top seller was Man Ray’s “Jacqueline Goddard, 1930,” which went for $374,500 to a buyer identified as The Bluff Collection LP.

But out of 20 works with high estimates above $100,000, just 12 found buyers. Among the buy-backs were Cindy Sherman’s “Film Still #5,” estimated at $300,000 to $500,000; Irving Penn’s “Asaro Mudmen,” estimated at $250,000 to $350,000; and Edward Steichen’s portrait of Auguste Rodin, which had an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.

In what could be a perverse sign of the times, a print of Dorothea Lange’s “White Angel Bread Line” sold for well above its high estimate of $100,000, going for $134,500.

On October 16, an auction of photographs at Phillips de Pury & Company sold 70 percent of the lots, bringing in $2.3 million, or 72 percent of the low estimate.

The auction house touted the success of one collection in particular, “Robert Mapplethorpe: Photographs from the Collection of Lisa Lyon,” which sold all 14 works for a total of $225,000. 

A Mitch Epstein print, “Flag,” sold for $20,625, a record for Epstein. Henry Wessel’s “Forty Real Estate Photographs,” which is just what it sounds like, also set an artist’s record, selling for $37,500.
 
One major auction remains, as Swann hosts an auction of Important 19th & 20th Century Photographs on October 21.