on Feb 17th, 2006Edward Steichen The Pond Moonlight Glitters Gold
If you open your family album and stare at the photographs, do any of them stand out as truly inspired? Did you capture a moment at precisely the right light and angle to capture a feeling that transcends time and space and soars into the heavens?
Well, Edward Steichen had such a moment on Long Island in 1904. For him it was a genuine feeling distilled into a single image of a pond bathed in moonlight; for Sothebys, over 100 years later, it was a genuine ka-ching feeling, as the gavel came down on the closing bid of almost $3 million for one photograph!
If that doesn’t make you want to rush out and buy a digital camera, then stick to your disposable. Go ahead, see the world through a cheap lens, see if I care. Just don’t expect to sell it for more than the paper it’s printed on. Unless, of course, your uncle or great grandfather ’s last name happens to be Steichen.
Tonight at Sotheby’s before a crowded room, Edward Steichen’s The Pond-Moonlight shattered the world record for a photograph at auction, selling to applause for $2,928,000, almost three times its high estimate (est. $700,000/1 million*), to Peter MacGill of Pace-MacGill Gallery on behalf of a private collector.
