While hugely successful photographers rarely become household names, many will have seen the headlines about their photographs making millions at auction.
German photographer Andreas Gursky has dominated the field in recent years, with his record-breaking photography sales matched only by a select few others. Click or scroll through our gallery to discover the world's most valuable photos, listed in ascending order. All dollar values in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
Note: We have deliberately excluded Richard Prince's Spiritual America from our round-up due to the nature of the image. London's Metropolitan police had the photograph removed from public display at the Tate Modern in 2009 as it showed a then 10-year-old Brooke Shields naked.
This unique photo (shown here on a 'wanted' poster), which dates back to 1879 or 1880, is the only surviving and authenticated solo portrait of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid. Experts believe it was taken at Fort Sumner in New Mexico.
At a Denver auction house in 2011, the photograph of the Wild West legend was expected to sell for a maximum of $400,000 (£305.4k). However, once under the hammer, it reached a record-breaking $2.3 million (£1.7m). The image is one of the most famous photographs in American history and is used on merchandise around the globe.
The original photo, which was snapped up by private collector William Koch, is a black and white tintype, and was taken with a very early type of photography that involved metal plates.
Often coloured in for reprints, the famous image shows the notorious outlaw dressed in old clothes and carrying two guns: a Winchester carbine and a Colt revolver.
The New York Times covered Billy the Kid’s death in 1881, describing him as having an "innocent appearance" that belied the fact that he was actually "one of the most dangerous characters which this country has produced".
Conspiracy theories, legends, and debates have shrouded Billy the Kid's life, which was cut short at the age of 21 when he was fatally shot by Pat Garrett, the Lincoln County Sheriff.
The two of them appear together in the photo shown here (Billy is second from left while Garrett sits on the far right), which, although bought for $10 at a North Carolina flea market in 2011, could even trump the first photo if it sells for its estimated valuation of "millions". At the moment, it remains in private hands.
In this 1973 photo collage, art duo Gilbert & George are shown in 37 individual images getting drunk.
Part of the provocateurs' Drinking Sculptures series, the gelatin silver print To Her Majesty sold at Christie's auction house in London in June 2008, making an impressive £1.9 million ($2.5m) in the process.
The artists, Gilbert Prousch from San Martin de Tor, Italy, and George Passmore from Plymouth, England, are known for their formal attire of suits and ties, with their clothing choices perhaps at odds with their provocative, colourful art.
"We want an art that is in your face: aggressive," Gilbert, who has been working with his partner for over half a century, once told The Guardian.
The duo's artworks are highly sought-after, although none of their bold graphic images has ever fetched as much as their record-breaking 1973 collage.
In their prints and performances, Gilbert & George have explored a wide range of subjects linked to sexuality, race, religion, and mortality.
Only three versions of The Pond-Moonlight, by Luxembourgish-American photographer Edward Steichen, are known to exist.
Taken in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, in 1904, Steichen created his striking early-colour pictures by applying light-sensitive gums that gave the final print of the dreamy, moonlit pond more than one colour. As the layering of gums was done by hand, each of the three prints is totally unique.
In 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which already owned a different version of the photograph, put The Pond-Moonlight up for auction.
While the 42cm by 40cm (16" by 15.7") image was expected to fetch a high price, it exceeded expectations and was purchased by a private buyer for a stunning $2.9 million (£2.2m). At the time, this was a world record sum for a photograph sold at auction.
Today, one photograph remains with a private buyer while the other two are housed in museum collections. Pictured is a self-portrait by Steichen.
A photograph by Surrealist artist Man Ray is one of the most celebrated of all time. According to Elodie Morel, Head of Photography at Christie’s in Paris, the 1926 artwork broke numerous records at auction in November 2017 when it soared past Christie’s initial estimates. When it sold for €2.7 million ($2.9m/£2.2m), it instantly became the most expensive photograph ever sold in France.
Man Ray’s silver-print photograph (pictured right) depicts his lover, the model and actress Kiki de Montparnasse, resting her head while holding an African mask.
Morel, in her assessment of the artwork, called it a "masterpiece of the artist’s play between consciousness and unconsciousness". Christie’s said that the print held particular appeal due to a culmination of retouches and added details, combining four different negatives, one of which is shown here on the left.
The photograph was first published in French Vogue in May 1926, the same year it was shot, and has changed hands multiple times since. It has been exhibited all over the world and was a key piece in the 2016 exhibition of Elton John’s modernist photography collection at the Tate Modern gallery in London.
Chicago Board of Trade III is one of an edition of six that German photographer Andreas Gursky produced in the 2000s; the version shown here was picked up by a private collector at a Sotheby’s auction in 2013.
In an interview with The Guardian, Gursky explained how he had moved to working digitally in the early 1990s, "combining shots, excising certain details, repeating others".
As in his other photographs of financial centres, such as the one shown here (titled Tokyo, Stock Exchange), Gursky shoots the scene from above.
Gursky, whose work features heavily in this list, describes these images as "constructed", with a focus on "the expanse rather than the detail". Several sections of the image have been double-exposed to give a sense of movement.
Comparing this photo to Gursky’s earlier image of the Chicago Board of Trade, the Tate Gallery reflected on the difference in the photographer’s vantage point. The earlier image was taken from a lower angle, showing the walls of the trading floor and making the space look contained. The later image, depicted here, shows the space as overcrowded and limitless, with colours digitally enhanced to give a decorative quality.
Andreas Gursky is the world’s most successful photographer when it comes to sale prices at auction, with ten of his prints having sold for upwards of $1 million (£775k) over the years.
This photograph, taken in 2001, was no exception to the rule, selling for $3.3 million (£2.5m) at Sotheby’s in London in 2007.
The photograph, entitled 99 Cent II, Diptychon, was one of 68 pieces to feature in the Hayward Gallery’s major Gursky retrospective in 2018. Despite dozens of other images being showcased, the Financial Times reported that 99 Cent II, Diptychon would be the photograph that people would be most likely to remember – largely due to its size.
Standing at nearly 207cm by 307cm (81" by 121", or around 7ft by 10ft), it far exceeded the public’s prior idea of what a photo could be. Gursky truly shifted photography from an art form belonging on the printed page to one that could be admired in a gallery.
The photograph’s subject matter – aisles of $0.99 goods in a Californian bargain store – also caught the art world’s attention. When asked by the Financial Times if his image was a critique of globalisation and consumption, Gursky’s answer was an emphatic "yes".
However, he admitted he had no solutions to the problems, with his work merely serving to "keep awareness of the problems simmering" while encouraging viewers to "come to their own conclusions".
American painter and photographer Richard Prince redefined photography with his Cowboy series, created predominantly between 1980 and 1989. Prince rephotographed a series of advertisements for Marlboro Cigarettes, removing the text and cropping and enlarging the images to create his own limited edition artworks.
The images feature the "Marlboro Man", a cowboy who was meant to symbolise the ideal figure of American masculinity. According to Prince (pictured), altering the images was his attempt to question the idea of the "macho man" that appeared throughout movies and TV shows, and had become synonymous with the American Dream.
Though Prince’s rephotography sparked controversy in the art world and lawsuits, it hasn’t stopped his collection from selling for a fortune. Untitled (Cowboy) (1998), shown here, fetched an incredible $3.7 million (£2.8m) at auction at Christie's in 2014, which was a record price for an image from this collection.
In Dead Troops Talk, Jeff Wall imagines a dead Soviet patrol talking and joking after being ambushed and killed during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Tate Gallery describes how the colour image was created in a large studio in 1992, with figures photographed separately and the final image being carefully constructed much like a film.
Wall, who hails from Canada, has been criticised by some for not being a "true" photographer as he creates his photographs in a studio, according to The Guardian.
On the other hand, many have hailed Wall as one of the pioneers of conceptual photography, alongside Andreas Gursky and Cindy Sherman (both of whom feature on this list). Wall himself describes his photographs as "cinematography" re-creations.
Wall, seen here at a press conference for a major exhibition of his work, made history at Christie’s New York in 2012 when Dead Troops Talk became the most expensive Canadian photo ever sold at auction.
CBC News reported that the photograph had been part of the estate belonging to the late clothing manufacturer, David Pincus. The estate also sold a Rothko painting for $86.8 million (£67.3m) at the same auction – and set a new record price for modernist art in the process.
Cindy Sherman has produced the most expensive photographs ever taken by any female photographer.
Bloomberg called her work "wildly successful, both critically and commercially" and her 1981 self-portrait, Untitled #96, sold at Christie’s New York for $3.9 million (£3m) in 2011.
The piece depicts Sherman dressed as a teenage girl, staring into the distance and clutching a torn-off classifieds page.
Christie’s, which auctioned the work, called it "at once seductive and anxiety-inducing" as well as "almost theatrical" due to the artificial light.
The photograph provoked much debate. Christie’s likened it to the large, horizontal portraits of women in men’s erotic magazines and commented that the photo’s composition – especially its aerial view over the adolescent girl – highlighted the victimisation of women in society.
It's reported that arts critic Laura Mulvey viewed it more as a "fetishisation" of women.
Later in 2011, Andreas Gursky managed to oust Sherman from her top spot for the most valuable photograph sold that year with his minimalist depiction of the Lower Rhine, which was taken in 1999.
The striking image, which shows the river and its surrounding fields and sky, was sold to an unknown private buyer at Christie’s New York.
Christie's described Rhein II as "a dramatic and profound reflection on human existence and our relationship to nature on the cusp of the 21st century", The Guardian reported at the time.
One critic from The Guardian called it "a sludgy image of the grey Rhine under grey skies", but admitted this was in fact Gursky’s intention.
Gursky has said of his work: "I wasn't interested in an unusual, possibly picturesque view of the Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it."
Gursky has been frank about the digital effects used on the piece, describing how the silvery water and perfect geometric lines were a result of digitised correction.
According to the Financial Times, Gursky digitally removed a power station from one side of the picture to streamline the bands of colour; he also cut off the image at each end to suggest an endlessly flowing river.
Phantom is perhaps the most controversial as well as the most expensive photograph ever made. Peter Lik’s black-and-white photograph of a stream of light filtering through Arizona's Antelope Canyon reportedly made the artist a tidy $6.5 million (£5m) when it was sold to a private buyer in December 2014.
Many have questioned how Lik managed to secure the unprecedented sum.
The Washington Post attributed the price to the Australian photographer’s salesmanship: after all, he advertised in Times Square and dubbed himself "one of the most important artists of the 21st century" and the "world’s most influential fine art photographer". Some even doubt if it really did sell for $6.5 million (£5m).
Artnet and The Times both drew attention to Lik’s prior poor sales figures at public auction – few of his pieces have made more than $3,000 (£2.3k). Phantom was sold privately by the photographer (pictured) to an unknown buyer, with no documentary proof of the sale "beyond a press release", according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Even if the sale price is correct, art consultant David Hulme claims the work has no secondary market value, while art critic Jonathan Jones wrote for The Guardian: "Someone has been very foolish with their money, mistaking the picturesque for high art."
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