Pix Of The Day: World Record Bid For Photograph
CREDIT: © Christies.com. Thumbnail click pops-up larger image on source page.
WHERE: Christie's auction house, London. WHAT: record Daguerreotype sale.

The name Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) may not trip lightly from your tongue. Until recently J-PGdP was considered to be a minor photographer, working in an early method of photography known as Daguerreotype, named after its inventor. Christie's auction house in London held a sale of eighty six photographs from the collection of a single owner. Sale 6762, Lot 13, entitled 'Athènes 1842 Temple de Jupiter Olympien pris de L'Est', was appraised at a pre auction estimate of £90k-£120k ($150k-$200k).

BJP (British Journal of Photography) reported that on the day our featured picture fetched £565,250 ($942k) approximately five times its median appraisal value, and a new world record. What is more, eight of the Daguerreotypes in the Christie's auction fetched more than £100k ($166,666). Four more examples of J-PGdP's work may be seen [1] [2] [3] [4] in an online exhibition at the BndF (Bibliothèque nationale de France). The web site is partially in English, but for this feature, 'Voyage en Orient', we were unable to find an English version, and this Google translation is patchy because of the page formats. We felt it worth the struggle to page through the web feature because of the high image content and partial translations.

[top ] posted 04:15GMT - item permalink [daily] [monthly] archive