Photography Collection

The dispersal of the Jammes collection belonging to Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes effectively put 20th century photography in the spotlight. This dispersal which began in 1999 at Sotheby’s, was to continue in 2002 with two more sales, before concluding in 2008 at the same auction house. In 1999, a number of spectacular sales generated a real shock wave and a +191% rise in prices in two years. The sale of Grande vague, Sète Gustave LE Gray (1820-1884) is an abiding memory: the print achieved ten times its estimate, the hammer coming down at GBP 460,000, a peak it has never again reached. Since then, the record for an albumin print of this same Grande Vague has been GBP 85,000.

During the last phase of the Jammes sale on 15 November, Sotheby’s catalogue cover boasted a very rare Baron Jean-Baptiste Gros daguerreotype, on which the hammer came down at EUR 180,000. A price level certainly in line with expectation in that it did not surpass its estimate, but which nonetheless beat its previous record by some EUR 90,000. Supported by the quality of the work and a historic provenance, the results were pretty positive with only 27.4% remaining unsold, a rather reassuring level in view of the 42% of prints bought in at other photography sales, irrespective of period, in October and November 2008 (rate recorded on 12 November).

The October sales have seen modern and contemporary rather than historic photography achieve more than their due, with five-figure sale results far more frequent for 20th century photographs. Some stars of the contemporary scene have even propelled photography to million-ticket highs. We might mention the USD 3 million achieved by the Richard Prince Cowboy at Sotheby’s NY in November 2007.