Buying historical limited edition photographs

While limited edition digital prints are a great way to buy fine art photography at
affordable prices- as we do on www.WillItLookGoodOverTheSofa.com - for those of you who have the budget and are interested in collecting original historical photos, check out the current photo auctions at Sotheby’s, Christies and some of the other great auction houses. One of my favorites is the Swann Gallery in NY on 25th Street.

On October 15, they have an auction of important 19th and 20th century photographs. Included in this sale are a collection of nearly 40 nautical photographs including Gustave Le Gray's Brig on the Water, large-format albumen print, 1856 ( and Edward Weston's Boats, San Francisco, silver print, 1925.

The sale also features a partial set of Edward S. Curtis's magnum opus, The North American Indian, with 16 complete portfolios containing his large-format magisterial photogravures and 16 fully illustrated text volumes.


Other sale highlights include 19th century works, such as a whole-plate daguerreotype from the 1850s through contemporary art, including Joel Sternfeld's Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, chromogenic print, 1979.

What I like about these auctions, is that if you’re a photo collector even on a small scale, it’s an amazing way to see and learn about the history of photography and old photo processes like albumen prints, photogravure, etc.

To see their catalogue, go to www.swanngalleries.com and click on the catalogue section.