World's Most Expensive Photograph is...

摘要：The Pond-Moonlight by Edward Steichen, taken on Long Island in 1904, broke the world record price for a photograph when it was sold for more than $2.9m (?1.67m) at a two-day Sotheby's sale which began in New York last night.美国摄影家爱德华·斯泰肯（1879—1973）于1904年摄于长岛的《池塘月光》，日前在纽约索思比拍卖行创下了290万美元的照片拍卖世界纪录。

The Pond-Moonlight by Edward Steichen, taken on Long Island in 1904, broke the world record price for a photograph when it was sold for more than $2.9m (?1.67m) at a two-day Sotheby's sale which began in New York last night. The previous record for a photograph at auction, $1,248,000, was set in November by Richard Prince's "Untitled (Cowboy)".

Steichen's 42cm by 40cm photograph, from the collection of the wealthy American industrialist Howard Gilman, is a dreamy, moonlit landscape with reflections of trees in a pond. As an image it is rather beautiful, bearing the impressionistic quality of early photography; an experiment exploring the limits of the photographic plate.

Its fame reflects just how much the value of rare, early prints has increased. Steichen's work is sought after by private collectors - this is the kind of landscape that usually only museums can acquire.

Only three prints of this photograph are known to exist. Two were held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, which acquired the Gilman collection in 2005, and one of these is the one sold by Sotheby's. The third is in the Museum of Modern Art. So the Met has sold what is, in effect, a duplicate, making the final auction price all the more astonishing.

The three prints were made under Steichen's supervision, and are a great example of a rare vintage photograph by an artist who had an influence on later 20th-century photographers such as Richard Avedon, whose work is also represented in the sale. Steichen's early painterly photographs, possibly naive to our image-soaked modern eyes, helped establish photography as an art form.

美国摄影家爱德华·斯泰肯（1879—1973）于1904年摄于长岛的《池塘月光》，日前在纽约索思比拍卖行创下了290万美元的照片拍卖世界纪录。

据英国《卫报》2月15日报道，14日在索思比举行的拍卖会上，斯泰肯的这幅《池塘月光》以290万美元的天价创下了新的世界纪录，此前的世界纪录是理查德·普林斯的《无题（牛仔）》，价格为124.8万美元。

斯泰肯的《池塘月光》展现了月光洒落在池塘树林的梦幻景色。作为斯泰肯早期风景摄影中的经典之作，《池塘月光》细腻的层次感与摄影家对色彩与光泽的精妙把握，充分证明了摄影可以像油画一样传递出丰富的情绪和内涵。

就目前所知，这幅照片在世界上只有3张印刷版本，此次在索思比拍卖的为其中之一。这幅长42厘米、宽40厘米的《池塘月光》原为纽约实业家霍华德·吉尔曼的收藏品，后被珍藏在纽约大都会美术馆中。

除此之外，曾被吉尔曼收藏的另一张《池塘月光》现仍被保存在大都会美术馆。而第3张《池塘月光》目前被珍藏在现代艺术博物馆。当年，这3件印刷版本都是在斯泰肯的监督下完成的。

索思比拍卖行对这幅《池塘月光》估价为70万美元至100万美元，但该作品最后卖出了290万美元的惊人高价。这也意味着早期珍贵照片印刷版本的增值。据悉，风景摄影作品以前仅被博物馆收藏，而斯泰肯的作品目前已被许多私人收藏家看好。

作为摄影史上最重要的人物之一，斯泰肯的早期作品使摄影真正成为了一种艺术形式，他也影响了20世纪后期的众多摄影家。除《池塘月光》外，此次拍卖会上颇受关注的作品还包括斯泰肯1908年拍摄的《巴尔扎克——开放的天空》和施蒂格利兹于1918年拍摄的《乔奇娅·奥基弗（手）》。