An anonymous buyer has paid US$4.3 million for an image by German photographer Andreas Gursky, making it the world’s most expensive photograph.
Gursky is an internationally-acclaimed visual artist known for his enormous architecture and landscape colour photographs, often taken from high vantage points.
The image Rhine II, sold at a Christies’ auction in New York last week, is a 1999 variation on one of his earlier photographs of the Rhine.
Before the 1990s, 56-year-old Gursky did not digitally manipulate his images but has since been frank about his use of computers to edit and enhance his large-scale photographs.
For Rhine II, he digitally removed all extraneous features such as dog walkers, cyclists and a factory building, according to The Guardian.
The previous highest price paid for a photograph was a 1981 print by Cindy Sherman.
The world's most expensive photo. In an interview with director Ben Lewis in 2002, Gursky described Rhine II as his favourite image. "It says a lot using the most minimal means … for me it is an allegorical picture about the meaning of life and how things are."
Story first published at www.photoimagingnews.com.au