Fine Art Prices Are Falling, but Photo Prices Are Rising
If you’ve been thinking about starting a fine art photography collection, now may not be a bad time to start that investment. While most types of fine art are seeing prices plunge, photography is actually growing in clout among art collectors and investors.
The data is from Coutts, a leading private bank and wealth management firm, which also found that photography has emerged from other types of fine art as one of the hottest new targets for collectors as of late.
Last November, a 1990 photo by Thomas Struth showing museum goers at the Art Institute of Chicago sold for a whopping £600,890 (~$777,000), multiple times its original estimate of £100,000-150,000 (~$132,000-$198,000).
Other photos by Gilbert & George, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andreas Gurksy have all sold recently for over $400,000 each, The Guardian says.
“It is definitely one of our fastest-growing categories,” Sotheby’s auctioneer Brandei Estes tells The Guardian. “It’s the nature of the work; it is the most democratic of art forms and because of the relatively accessible price points, it’s an attractive category for the growing middle market.”
So if you have some money to invest and a passion for art collecting, you might want to take a closer look at photography.
Image credits: Header illustration based on photo by Samuel Zeller
