Auction Results: Photographs, July 1, 2009 @Christie's London

The final sale of the Spring photographs season took place at Christie's in London last week. Whether it was fatigue at the end of a long run of sales or the onset of the hot summer, the results for the sale languished below the average for the season, with a buy in rate in the low 40s and proceeds well below the total Low estimate. It certainly didn't help that the top four lots in the sale failed to find buyers, but even if they had, there was some softness in the outcomes across the board.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 123
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £955000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1365500

Total Lots Sold: 70
Total Lots Bought In: 53
Buy In %: 43.09%
Total Sale Proceeds: £632425

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 42
Low Sold: 22
Low Bought In: 20
Buy In %: 47.62%
Total Low Estimate: £162500
Total Low Sold: £77125

Mid Total Lots: 73
Mid Sold: 46
Mid Bought In: 27
Buy In %: 36.99%
Total Mid Estimate: £713000
Total Mid Sold: £421000

High Total Lots: 8
High Sold: 4
High Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total High Estimate: £490000
Total High Sold: £134300

87.14% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There was only one surprise in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 91, Man Ray, Kiki, 1924, at £6875

The top lot by High estimate was lot 68, Andreas Gursky, Singapore Borse I, 1997, at £150000-200000, but it failed to sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 23, Richard Avedon, Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, 1981, at £46850, against an estimate of £20000-30000.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie's
8 King Street, St. James's
London SW1Y 6QT

NOTE: The photography auction season is now officially over (at least for the time being), with no new major sales coming until the fall. As such, our normal Tuesday auction posts will be replaced by a variety of other topics during the summer.