Back in 2011, I reported that a tintype photo of Billy the Kid had sold at auction for $2.3 million. The price struck me as outrageous, but at least the picture (at the time, it was the only known photograph of the outlaw) has some historical significance.
That 2.3 pales in comparison to the $4.3 million paid a few months later for the picture above. Titled Rhein II by photographer Andreas Gursky, it is still the most expensive photograph ever sold. The print is huge, six by eleven feet, but I can’t see any reason why anyone would pay that kind of money for the thing.
Fellow amateur shutterbugs will be interested to learn that the picture has been Photoshopped – some elements that appeared in the original were electronically removed. Justifying this manipulation of the image, Gursky said "Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ, a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river."
Admittedly, I am not particularly artistic, so I must be missing something very important. I do know that I have taken (and deleted) similar photos so I may have thrown away a fortune and never knew it.
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