Multimillion Dollar 99 Cents…

A print by Andreas Gursky, “99 Cent II Diptychon” (2001), has set a new austion record for work by a living photographer. It was bought  by an anonymous bidder for $2.48 million on November 16 at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York. The highest price ever paid for a photograph was $2 928 000 for a 1904 Edward Steichen print.

Gursky’s large format photographs are digitally altered to oversaturate the colour and flatten perspective. This technique creates an overwhelming sensation of alienation and superfluity when applied to subject matter such as supermarkets, stock exchanges and apartment buildings. While the work can be viewed as documenting everyday environments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it is also a savage indictment of the ways in which the tools we choose to ease our lives can end up determining how we live.