THE MOST EXPENSIVE PHOTOGRAPHS

1) Cindy Sherman, Untitled №96 (1981), $3,890,500, May 2011, Christie's New York.

2) Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456, February 2007, Sotheby's London auction. A second print of 99 Cent II Diptychon sold for $2.48 million in November 2006 at a New York gallery, and a third print sold for $2.25 million at Sotheby's in May 2006.

3)Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.

4)Unknown photographer, Billy the Kid (1879–80), tintype portrait, $2,300,000, June 2011, Brian Lebel's Old West Show & Auction.

5)Dmitry Medvedev, Kremlin of Tobolsk (2009), $1,750,000, January 2010, Christmas Yarmarka, Saint Petersburg.

5)Edward Weston, Nude (1925), $1,609,000, April 2008, Sotheby's New York auction.

6) Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands) (1919), $1,470,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.

7)Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe Nude (1919), $1,360,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.

8)Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), $1,248,000, November 2005, Christie's New York auction.

9)Richard Avedon, Dovima with elephants (1955), $1,151,976, November 2010, Christie's Paris auction.

10) Edward Weston, Nautilus (1927), $1,082,500, April 2010, Sotheby's New York auction.

11) Peter Lik, One (2010), $1,000,000, December 2010, Anonymous Collector

12) Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, 113.Athènes, T[emple] de J[upiter] olympien pris de l'est (1842) $922,488, 2003, auction.

13) Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete (1857) $838,000, 1999.

14) Eugène Atget, Joueur d'Orgue, (1898–1899), $686,500, April 2010, Christie's New York auction.

15) Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol (1987) $643,200, 2006

16) Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948) $609,600, Sotheby's New York auction, 2006

Herbert "HERB" Ritts

Herbert Ritts, Jr. enjoyed a comfortable childhood. Born on August 13, 1952 to parents who owned a profitable furniture business in California, Ritts was part of a family who lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills and also had a summer home on fashionable Santa Catalina Island. Young Ritts grew up in glamorous surroundings, with movie stars for neighbors.

Ritts had not decided what profession to pursue, but he certainly was not considering a career in photography, which he had only recently taken up as a hobby. It happened, however, that in 1978 he had his camera with him when he and a friend, the then little-known actor Richard Gere, had to stop at a gas station to repair a flat tire.

He photographed Brooke Shields for the cover of the Oct. 12, 1981 edition of Elle and he photographed Olivia Newton-John for her Physical album in 1981. Five years later he would replicate that cover pose with Madonna for her 1986 release True Blue.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Ritts photographed notables such as, Christopher Reeve, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Francesco Clemente, George Clooney, Cher, Mel Gibson, Elizabeth Taylor, Brad Pitt, Ronald Reagan, Julia Roberts, Steven Hawking, Nicole Kidman, Edward Norton, Tom Cruise, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dizzy Gillespie, Elton John, Annette Benning, Antonio Banderas,  Jack Nicholson, , and many others.

He took many fashion and nude photos of supermodel Cindy Crawford and eventually set her up with his good friend, actor Richard Gere, at a BBQ held at his mother Shirley's house. The couple married four years later in 1991, but divorced in 1995.

He also worked for the magazines, Interview, Esquire, Mademoiselle, Glamour, GQ, Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Time, Vogue, Allure, Vanity Fair, Details, and Elle. He photographed Prince for his The Hits/The B-Sides greatest-hits package released in 1993. He published many books on photography for leading fashion designers including, Giorgio Armani, Revlon, Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein, Elizabeth Arden, Donna Karan, Cartier, Guess, Maybelline, TAG Heuer, Lacoste, Gianfranco Ferrè, Levi's, Victoria's Secret, Gap, Acura, CoverGirl, Lancôme, and Valentino. From 1996 to 1997 his work was displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, attracting more than 250,000 people to the exhibit and in 2003 a solo exhibition was held at the Daimaru Museum, in Kyoto, Japan.

He also take photos for Pirelli calendar at 1994 in Paradise Island, the Bahamas.

Herb Ritts photos:

Mr. Arthur Elgor - "snapshot" icon

Arthur Elgort was born in 1940 and raised in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School and then Hunter College where he studied painting. Finding painting to be too lonely an art form, he moved on to photography which he took to naturally. He began his career working as a photo assistant to Gus Peterson whose natural shooting style greatly contributed to the lively and casual style Mr. Elgort is so well known for today. He also attributes much of his style to a lifelong love of music and dance, particularly jazz and ballet.
Elgort's 1971 debut in British Vogue created a sensation in the Fashion Photography world where his soon-to-be iconic "snapshot" style and emphasis on movement and natural light liberated the idea of fashion photography. In September 2008, he told Teen Vogue that he credited Mademoiselle for his big break: "They were really brave and gave me a chance. It was the first time I was shooting a cover instead of a half-page here or there." From there, he rose to fame working for such elite magazines as International and American Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Teen Vogue among others and shooting advertising campaigns with numerous international fashion labels such as Chanel, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent. Elgort quickly became one of the most well-known and emulated photographers in the world. His early body of work from the 70's and 80's is often considered representative of the fashion industry at the time.
Arthur Elgort published his first of several books, Personal Fashion Photographs, in 1983 and later his world wide best seller Models Manual during the super model boom in 1994. His other two books, Camera Crazy  and Camera Ready , focus on his love of cameras and taking pictures.
Today Elgort continues shooting for American Vogue and many other Conde Nast publications, as well as working on his most recent 2009 advertising campaigns with Via Spiga and Liz Claiborne with Isaac Mizrahi. He lives in New York City with his wife and three children.


Arthur Elgor photos:

Norman Parkinson - out of the studio

Norman Parkinson (21 April 1913 – 15 February 1990) 

 "I like to make people look as good as they'd like to look, and with luck, a shade better"

English photographer and eccentric whose career saw fashion photography transform itself from decorative depiction of aristocratic ladies to a more commercial and democratic medium. After apprenticeship to the court photographers Speaight & Sons of Bond Street, he set up his own studio at the age of 21. Like Cecil Beaton, Parkinson was noted for taking his sitters out of the studio and encouraging them to move naturally, resulting in elegant portraits captured in contrastingly grimy or working‐class environments. Sittings with contemporary figures including the Sitwells, Vaughan Williams, and Kathleen Ferrier for publications such as The Bystander, Life, and Look led to a close relationship with Condé Nast from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Parkinson pioneered the outdoor use of colour photography with then difficult to source early 35 mm stock, which he used for landmark fashion imagery for American Vogue. Many models were exulted to fame by Parkinson including Celia Hammond (who he discovered for Queen magazine), Jan Ward, Adele Collins, Davina Taylor, Carmen dell'Orefice, Enid Boulting and the first 'supermodel' and wife of fellow photographer Irving Penn, Lisa Fonssagrives.He spotted Nena von Schlebrügge, the mother of Uma Thurman at age 16 when she left her senior school in Stockholm, and brought her to London to model for Vogue Magazine.
In 1963, Parkinson moved from Twickenham to Tobago, where he set up a pig farm and marketed his famous ‘Porkinson's Bangers’ sausages. One of the first fashion photographers to enjoy personal celebrity, he was latterly known as the unofficial royal portraitist.

"The only thing that gets in the way of a really good photograph, is the camera".

Norman Parkinson Photo Gallery

Harry Peccanotti - most talented men to ever hold a camera.

Every photographer who’s made a career out of pressing shutter buttons in front of beautiful women owes a great debt to Harri Peccinotti. He was the first person to consistently capture the sexuality of everyday activities on camera: subversively pleasing sights like girls carefully sucking on popsicles, close-ups of butts on bike seats, and California beach bunnies unknowingly shot with telephoto lenses.

Harry Peccanotti at work

Biography


Harry Peccanotti (also known as Harri Peccinotti) is a photographer, known for his erotic work.He was born in London in 1935. At 14, he dropped out of school to design album covers for the jazz label Esquire Records. In the 50s, he began working as an advertising photographer and eventually served as art director for glossy behemoths like Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair UK. But he will forever be remembered as the main brain behind Nova, a British magazine first published in 1965 that set new standards for both graphic and journalistic content by integrating ideas borrowed from the psychedelic subculture and underground press of the day.

In ’68, after completing an assignment in Vietnam, he photographed the now legendary Pirelli pinup calendar that paired love poems with photographic interpretations of the verses—alluring, tastefully shot women lounging around the Tunisian island of Djerba. Pirelli—and everyone in the world who wasn’t blind—liked it so much they invited him back the following year. This time Harri proceeded to up the raunch factor by featuring the aforementioned California girls in various states of undress.

Harri’s recent endeavors have focused on ethnographic reportage, filmmaking, and publishing books of his work. He also continues to shoot fashion and advertisements and is a photography consultant for the weekly French newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

His life's work is celebrated in the retrospective book "HP" by Harri Peccinotti.


Covers of Nova Magazine that was made by Harri Peccinotti

Harry Peccanotti Photo Gallery

Pirelli Calendar

The first calendar in 1962 featured models from Pirelli’s key markets with images of tyres super-imposed on them! Pirelli’s UK subsidiary produced the calendar. It was almost just a ‘pin-up’ calendar but Robert Freeman, who photographed the Beatle’s ‘magical tours’, lifted it from mediocrity with his shots of models on the beaches of the Cote d’Azur.
The calendar is famous for its limited availability because it is not sold and is only given as a corporate gift to a restricted number of important Pirelli customers and celebrity VIPs. The Pirelli Calendar is perhaps the world's only prestigious and exclusive "girly" calendar, featuring pictures generally considered glamour photography including artistic nudes.
Publication was discontinued after the 1974 issue as an economising cut back in response to the world recession from the oil shock.Tyres were still featured in the 1984-1994 calendars, but the images of these products were always displayed discreetly. They were shown as a mark in the sand or as ruffles in a glamorous dress, for example. Once the calendar became more sophisticated, showing the product wasn’t necessary any more. It was resurrected 10 years later and has been published regularly since then.
Appearance on the calendar has become a mark of distinction for those photographic models that are chosen, as well as for the photographers commissioned to produce the images used. Over the years the supermodels and celebrities who have appeared have included Sienna Miller, Naomi Campbell, Eva Riccobono, Malgosia Bela, Gisele Bündchen, Emanuela de Paula, Sonny Freeman Drane, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Selma Blair, Lauren Bush, Elsa Benitez, Laetitia Casta, Rachael Leigh Cook, Milla Jovovich, Doutzen Kroes, Heidi Klum, Sophia Loren, Penélope Cruz, Brittany Murphy, Amy Smart, Julia Stiles, Karolina Kurkova, Caroline Trentini, Raica Oliveira, Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Bridget Moynahan, Shannyn Sossamon, Mena Suvari, Monet Mazur, Aurelie Claudel, Fernanda Tavares, Isabeli Fontana, Frankie Rayder, Angela Lindvall, Hilary Swank and Yamila Díaz.

Photographers:

Robert Freeman (first calendar), Brian Duffy, Peter Knapp, Harry Peccinotti, Francis Giacobetti, Sarah Moon (first women photographer for Pirelli), Hans Feurer, Uwe Ommer, Norman Parkinson, Bert Stern, Terence Donovan, Barry Lategan, Joyce Tennyson, Arthur Elgort, Clive Arrowsmith, John Claridge, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Nick Knight, Patrick Demarchelier, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot (The 2006 Pirelli calendar), Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (The 2007 Pirelli calendar), Peter Beard, Terry Richardson, Karl Lagerfeld.

The 2007 Pirelli Calendar
 
Sophia Loren agreed to appear semi-naked for the  Pirelli Calendar at 72 her decision was controversial.


The 2009 Pirelli Calendar


Peter Beard, who photographed the calendar in 2009, described it as a ‘living sculpture’.  He photographed his models in the wild African landscape of Botswana which remains unspoiled and has a high concentration of wildlife.  The Kalahari outback and the Okavango River delta were used as backdrops to the free-spirited and natural look of the models. Beard has lived in Africa for thirty years.




The 2010 Pirelli Calendar


It was shot in Brazil by the provocative photographer, Terry Richardson, who seems to have brought an element of playfulness to the calendar with his photographs of models hosing themselves or eating bananas.


Pirelli Calendar Photos